I’ve been having to go to meetings lately. So I’ve been printing my most popular articles and taking them with me, using them as writing fodder–as a place to get ideas. That’s what got me thinking how often it is that we forget the best promotion that we have is sitting in our blog archives.
Letting readers know what’s in our archives is a great way to invite them to become a part of our brands, our blogs, and our businesses in a more intimate fashion.
Blog Archive Promotion To-Do List
Here’s a check list of a few things we all should be doing to promote our blogs from within. I call it the Blog Archive Promotion To-Do List.
- Put Popular Posts where folks can find them. I’m as guilty as the next guy, as I’m not a tech and I’ve not yet charmed one into helping me put up an automatic list of popular posts. But in the meantime, I have a Popular Post Page in the sidebar, and I’ll keep it even after I get that list of Popular Posts. If you can’t create a page, hand code links to your best posts.
- Feature Related Articles at the end of every new post. When you finish writing a post, let folks know about other articles you’ve written that they might be interested in. Intra-linking of this nature is not only a service to your readers, it lets search engines know how the content on your blog has relevance and context for your readers.
- Intra-Link to Past Articles when you can. If you have an article that perfectly fits what you’re talking about as my post Think Before You Intra-link so perfectly suits this one, remember to include a link to it.
- Read your stats to see what’s popular and make more. Then read those posts to learn what made them favorites with readers. Keep popular posts in a collection. Try to figure out what they have in common. Use those common features to guide you as you write in the future.
- If you get key word traffic, make sure it’s landing on the posts that it should. If it isn’t find a way to tag your posts so that the next person who searches with that key word gets to the post that delivers the right goods.
I’m sure I’ve not thought of all the ways we might be using archives as promotion. You must have ideas too. What are some creative ways that you’ve used your archives to encourage readers to visit more and stay longer at your blog?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Hey Liz,
I usually put a (previous post) type thing. (with a pop-up)
I think using at least the title of the prevous post is a great idea for all the reasons you mentioned in both your posts.
I had an idea while reading comments on your Think Before You Intra-Link post. What if you put the *Title in Bold and at the Bottom of the post use *Title for the Intra-link?
I may try that on my Blog and see if anyone links to the previous post that way.
Just my 2 cents,
Joe
I guess I’m getting to be a regular… 😉
Joe
Hi Joe!
Glad to see you back again! it gets lonely here inside your computer. 🙂
I had an idea while reading comments on your Think Before You Intra-Link post. What if you put the *Title in Bold and at the Bottom of the post use *Title for the Intra-link?
I’m not sure I’m following what you’re explaining here. If you do it on your blog, will you come back here and leave a link so that we can all come to see what you did?
Thanks, I love regular guys, Joe.
Have a snack and drink. If I’m not around they’re always in the sidebar. 🙂
Liz
I’m using both “Related Posts” plugin and Semiologic’s “Related Keywords” plugin. Very useful and I think good value to my PetLvr and a few other blogs. But now that you mentioned it .. I also started to think …
While reviewing stats, and other info .. usually I can tell which posts are popular. I often click on the link to figure out why. I should just create a new category called “Popular Posts” and give it a tick while I’m in there .. wordpress is great for stuff like that. Plus – people would also notice because (like you must know already) everytime you do a little update and save to the blog entry – it gets reposted another time in the RSS feed (at least in my bloglines).
I can’t tell you how many days I see the same blogs over and over in here 🙂
Everybody HART!
I think I live for finding “missed opportunities and taking advantage of them. If I had my own server I would be opportunity queen. But I’m not yet up to speed with FTP protocol . . . when I am, watch out world–you won’t be able to get away from whatever I have that relates to whatever you’re reading.
People Magazine at the dentist’s office–I”l be there!
Those plug-ins sound fabulous. I know that about Bloglines. I must drive you crazy with my updates and fixes especially this week when my template got some sort of virusy thing that made the whole thing slide off the page. . . . it was uggggly.
Sorry about that. I am working on improving, but there is so much about this blog that needs to be brought up to speed from the early days.
I wish the feeds had a disconnect button that you could push–send/don’t send this change. That would be very cool.
Liz
Liz .. everyone with a blog should know how to FTP .. However, you might have some other issues re: b5 that precludes you from this anyway … But – regarding the plugs (here’s an example on my PetLvr blog recent entry here:
http://www.petlvr.com/blog/2006/03/have-you-met-maxxie-and-sophie-yet/ )
The plugins I use:
Related Posts – http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/
(standalone)
Extract Terms – http://www.semiologic.com/projects/extract-terms/
Terms2post – http://www.semiologic.com/projects/terms2posts/
Terms2search – http://www.semiologic.com/projects/terms2search/
Terms2tags – http://www.semiologic.com/projects/terms2tags/
(you need all 4)
You have to make modifications to some files, naturally to insert code etc – but there is documentation that makes it easy.
EVERYBODY HART!
The FTP problem is totally mine. I’m trying to learn it on the side with another blog that I’m building and it’s a matter of finding the time in between all of what else I have going on. A kid in college tends to organize my priorities for me.
b5media on the other hand is happy to put in plugins for me whenever I ask. . . . 🙂
Thanks for all of this information.
Once again you prove. That
MORE THAN “Half the show is in the comments.”
Liz
Hey Liz,
*Title in Bold and at the Bottom of the post use *Title for the Intra-link? ”
Nothing fancy, I didn’t use bold, I used Italics. But if you want to know, I did get views from the references within the post.
Here it is: http://mcbsconsulting.blogspot.com/2006/03/my-trek-to-working-at-home.html
See if you think it works, I think this way doesn’t really take away from the post, but still gives intra-links and related posts.
Joe
Hi Joe,
I see what you’re doing. That would work as soon as your reader had read one post. I would use convention though an put the asterisk after the work not before it.
I see how you’re using and I think it might work better than bold, and it’s easier to do. This certainly makes the connection strong in a way readers are used to.
Great navigation idea, Joe!
Liz
Hey Liz,
Picky, picky*…;-)
You are right about being more conventional, I never really thought about that.
Thanks,
Joe
Hey, Joe,
I wasn’t being picky. I was being thoughtful! 🙂
I was thinking that you wanted folks to read your word before they looked to see what it connected to.
That’s the kind of thing that editors think about all of the time.
Liz
Hey Liz,
Ok, I do need an editor at times. 🙂
I appreciate your thoughts on things like that.
BTW (I really do hate acronyms), I would like to put a link to Successful Blog in my Favorites catagory for my readers to have an easy reference.
Hope you don’t mind. It’ll be there tomorrow, unless you don’t want it.
Thanks,
Joe
Joe,
Everyone, including editors, needs an editor at times.
Mind if you linked Successful Blog? No I’d consider that an honor . . . you’re a reader and that the coolest compliment a reader can give.
Thank you, Joe. I appreciate that.
Liz
Hey Liz,
I have been using the Intra-link with* and the Title in Italics since that first comment.
Just to update, It has worked very well both with intra and external links.
Thought you might like to know.
Joe
Thanks Joe, I appreciate you bringing back the information. That way everyone who reads the blog can know. Very cool that it works both ways.
Great to see you!
Liz
Hey Liz,
I’m always here, just behind the seens unless I can contribute to the conversation. 🙂
Joe
sorry, misspelled scenes
🙁
J.
Hey Joe,
It’s great to know that you’re out there watching over me. I need watching over, you know.
You have a long way to go to make as many typos as I do and I am an editor by trade. 🙂
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