Managing A Series of Posts on Your Blog- In Series Plugin
Andy Beard’s Niche Marketing writes a very thorough and detailed post on taking advantage and optimizing the situation when when of the article on your blog suddenly gets a lot of heat and traffic. In his post,
Optimizing HTML Links In The Aftermath Of A Blog Storm, Andy recommends several strategies that will maximize the benefits of your new-found exposure.
He briefly mentions a plugin-in I have needed for a while but honestly didn’t know existed. The plugin in would be useful for stringing a series of related news articles together but I have been looking for something like this to manage tutorial type posts and series posts.
Creating Tutorials Encourages Return Visits and Fosters Loyalty
The plugin is called In Series. I have written a couple tutorial series here and many others on other blogs and I love the idea but have had trouble managing them. Getting them all to link together and flow has proved difficult and TIME CONSUMING so i find myself only doing it when I really need to..Many posts can be broken down and expanded upon- I encourage bloggers to write more posts that are more in depth rather than longer ones that skim over a lot of material.
Which is Better – Long Detailed Posts Or Series of Short Informative Posts?
Both. Shorter posts create more content and allow for you to really sink your teeth into a particular topic or idea and you can really get into the nitty gritty of something. I also come from the blog school of thought where more is better
Howver, long “authority” type posts have their place. They are an excellent way to establish authority in a particular area and longer detailed posts may also get you some meaty links. If you are writing a longer post- spend some time on it- it may take you a few days. An “authority post” may become one of your signature posts and the most popular on your blog. ( Note- should you find yourself getting consost traffic to one of your posts- feature it some when on the main page of your blog.. in a “Popular Posts” type section or “post of the month”, etc.)
It is the kind of article that others will end up linking to.Make sure you have lots of crosslinks in your post when you are referencing other ideas or concepts ( which you should be doing anyway).
It is always a good idea to link OUT to others sites. Many bloggers are reluctant to send reader out to other sites- this is misguided. Referring to other experts in your field on your blog will help build relationships with other bloggers another key to success with your blog.
