How a Best Posts Page Will Increase Your Blog Subscribers
I started reading through some of the blogs I hadn’t heard of from Rand’s list of top 50 blogs (mostly from some of the comments), and realized just how important it is to showcase your top posts. For me personally, it is the difference between me subscribing to your feed in bloglines, or clicking away and having it sink into oblivion where I’ll never read it again (unless perhaps someone else mentions it again).
There are actually two things I check out generally when I first visit a blog. 1. The top posts as mentioned above, and 2. the about page. The combination of personality from the about page (if you act like Bill O’Reilly I’m probably not going to want to spend my time reading your site), and the expertise shown by what you’ve written about. You probably have some GREAT posts buried in your archives that I will never see if you don’t bring them to the top. Bring them to my attention!! Show me your crem-de-la-crem. Like 99% of your potential blog readers, I’M IN A HURRY to get to the other 500 feeds I want to read today. Bust out the goods, and don’t make me dig through your cat posts (it’s okay, I do them too - as GW says, it’s good to experiment.)
With so many different types of posts (news, humor, call-to-action, resource, etc.), it’s really important to showcase the more timeless authority posts. It can be done manually, or I’m sure there are a few plugins for user favorite posts. I like the manual route myself, as I think it offers a nice level of editorial control. In case you’re wondering (and didn’t notice it at the top of the page) - my best posts are here
Think of your best posts page as a sitemap for new users to check out your style. There are two things that will get people to subscribe when they visit - Personality (about page) and style (best posts page). Personally, it takes me less than five minutes to decide if I’ll ever visits a blog again and subscribe with bloglines. Please make a good impression to your first timers.
**Added - If there is an ambitious developer out there a category level best posts list page generator plugin would be freakin’ sweet. When I was re-reading for typos, I thought of doing best posts at a category level, which is definitely going on the to-do list. Some posts are timeless, and should not fall into the blogabyss.
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Thomas Holmes
August 17th, 2006,
4:11 pm
Excellent point Todd - at the right time too - noted in my wireframe document!
We do things so quickly these days - with up to five hundred feeds its no wonder - but there’s a lot to be learnt by just thinking about how we do things ourselves…
ShandyKing | Obsessive Compulsive Entrepreneur » Blog Archive » A Slight Change with Wordpress Comment Plugins
August 17th, 2006,
5:56 pm
[…] I was reading Todd Malicoat’s Blog this morning, How a Best Posts Page Will Increase Your Blog Subscribers and he explained how a Blogger could write so many different types of blog posts. With the way Blogs work a new reader could come to your Blog just when you’ve written something less then stellar thus a new visitor may not feel the Blog is worthy of a second visit. […]
Xenith
August 18th, 2006,
8:13 pm
Gday Todd,
I think it’s also really good usability for a blog in general. Unless you have a reason to read the blog and follow it, best posts give a good ‘mental picture’ of what the blog contains. An easy way to boost page views.
Re: category level best posts list page generator plugin - I have seen popularity per post in % on some blogs. I guess you could implement that system then rank them according to category or something similar. Tops posts and most popular.
Online Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » Most Popular Blog Posts for OMB
August 21st, 2006,
12:15 pm
[…] When I shared the design under development for Online Marketing Blog with Todd Malicoat, one suggestion he made was to add a list of the best posts. Todd posted about making a list of “best posts” over on his excellent blog, Stuntdubl as well. Deciding what the best posts is pretty subjective, so I am going to make a list of the 10 most popular posts based on traffic: […]
fra
December 18th, 2006,
4:21 pm
I’m ok with the “best post” page, when I’ll do it as soon as my blog will be big enough, but I wrote an article proposing to do something more … maybe you can find it intresting.
anyway, I bookmarked (on delicious) your “best post” page, so I will be back!
Top Posts by Category Plugin | Macalua.com
January 31st, 2007,
1:58 pm
[…] Hat tip to my buddy Todd for his best posts page article, the inspiration behind the Top Posts by Category plugin. Did you like this post? Please consider subscribing to my blog feed. […]
Leroy Brown
February 8th, 2007,
10:10 pm
I just installed the top posts plugin myself. After all, I always check out the top posts on every other blog I read, why in the world didn’t I have it on mine already?
robmac
May 9th, 2007,
10:08 am
Just installed the plugin. It works! one day I might be actually in the list
Bookmarked you so carry iin blogging, its great stuff
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[…] There is a good post here about the importance of maintaining a Top (or Best or Favorite, whichever you prefer) Posts list on your blog. Todd writes: Think of your best posts page as a sitemap for new users to check out your style. There are two things that will get people to subscribe when they visit - Personality (about page) and style (best posts page). Personally, it takes me less than five minutes to decide if I’ll ever visits a blog again and subscribe with bloglines. Please make a good impression to your first timers. […]
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