Today I got to thinking about another area of opportunity in blogging- displaying popular posts. You might want to manipulate what your readers are looking at on your blog, and displaying popular posts is the best way to do so.

You could let your readers sift through page after page of posts until they find something they like. You could even hope that they search for something they are looking for with your built-in search tool. But sooner or later, you are going to take a look back and laugh at the way you used to do things. That’s right. Without a clear list of what is important on your site, the reader is literally lost. But don’t let that get you down, I will show you the way.

What happens when you arrive at a site and get done reading the interesting post that led you there? You either see something interesting at the bottom/top of the page or you leave. So place a Popular Posts Plugin and you’re set. And you don’t even have to put a whole lot of thought into what you lead your users to, as long as they stay on your site.

Some things to consider when showing you most popular posts are the following:

• You can now change what you visitors are looking at. If something isn’t as popular as you like, move it to the ‘Most Popular’ list and have the visitors assume it is.

• Show comments or views to let your users know how popular it is. Numbers always seem to attract views.

• In my own personal opinion I think that a component such as this will function best if it is very noticeable. Instead of placing it to the left with standard hypertext format, try creating a different unique area at the top of your page (I know my design does not yet reflect this, but it soon will).

What do you think? Too much thought, or not enough…