This is Day 18 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, a group project 60+ of us bloggers are doing together in an effort to help each other become better bloggers.
The idea behind creating a sneeze page for your blog? Quite the opposite of spewing bacteria all over your friends, family and co-workers while wondering why no one says God bless you anymore, your blog’s sneeze page encourages your visitors to stick around for a while, hand sanitizer optional.
If you still haven’t installed a statistics tracker, today is a good day to get that done. Tracking the hits to your blog is the only way to know if these exercises are doing your blog any good.
Creating a sneeze page can be done several different ways, and if you’ve been blogging for more than a minute, you’re probably doing at least one of them.
- Your about me page is more than a mini-bio. Link to your favorite posts that tell your readers more about you.
- Create a page that lists the most popular posts on your site. For you WordPress users, there are plugins that will do this automatically, but why not stroll through your archives yourself? Link to the ones you like the best, the ones with the most views, and the ones that generated interesting discussions in your comments. Mix it up.
- When you use words like “yesterday’s post” in your current post, take the time to hyperlink yesterday’s post. Write your blog as though every single visitor is reading for the first time.
- Each post should be a sneeze post. Link your commonly used themes, references and cast of characters in each post. Tell us who you are every chance you get, and be interesting. Readers won’t read your blog for an hour without compelling content and easy navigation. Don’t bury the goodness.
- If you’re using a blogging platform that won’t allow separate, tabbed pages, you can use your sidebars just as effectively, but on a smaller scale. More of a slightly runny nose than a sneeze, you can still get your readers to click around your site by listing your must-read posts.
Discussion questions:
- What is your current method for getting your readers to stick around on your blog?
- Do you change your sneeze or sticky pages frequently or just kinda let them collect dust?
- What’s your way of knowing if anything you’re doing on your blog is working?
- Do you like cats?
The Extra Mile
A few other things you can do to take your blog, other bloggers, and this project even further today…
- Reply & give other bloggers feedback on the little things they do.
- When other bloggers include a link to a new article they’ve posted today, click, read, and comment on it.
- Check previous posts in the series for new comments.
- Tweet, share, & bookmark this post.
- Please review the blog of Becky Beery (aka TiajuanaBecky), and give her some feedback.
Blogging daily about nothing in particular at freefringes.com and tweeting about even less as @hmx5, Erica Mullenix is a writer and special needs parent living in Texas with her three extraordinarily normal children and Lab mix pound puppy.
73 Comments
I'm back! I went away on a retreat (with no internet access) with some other guys to discuss ministry, fish, and build a deck. Good times.
I do try to link internally as much as I can (for instance, by linking "yesterday's post" to yesterday's post), but I'm not sure my blog has been around long enough to actually write a real sneeze page. I just don't have that many posts up yet, and that brings up a question which I think has been thrown around here, but I don't recall seeing an answer: How often should you post to your blog? Once a week? Once a day? Somewhere in between?
Oh – and by the way, Erica, great job.
The how often should I post is the ten dollar question. Maybe Paul will open that topic in a separate post. I believe that as long as you let your readers and first time visitors know your schedule, you can decide for yourself. Irregularity will kill your blog faster than infrequency.
Thanks for the compliment on the guest post.
Great question Chris! And great suggestion Erica, to open this topic up as a separate post…
How often should you post to your blog?
https://blog.ourchurch.com/2010/05/26/how-often-sh…
I find that I will read others' blogs that I am interested in once a day if they have new content. Any more than that is too much for me. Less than every day or two and I tend to lose interest. I don't know if anyone else is like me in that area.
I tend to have a tendancy to write late at night/early morning EDT. So for most people in the USA there would be something new every morning. I blog about almost anything, and some days I just want to share a lot while other days I feel I don't have a lot, so depending on the day just depends on how many posts I do daily. Normally at least once a day for me, and I try to keep it regular as to when I post (early morning, or late morning/early afternoon).
RSS reader is great for this. Because people can just check the reader to read new blog posts as they come in instead of having to visit the blogs a lot to see if it's updated. I used to be like you Richard and only check once a day, now that I have Reader it's a lot easier.
"My Father He Loves Me" A video written in the international language of love! Enjoy!
