Last Thursday I made some observations about writing blog posts. I looked at the differences between using blog posts as a diary, library or noticeboard. Today, I suggest some simple methods for making blog posts accessible, to help your readers navigate your blog. There are more complex approaches but my concern here is to suggest solutions anyone can carry out.
Noticeboards
The noticeboard can be a little difficult where you have a lot of events and want them in date order. If you leave it to the default the posts will appear in order of the date you posted them and not in date order of the events.
A simple solution is to use a WordPress plug-in such as “Simple Custom Post Order”, which allows you to drag and drop posts in All Posts window.
If you have a lot of events you it may be worth looking at one of the Calendar plug-ins. I hesitate to use them because with too few events it’s possible to have pages of calendars with no events.
Diaries and Libraries
There could be hundreds of permanent posts on your site and you need some way to help readers navigate them. I’m assuming you use categories and tags and I have written about the basics of using these. However categories and tags alone are not enough.
If you present category pages in the usual blog format, you will find you have a series of posts in reverse order of publishing. The reader needs to find the beginning and then scroll backwards through the blog. Giving them the url for the first post in the sequence does not help them find the rest of the posts in the sequence.
There are several approaches and each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Cornerstone Pages
One solution is the Cornerstone Page. You will find examples of these in the navigation on my site. A Cornerstone page lists the posts in a sequence in a coherent way.
It enables you to summarise the sequence. The reader can read the page to get an overall idea of what the sequence is about and follow the links to posts for more detail.
These pages can be used as landing pages and they can be search engine optimised. This way you can use them to draw traffic to your site and guide new visitors to what you have to offer on the topic they are searching.
Mindmaps
A mindmap is where you write your central topic heading in the centre of a page or screen and then add links as you break down the topic into its parts. This can be done using mindmap applications such as xmind.net. Mindmaps can show how the various posts link together. With xmind you can either turn your map into a pdf or use a xmind file, which can be opened by anyone with xmind. Xmind is a free application with a premium version. I’ve got a lot of use out of it without paying for the premium.
You can set it up so that the map includes links to blog posts. So, someone exploring your map can jump to a post for more information.
The main disadvantage is you need the software to open a mindmap. This may be something you give away to people who want to be on your email list.
Products
And of course you could convert your posts into products such as an ebook, a real book or a video course. If you are blogging to find out what you know, as the material accumulates you may be able to convert into a more accessible medium. Posts can be taken down but many people who value your work might be prepared to spend a little on a more accessible format.