Sticky post

Do you know that you can stick a post on your blog? Look in the admin section and edit post.

The post will appear as the first post on the blog no matter how many new posts you are publishing.

Is it good or bad to stick a post or several on your blog?

Well, I think you have to try that out.

If your readers mostly come from Reader they won’t know the difference I believe. The Reader shows the newest posts first and a sticky post just show up there when they’re published. But if the readers click their way to the actual blog, then they will find your sticky post.

If your readers read your blog through browser, then they will see your sticky post as the first post. If you have a theme or other options that only shows one post at the time, they might believe you haven’t posted any new posts since the sticky post, that they’ve already read. Then sticky posts are no good.

If you have posts that you don’t want to disappear as fast as you’re making new ones, then sticky posts are one way to keep them high up in the post flow on your blog.

Another way is to repost them. You can edit the publish date, see the below area in the picture above. Don’t repost reblogged posts too soon. Then the link will fail if someone find the reblogged post and click further to your blog. But after a while the reblogged post will “disappear” in the flow, so then you can repost because very few readers find and read old reblogged posts.

You can also reblog your own posts if tou want them to appear again in the post flow. But if you do that to often the blog can be messy to read. It will look like you post several posts that look the same. That can be confusing for readers.

Different themes handles sticky posts differently, you have to tey out what’s working for your blog.

I use sticky posts when I don’t want to repost because I have given links to the post for people to read. If I repost before they get the chance to click the link they will miss the post. I also use sticky posts when I write about something that get readers outside the daily blog sphere. They are not use to scrolling blogs or Readers flow. They want to find the post immediately.

But, when I use sticky post I believe my view stats go down sometimes. Maybe because of the themes I have tried so far don’t handle the sticky posts and the newest post with the same visibility. Maybe the sticky post give the impression of no new posts. But I’m just guessing. Many of my readers comes from Reader says my stats. Then it shouldn’t matter if I stick a post or not.

I think you have to find out for your selves how the sticky posts works for you.

Happy blogging!

Anna