3 Simple Ways To Make Your Blog an Unforgettable Resource

The Internet is changing the way people remember things.

Last year, a study led at Columbia showed that instead of remembering the actual information we learn online, we remember where we learned it. Because we trust that websites are more or less permanent, we often simply plan on returning to sites later to find facts when we need them, rather than memorizing said facts in the first place.

How do you establish this stickiness with your own site? By quickly and clearly demonstrating to readers that your blog is more than a conversation – it’s a resource.

By making your website timeless, you help your readers trust you. Your content becomes an extension of their brains, which will make their loyalty soar.

Here are three simple tactics to make your blog an unforgettable resource:

1. Use Tags and Keywords To Your Advantage

Brainpickings does an excellent job at using keywords to hook and engage readers. The site, known for its quirky collection of creative intellectual pursuits, uses an “explore” sidebar to give readers a taste of its contents. This not only lets the reader know what is important, but it helps map what they may expect in the future.

2. Make Your Archives Accessible

By offering a clear and useful way to see old posts, a blog becomes a much deeper experience than its latest article. Therefore, a blog should make their content searchable in every way imaginable.

Manifest, a style blog collective that hosts bloggers like Bryan Boy and Fashion Toast, does a great job maximizing its resources this way.

The site’s posts aren’t time sensitive, so opening them up means more entertainment for their readers. Intrigued wanderers suddenly have hours of images, blurbs, and inspiration to digest — at no additional pain to the content creators.

3. Embed Your Juiciest Stuff

Give your readers maximal opportunities to interact with your best content by putting it on your homepage –- even if your main site isn’t a blog. This gives users a taste of what you are and will be offering, in terms of content.

A great example of this is Open Culture‘s list of essentials. Its lists don’t overload readers, but excite them with a preview of powerful insides. This way, a reader might have found the site for its free online courses offerings, but may come back for free textbooks, as well.

Help your readers find what they need, while showing them your best stuff.

Hopefully, they’ll leave with a good first impression of your site, but more importantly, a lasting memory of its contents.

Image courtesy of Flickr, mightymightymatze