The Fine Art of Leading Your Readers
News and Updates at Site Sketch 101
Recently at Site Sketch 101, I ran a poll to discover why my readers had blogs and it was no surprise to find out that the reasons varied greatly. I released the results of that poll in an article called Poll: What is Most Important to You?
Some people start their blog in order to pursue some dream of becoming rich from the internet. Others write each article as a way of achieving a certain level of recognition. Some do it just to connect with other like-minded people.
In a recent article entitled 10 Killer Ways to Boost Your Site’s Usability, I introduced you to the idea of enhancing your readers interactions by simplifying their experience at your website.
As you work to put into practice the principles from that article and you develop your site’s usability, it’s important that you constantly refer back to the goals and objectives that inspired you to start your site in the first place.
Whichever category in that poll that you fall into, it’s important to realize that you are going to have to use different styles and techniques to achieve success than what your peers are using.
If you are blogging to make mega cash then you are going to position your advertisements in a different way than if you were blogging with the sole purpose of creating quality articles. In this way, your goals will direct the way that you set up your sites usability.
Consider the following three areas that you may wish to lead your readers toward. Be sure to stop on each point and assess whether or not it is an area that supports your objectives at your website. If it is then be sure to implement its usability principle at your site. If it isn’t something that is important to you then simply skip over to the next point.
Lead your readers towards your content
Your readers are at your site for one reason: content. They want to read your articles and discover more information about whatever topic you write on.
You need to make it as easy as possible for them to locate your best articles. There are several ways that you can do this. I recommend that you put a section in your blog’s sidebar that lists the most popular posts from the past month. You should also be sure to include related posts in the footer of each article. If your reader makes it to the end of your article then you should be able to lead them to other articles.
Lead Your Readers Towards Your Advertisements
If you are trying to make money on your site through advertising programs like Google’s Adsense or through personally sold ads then you need to make it very easy for your users to interact with them.
Ensure that they visually correspond with the layout and color scheme of your site. Place them in a prominent position near the top of the page while at the same time not placing them in such a way as to subtract from the quality of your content. By optimizing your advertisements you can lead your readers to generate profits for you on your site.
Lead Your Readers Towards Your Subscription Options
A growing trend among bloggers is to relate a person’s subscriber count with their credibility. If a blogger has hundreds or thousands of followers then they are considered to be well-established and reliable. Subscriptions are also the best way to get users to return to your site again and again.
Make it easy for your users to subscribe to your website. I recommend that you find a large RSS icon that matches the overall look of the site and that you place it on several parts of your website. You should place one in the header, one in the sidebar, and one in the footer of each post.
If you can prominently display your subscription options in a classy, non-overbearing way then your readers will be led to click through and subscribe to your feed.
Lead Your Readers Towards Your Personalized Goals
I’ve demonstrated three popular goals that bloggers desire to lead their readers toward: articles, advertisements, and subscription options. Your goals, however, may be different. The important thing to remember is that you can develop principles and practices on your blog that will lead your readers towards the accomplishment of your goals. Make the links clear and large. Place the information above the fold of the page.
Eric B. said:
Thanks for the tips. Although I would be careful about leading readers towards the advertisements, because if they blend in too well with your site, it can look like the ads are part of the content.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Eric B. » You’re right. You always want to be transparent about your advertisements. When I say to blend them in I mostly mean to take time to line them up and make sure that they don’t disrupt the layout of your website. Take time to make it look nice.
Eric » Here’s a few ideas for you. I use the Popularity Contest plugin for wordpress and I list the most popular articles in my sidebar. I have it set to only count votes from the past 30 days. You can determine how much each item weighs in as a vote such as trackbacks, comments, page views, etc. I also recommend setting up some sort of a ‘featured article’ section like you’ll find at the top of Darren Rowse’s Problogger.net. I hope these ideas help you out a bit.
Eric said:
I’m struggling a little bit with my best post getting lost in the chronology of my blog. Any ideas on how to direct readers to a prior (high quality) post other than by placing a link to that post in another article?
Stefan said:
One method could be to mark a post as featured and display it above the rest of your posts on your first page. You could also place the link and short information in your header.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Stefan –> I like that idea and I’ve seen it implemented very effectively on some sites like on Problogger.net.
