Anyone who runs their own blog knows that the biggest battle they face is first acquiring the initial traffic to come and visit it, and then to convince that traffic to come back again and again. Visitors to blogs are usually seeking either to be informed or entertained and if they decide upon viewing a blog that there is nothing interesting there, they may never come back again. The strategy of creating an environment where traffic doesn’t want to leave a blog, but instead wants to stay and explore it more fully is called making it sticky.
Having traffic stick around for as long as possible is the kind of thing that can lead to a blog becoming a big success. One of the best ways to keep these visitors coming back is to use various plugins that add unique and sometimes entertaining options to the content provided on the blog. Most serious bloggers already use the Wordpress blogging platform to handle the mechanics of their site and it comes with thousands of plugins available that perform a number of different features. Here is a look at five Wordpress plugins that are designed to make a blog more sticky.
Show Top Commentators
One of the best ways for a blogger to have their blog become successful is to help it develop into a true community. Nothing fosters a feeling of community more than communication, and in blogging that communication usually takes place in the form of comments made in response to the individual blog posts. There is no better way to reward the readers who comment most than by using the Show Top Commentators plugin which will display in the sidebar the name or names of the people leaving the most comments. When blog readers see their name on display for all to see, they will only be encouraged more to participate in the ongoing discussions.
Related Posts
We have previously established that blog readers are usually coming to a blog for information on a specific subject. With that in mind, a great way to give them exactly what they want is to display a list of blog posts that discuss similar subjects at the bottom of the post that they have just read. The Related Posts plugin available for Wordpress blogs does just that. With it installed, a reader can finish reading the information they were interested in and immediately see links to other posts that may interest them as well. This satisfies the reader’s quest for more information as well as the blogger’s desire that they remain on their website instead of leaving to find another.
Tag Clouds
Tags are another way of organizing blog posts outside of, and in addition to, the normal category setup. Wordpress comes with a tag cloud option that can be activated with a simple line of code. There are also a number of more dramatic ways of displaying tags, some even using flash programming for movement and text highlighting, that will visually satisfy most blog readers and also give them another way of navigating around a blog’s content. When used properly, tagging blog posts can lead to them receiving even more traffic than they normally would. Making these tags stick out by using an attention grabbing tag cloud plugin can go a long way in retaining readers for a longer time.
WP-Contact Form
In life, people crave to be valued for their opinion and also seek to establish relationships with others. The same is true online, and it is especially clear through blogging. When a visitor comes to a blog, seeing an easy way to contact the author or owner of the blog places a number of thoughts in their head. They know that this blogger respects their traffic enough to invite them to make contact and participate in a discussion. They get a feeling that because it is possible to contact the blog author that the content of the blog may be somewhat more reliable as it is not being written by someone hiding behind their anonymity. Readers of a blog who know that they can contact the blog owner at their convenience also are more apt to make transactions on a blog or buy something that the blogger recommends because they know that they can get in contact with someone should a problem develop. Using WP-Contact Form is a great way to set a blog visitor’s mind at ease and encourage them to keep coming back.
Random Redirect
Many websites make use of a random page or random post link in either the sidebar or near the header. This is a nice feature to have as it is geared to the person viewing the blog who has a good deal of free time on their hands and is looking for some non-specific additional information. By clicking on the random post button or hyperlink, the visitor is then taken to view a random post from the archives of the blog. The other nice thing about this action is that it makes use of sometimes forgotten posts that would otherwise languish in the archives, seldom being viewed by anyone. The Random Redirect plugin available for Wordpress blogs is an easy way to setup this type of feature.
Getting traffic to come to a blog is not just something that must be done when a blog starts out, but it must be done all throughout its existence. While getting that initial traffic surge is important, it is just as important to create the type of blog experience for the reader that will encourage them both to stay reading the blog for a longer time, as well as to come back again at their earliest convenience. Wordpress is a powerful blogging platform, and a large part of its power comes from the fact that it has so many plugins at its disposal that it can use to enhance the content that the blogger is posting on their site. Properly sing many of the plugins available with Wordpress is a great way to make almost any blog stickier.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Good Article and I agree with all of them except for maybe the Random Redirect. That one I am not to sure of, maybe I will try it out for awhile to see how it does.