Blog Pages: What are they for?

18 May 2011 in Audience Development Blog

Some, not all, blogging platforms give you the choice of publishing ‘Posts’ and ‘Pages’. Posts are the ‘articles’ you publish, while ‘Pages’ are additional static pages that you can publish independently of the traditional blog post.

There are lots of reasons to use pages to support your blog posts, they can give you the space to include more general information about who you are, the project you are blogging about or links to your online shop, website or social media platforms.

Highlighted below are a few ‘page’ ideas that you may want to develop to promote your blog to different groups of people.

  1. About Page – Possibly the most common uses of the ‘page’ function on blogs is the ‘About’ page. This is definitely a priority page, it can offer the essential information about who you are and what you do for new visitors and provides the overall context for the blog.
  2. Contact Page – Lots of bloggers don’t offer any means of contacting them on their blog, obviously visitors can leave comments, but you could be missing out on all sorts of opportunities by not giving your readers, potential audiences/ customers, partners, press and other bloggers a way of contacting you. This is also a great place to add in links to your website and social networks.
  3. Press Page – A press page is a great chance to offer potential journalists and media outlets specific information about you and what you do, but it can also be a great place to show journalists what other people have written about you. Providing a list of previously published articles, reviews, features etc, from the press gives you a little credibility and gives journalists a head start in finding an angle to pursue for their own articles about you.
  4. FAQ Page If you find you are often asked the same questions by different people, then a Frequently Asked Questions page can come in very useful. Not only will it cut down on your own workload but it demonstrates that you can anticipate your customers or audiences needs and questions. If you link this prominently from your About page or Contact page and point people towards it if you still receive similar questions from visitors, then this page can become very effective for communicating with your blog visitors.
  5. Subscription Page – Having a page dedicated to how people can subscribe to your blog, sign up to your Facebook page, join an eNewsletter – all the ways your online audience can engage with you, can also be extremely useful. This can be really useful if your visitors are unsure what an RSS feed is or have issues about privacy and what it means to ‘subscribe’.
  6. Series Page Compilation This is an approach that enables you to compile a series of posts on a single issue, project, theme and publish them as a series to a page. This is not done very regularly by bloggers, but can be very effective if you have a series of posts that develop around a story or offer advice on a single topic.
  7. Services Page – if you offer services to customers or audiences then developing a dedicated services page for yourself and linking to it within your blog can be very useful. Having a dedicated services (or sales) page enables you to really sell yourself more expansively than through a quick mention elsewhere on your blog or in a single blog post.
  8. Key Information Pages – Do you have information that you are regularly providing to people over and over again – whether that it is through your blog, email, Facebook, over the phone etc? Creating a page about it and having the link handy at all times can cut down on the time you spend providing this information to individual people.
  9. Sneeze Pages – one way to engage people within your blog is to develop a Sneeze Page, or a ‘Best of’ page that highlights some of the better articles on your blog around a particular theme. Add links to these pages from your sidebar or refer to them in posts and you should see your page impressions per visit statistics go up.
  10. Testimonial Pages – these are fantastic if you are selling something (even if it is yourself) to have some sort of testimonial page can be very worthwhile. People base their buying decisions increasingly upon the opinions and reviews of other people, not always that of critics and the media, in fact peer-reviewed content is far more valuable and enriching.
  11. Event Specific Pages – Are you leading a workshop? Showcasing your work at an exhibition? Running an outreach project? Then create a page specifically for those attending these and mention that you’ve done so in at the start of your workshop, exhibition or project. This way you can tailor a specific message to those visitors, their needs, your work and create an action for them (subscribe to your blog, engage with other activities, buy your work or services).
  12. Resource Page – You will no doubt have resources – websites, books and information – that you would recommend to someone, so why not add this to a blog page. This is a great way of adding additional value for your blog visitors.
  13. Giveaway Page or Winners Page – Not everyone will have Giveaways, but you might run competitions, and often or not we don’t really get to find out who the winners are.
  14. Crowdfunding Page – if you are launching a crowdfunding project then creating a dedicated page for it from your blog is essential. Crowdfunding was borne out through the social engagement and interactivity between social networks like blogs and would attract donations from the individuals who already understand the value of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding.