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If you like this post, check out some of the earlier posts in this series: Quick Tips archive.This is the seventh instalment of Quick Tips! Can you believe it? Time flies when you're blogging. This week I've chosen to look at three content-related tips that might help you.
Link to old posts
If you know how to find previous posts on your site, you'll get on quite well with this tip. Once your posts disappear from the front page of your site, you can go through an archive to see the older posts - but when you're writing loads of content, this is going to fill up fast. You need to show people the way to your older posts - they're unlikely to read the entire contents of your archives.If you're writing about something that is related to a previous post, link to that post. Look for the posts that you're really pleased with but that didn't get as many comments as you think they should. I have lots of old posts that I wrote before people started to find my site, and some of them have no comments at all. That's why I did some reorganisation. There's more to do, though, as I haven't set up all of the Tutorial subareas yet.
Follow-up posts
Linking to old posts is good if you are writing a fairly broad post and you can link into a few previous themes. You can go one step further with a follow-up post. Take the original idea and go off on a tangent. This can be easier to do if you're getting good comments, as sometimes you'll find that people bring up things you didn't even think of.If you're making an effort to leave good comments, you may be inadvertently helping others to think of follow-up posts, too. Do them a favour - write great comments.
Setting up posts
If you sense a tangent appearing in a post, resist the urge to go down that road. Leave an inconclusive comment so you can write a proper post on it later. I'm not saying that you should write half-baked posts, more than you should try to stick to the original topic and leave other subjects for another day.Doing this not only means you'll have more potential posts lined up for the future, it also stops you from meandering and making people wonder what happened to the original subject.
What do you think?
Have you tried any of these tips? Are they useful to you? Are there any others you'd like to see in a future post?Did you like this post? Subscribe today!
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Tags: quick tips, old posts, linking to posts, follow-up posts, future posts
Posted by Ben on March 18, 2008 21:49 / Edited: Never
Tags: quick tips, old posts, linking to posts, follow-up posts, future posts
Posted by Ben on March 18, 2008 21:49 / Edited: Never
Comments
2
Thanks for the comment, Nathan. :)
3
Hi, Ben.
The first tip is the one I use most often on my two blog. I started doing this when you talked about it on an older post.
I do not only link old posts on new ones, but I also update old ones to link the freshest ones.
That was one of your greatest tips ever.
Even though it is so obvious I never thought of that.
Cheers.
4
Thanks, Mario. :) Glad it's working out for you!
This is good advice. I'll keep it in mind as I develop my new blog.