I’ve been having to go to meetings lately. So I’ve been printing my most popular articles and taking them with me, using them as writing fodder–as a place to get ideas. That’s what got me thinking how often it is that we forget the best promotion that we have is sitting in our blog archives.

Letting readers know what’s in our archives is a great way to invite them to become a part of our brands, our blogs, and our businesses in a more intimate fashion.

Blog Archive Promotion To-Do List

Here’s a check list of a few things we all should be doing to promote our blogs from within. I call it the Blog Archive Promotion To-Do List.

Put Popular Posts where folks can find them. I’m as guilty as the next guy, as I’m not a tech and I’ve not yet charmed one into helping me put up an automatic list of popular posts. But in the meantime, I have a Popular Post Page in the sidebar, and I’ll keep it even after I get that list of Popular Posts. If you can’t create a page, hand code links to your best posts.
Feature Related Articles at the end of every new post. When you finish writing a post, let folks know about other articles you’ve written that they might be interested in. Intra-linking of this nature is not only a service to your readers, it lets search engines know how the content on your blog has relevance and context for your readers.
Intra-Link to Past Articles when you can. If you have an article that perfectly fits what you’re talking about as my post Think Before You Intra-link so perfectly suits this one, remember to include a link to it.
Read your stats to see what’s popular and make more. Then read those posts to learn what made them favorites with readers. Keep popular posts in a collection. Try to figure out what they have in common. Use those common features to guide you as you write in the future.
If you get key word traffic, make sure it’s landing on the posts that it should. If it isn’t find a way to tag your posts so that the next person who searches with that key word gets to the post that delivers the right goods.

I’m sure I’ve not thought of all the ways we might be using archives as promotion. You must have ideas too. What are some creative ways that you’ve used your archives to encourage readers to visit more and stay longer at your blog?

–ME “Liz” Strauss