(Mi Padre Me Ama)
Today's video post on my blog is one of my favorites! I love mixed media. Does it work?
http://guidedreflections.blogspot.com/2010/05/my-…
I just added a new post. While it does contain an internal link, it's not a sneeze post.
"Busy Hands Are The Devil's Tools" http://prayerexperiment.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/…
I don't really have a method, but I do tend to change things around a lot. My Sneeze Pages are just pages like About, Categories, Blogroll. I added one that lists the Series I've done, so that it's easier to find a particular post.
On WordPress it tells you some of that for free, like what posts are popular, how many have been on your blog, and a few other things. That's how I figure it out. Cats are okay.
Series Page –http://tijuanabecky.wordpress.com/series/
Like the idea of most popular posts list but need to have more comments to make it worthwhile. Already have post categories so posts are liked together i that respect. Have to put links to like posts in future posts. I use visitor tracking HTML already.
I have had mostly dogs and 1 cat. Overall l like dogs better. It depends on the breed
I list my blog categories in the sidebar and I creating a list of links for first time visitors so that they have a context for my blog and the community I am trying to create. So far it only includes an "about me" link, my "comments policy", and now a "why am I blogging" post. I also include links in each post to other articles within the same category.
I use sitemeter, google analytics, and google webtools to evaluate how well I am doing. Since my blog is so new I am not sure how well anything is working. However, I am seeing that the more posts that I write the more traffic I am receiving from google. I am now receiving more hits from google than my rss feed and facebook. So I guess there is something to writing consistently.
Here is today's post which has been added to my First Time Visitors section in my sidebar. http://larrywestfall.com/why-am-i-blogging/
P.S. I have two dogs and a cat. The cat is more self-sufficient so he is my favorite.
Great stuff here.
I'm again feeling the limitations of Blogger. Though I've done some of the things suggested here (sidebar with a list of top articles) I think I'm going to like the added capabilities when I move to WordPress. Then it will be easier to sneeze.
I like writing about people. I have a theme on my site for this called, "Agents of Grace." This week I profiled a friend named Chris who is dying of cancer.http://bit.ly/bqzPpo
Also, I started a new theme last night that I'm calling "Redemption and Reconciliation." I'll use it to tell stories of how God is involved in both big and small areas of our lives. Last night's post was titled, "God's Business Card."http://bit.ly/ajgq1M
I love those themes Chad! And I think that you'll be able to do some great stuff with them!
Thanks, Bibledude!
Pingback: How often should you post to your blog? « Christian Web Trends Blog
I've found that I love sneezing all over the place. It's so cool to find other people to whom God's been saying the same things He's been saying to me. So I want to sneeze big–all over all my friends'/new friends' blogs. 😉
But I am constructing a page that will link my posts that are all on similar themes. I think that was the assignment several days ago–or my idea of how to fulfill it, anyway. This will take a while since I've been blogging fairly regularly for more than a year. Still, if I do a little at a time, plus keeping updated . . . .
Thanks to everyone who reviewed my blog yesterday–it was a big help, especially to those of you who spent so much time reading old posts. Above and beyond the call–I'm very grateful.
Love, Cindy
1. I've found that the LinkWithin pluggin has been awesome and increased my 'stickness' quite a bit. # of pages per visit has gone up, and I see those as being very active links. But I also like the ideas on this post and in some of the comments, so I'll be trying a few other things out…
2. I just updated two pages in my blog based on one of the ideas here. I updated my blog's about page (an all new one that includes my elevator pitch from Day 1), and my about dan king page (which includes info about who I am and my personal testimony.
about – added links to popular posts (as reported through Analytics) http://bibledude.net/about/
about dan king – added some of my personal favorite posts http://bibledude.net/about/dan-king/
3. I use Google Analytics, and a WordPress stats plugin. Between the two of those things I can get a quick overview and a pretty deep dive into visitor behavior.
4. Not a fan of cats. I'm definitely more of a dog person.
I meant to ask you about your link plugin – because I like the way it 'jazz's" up the link by adding pictures. I presume the pics are taken from the post?
Yeah… it's great! It manages the images from with the post without having to do anything extra. It is VERY simple to manage. And I'm getting some great click-thru traffic from it. It uses the tags that I already put on the posts to find similar content. So it's important to tag your posts really well.
You can check out more about it here… http://www.linkwithin.com/learn?ref=widget