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How a Best Posts Page Will Increase Your Blog Subscribers

Online marketing information can change quickly This article is 14 years and 38 days old, and the facts and opinions contained in it may be out of date.

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.

  • The top posts as mentioned above, and
  • 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.

    • More information about Todd Malicoat aka stuntdubl.

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    • http://www.contemporary-artists.info/ Thomas Holmes

      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…

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    • http://ben.wilks.net/ Xenith

      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.

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    • http://www.mapelli.info fra

      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! :)

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    • http://www.greenllama.net/blog/ Leroy Brown

      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?

    • http://www.directorymember.org robmac

      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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    • http://www.claudiudesign.org Professional Web Design | Romania Web Design

      Wow….I know have something to read about SEO. This is something that I was looking for.Thank You for this

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