A great way to drive subscriptions is to put a “follow us” block after your content. In this box you can promote whatever you’re trying to get your readers to do, whether that’s sign up for your mailing list, click the Facebook “like” button, add your RSS feed to their reader, whatever.

Usually, you want this to go at the bottom of a full post, not after excerpts or after the end of every page. The logic being that if a reader goes through your post all the way to the end, s/he must really like your content so why wouldn’t s/he want to sign up for more?

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about when I say “follow us block”, check out the one on socialtriggers.com:

Pretty nifty, huh? It’s a great placement that is sure to convert very well on any site.

I was curious to compare the designs of various top site’s Author Bio boxes so started collecting screenshots.

I figured if this is useful for me in designing my WordPress sites, it would probably be useful for some of you!

For each site, I’ve grabbed one Author Bio Box and a bit of the background or background color so that you can get a feel for how it sits on the page.

You can click on either the name of the site or the box itself to visit the site it came from.

Check out the screenshots below, and feel free to leave comments pointing to your own site if you are using Author Bio Boxes.

Outspoken Media

Pro Blog Design

Do you run a WordPress site where more than one person writes the content?

If so you should consider adding author bios to each post, like most top sites do. This small addition will not only make your authors happy, it will also allow your readers to feel a greater connection to your content and also the creators of that content. It’s a win-win!

And with the Custom About Author Plugin, it’s as easy as a few clicks.

This site’s author bios (like the one you see at the bottom of this post) are created with this plugin with absolutely no customization.

Are you looking for social media icons for your WordPress site, and a square design would best suit your website design?

Well you’ve come to the right place, because I’ve been categorizing free social media icons into groups and this post is dedicated to square (or squarish) icons.

Square is probably the most popular shape for social media icons so there are tons, but I’ve only listed sets that are visually-appealing and complete. If you know of any square(ish) sets that are worth including, please link to them in the comments!

Click on the previews to go to the download page for each set.

Enjoy!

Basic & Classic Square Icons

I was just reading Launching a New Website: 18 Steps to Successful Metrics & Marketing and nodding my head going “done it, done it, done it” when I reached step #8, Establish a KPI dashboard.

That stopped me in my tracks because I’ve never done that for any of my own properties, even though I’m a huge data nerd who looks at analytics almost every day!

What’s KPI?

Depending on your background, you might be asking “what’s KPI mean?” — and no one would blame you. KPI stands for “key performance indicator,” and it’s a way to measure the success of your website, blog, or business by measuring stuff.

Today, it’s pretty much assumed that any site is going to have a social media presence of some sort, and of course you want to link to those profiles right?

Using social media icons to link to Twitter, Facebook, etc is a no-brainer, and it’s also an easy way to add some personality to your site without actually having to do any design work.

There are tons of free social media icon sets all over the web but it’s really hard to find what you’re looking for, so I started archiving them as I found them.

And now you get to benefit from my compulsive personality with organized resource lists for icon sets divided by the way their style!

Wood-type Icons

This set from the brilliant folks at Six Revisions features a faux-wood look but is still a slick and modern-looking icon set. This would be a nice set for a website featuring neutral colors and an otherwise minimalist look.