InternethowBlog said:
hi nicholas. great post. also want to add internal linking to your older posts, as well as related post section and popular articles section as you mentioned.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
InternethowBlog » Great points! Internal linking is a great way to promote other articles and it’s a great way to develop page rank on other pages as well.
Bruce said:
Eric: I use the side bars to advertise other posts, I throw up a picture and a little blurb to try and attract people to read it. I also have a featured articles slide show in the top left. I must confess I need to change out some of the articles I’m advertising, but I think it is a good way to get readers to read your best posts.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Bruce » Great tips, Bruce. I love seeing everyone in here jumping in and helping everyone else. Make sure the you get in there and switch out those featured articles every once in a while:
InternetHowBlog » That’s a good idea. Of course that would probably take a lot of work but I bet that it would be a great way to welcome people to your site. I really like the idea of reviewing old blog posts in a post. That ones really good.
Arisu » You’re right. There are many ways to do it. That’s the beauty of it. You get to do it the way you like and I get to do it the way I like!
InternethowBlog said:
Also, another thing you can do regards to old post is send it to your new email subscribers.
You can also make blog posts that review and updates your old blog posts.
Seth W said:
At my partner and I’s blog, we like to some times recycle posts, sparingly, and/or make a list of great posts you would like to read or revisit.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Seth W –> I read a post about recycling posts recently. I think it was at blogussion, actually. I’m definitely going to start doing that every once in a while.
Arisu said:
Right to the point as always.
And there are a lot of ways to make some element in your site stand out: graphics, banners, sidebar elements… also, if you want someone to click an add try to get the most good looking -not simple text links or something – for articles put an icon, arrows or images and use bigger font size to make them stand out and we must not forget to make awesome eye-jerking titles
InternethowBlog said:
Arisu >> You need to be careful, when you make your ads stand out. You’ve got to make sure it blends well with the content. Otherwise, it will distract the readers from the main conetent itself. Especially those colorfull animated ads.
George Serradinho said:
Interesting points you have listed above. I have tried to make my subscription section as clear as possible and put it close to the top of my site.
I show my popular posts in my sidebar and it has a coloured box around.
I’m still busy seeing where my ads do the best in terms of performance, thats being tested by myself.
We all try and lead our readers, but they are all different in their own ways and thats what makes it hard.
Arisu said:
InternethowBlog>>
Like everything in life you have to find the balance.
And in the very end, is up to each blogger to choose how to do it.
I think is a must to make them stand out, but adds can´t be the star of the blog. And flashy animated adds usually are over the top, so I agree with that!
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Arisu » That’s exactly right. It is about balance. Because I want to give my advertisers as much bang as I can in the form of people coming through and clicking on their material and viewing their products and sites. But I also don’t want to take away from my reader’s browsing experience at my site. The goal is to accomplish both as effectively as possible.
Seth W said:
Ads should be included only when they are useful to the reader. That is why I don’t like ads… what is some spammy program going to do for me, or the variety of other ads showing through most ad networks. If they are targeted and useful resources, ads are natural and non distracting.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Seth W –> Exactly right. Too often ads become overbearing and are absolutely annoying.
Stefan said:
Personally I prefer to create pages with compilations of longer series. For an example I have a page with links to all of my posts on how to make money through niche sites.
Unfortunately this doesn’t work if you write a great post unrelated to any of your other posts.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Stefan –> It’s a good idea to do that. Not only that, but I’m gonna have to check out your articles on making money on Niche sites. I could always improve in that area on here!
Ron Boracay said:
What I love most in this post of yours, Nicholas, is that, placing what information or idea you want your readers to go to, on your blog topmost or header area.
Whether it is an ad, article or some graphics.
This can make them stand out and gives you out high recognition and conversion percentage.
ZXT said:
Relevant ads can be helpful to readers too. I sometimes find myself clicking on adsense not because I thought it was a part of the content but the ads seems interesting enough to visit. But if its not visible enough then it won’t be notice.
Arisu said:
ZXT>>
Exactly, Google ads and others would be more efficient if you could choose things related to your site to promote or if they could choose based on keywords or something -_-U
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Arisu –> Well Google uses forumlas to try to get the most related sites that they can find based on keywords and based on the browser’s surfing history but it’s still a very imperfect science.
Arisu said:
Nick>>
I guess is the best an automatic system can do it, right? At least for now. And I guess people working in some specific areas would opt for a direct deal to advertise.