On Blogging Australia

I was responding to a comment from Cerebralmum on a post from August 2007 this morning and noticed an article that I’d written called Storytelling your sneeze page. I couldn’t remember what it was about so I went and read it.

Sure enough, it is about storytelling sneeze pages!

What’s a sneeze page?
Good question. This is the definition of sneeze pages from the article inspired by Darren Rowse:

Darren Rowse, as part of the the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project has asked us to develop a ‘Sneeze Page’ for our blogs.

What is a sneeze page? Darren says:

A Sneeze Page is one that simply directs readers in multiple directions at once - back into your archives.

He goes on to explain how to write a sneeze page - basically, think of a facet (such as a common topic, timeframe or high-comment posts) and then meaningfully link them.

How does this relate to storytelling?
Here’s what I had to say at the end of that article to add value to the blogging-about-blogging niche:

What I would like to suggest is that you consider using storytelling in your sneeze pages - weave the links into the thread of the conversation - and see how you go. My guess is that your readers will appreciate it, as storytelling is a fairly natural way to read (and, hint hint, an easy way to write!)

It is hard to underestimate the power of a good yarn. My favourite newly-discovered blogs from NaBloPoMo told a story - of family life, of living with a challenging medical condition, of looking for love. There is a lot of corporate wisdom around to suggest that storytelling is a really good way to make a point - that wrapping the main point in a story makes it easier to digest (and therefore easier to accept).

The art of the facet - one thread to rule them all
The observant will note that I’ve just storytold a sneeze page above. How do I do this? By finding the common thread between different posts. Because of my niche (metablogging or blogging on blogging) this will usually be something that is of benefit to bloggers. I’ve written a lot of material on this over the last eight months and I’ve read a heap more - but how do I narrow it down? Usually by seeing something that reminds me of an old post.

I could also:

• go through random old posts and pick up on one facet - one way of looking at my niche - then finding other posts that support it,
• look at the related posts at the footer of a new article, and seeing where that leads me, or
• look at a post I’m writing for one of my non-metablogging blogs and reframe it.

To compare, Darren suggests the following:

1. Themed Sneeze Pages - these are posts or pages on your blog or site that revolve around a single theme. For example - on the front page of the newly designed ProBlogger you’ll now find a section called ‘Best of ProBlogger’ which has a tab in it titled ‘Darren’s Favs’. The five links in this section point to five new pages on ProBlogger which are in effect Themed Sneeze Pages (How to Make Money Blogging, How to Find Readers for Your Blog, How to Write Great Blog Content, Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers and Darren’s Recommendations).

These pages each break down the overarching topic or theme of the page into sub themes and then list off some of the key posts that I’ve written on the topic.

Interestingly - some of the posts that I link to are the central page for a series of posts (which are Sneeze pages in themselves - for example the page on writing content links to the 7 Days to Rediscovering your Blogging Groove series). As a result these pages have the potential to sneeze readers into hundreds of archived posts very quickly.

2. Time Related Sneeze Pages - a Sneeze page that is based around a defined period of time can be very effective. These ‘best of’ posts highlight your key posts from that period to either remind readers of previous posts that they might want to revisit or to highlight posts that they might have missed.

The period of time that you choose can really be anything from a year (here’s my best of 2006 at ProBlogger post) through to a month, week or even a weekend (ie a post that summarizes the posts from a weekend that those readers who don’t read your blog on a weekend might have missed).

3. Hot Comment Thread Sneeze Pages - I haven’t done this for a while but I used to occasionally compile a list of the posts in my archives that had comment threads on them that just wouldn’t die. This drove traffic back to engaging conversations, controversial debates and insightful discussions through my blog. It was actually a great traffic driver that worked quite effectively.

4. Series Sneeze Pages - as mentioned above - the introductory or summary post of a new series of posts can be an effective Sneeze Page. The best current example of this on ProBlogger is the central page for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project which will end up being a list of 31 posts from this blog as well as hundreds of reader submitted tips.

How do you find relevant posts?
Once you’ve decided on the facet/theme of the sneeze page, how do you come up with the list of posts to try and weave into it? I usually search through a couple of my blogs and find posts that are not more than one degree of semantic separation from the main theme. For example, let’s say that I’m writing about showing Dobermanns in Australia (something I did in a past life, and my ex still does) - within one degree of separation is:

• Showing Dobermanns anywhere in the world,
• Showing any other breed within Australia, and
• Anything about Dobermanns in Australia.

Sticking to the “one degree of separation” rule helps to keep the list of posts relevant - they need to be close enough that you can weave them into a coherent story without being awkward.

The art of the segue
It is not enough to pile a set of related links into a page - they need to be tied together in a way that is relevant to one another and to the flow of the story as a whole. Disjointed writing jars - and jarred readers leave. The easiest way to ensure a smooth transition is to consider the links (and the linking text) as building materials - they must be glued together with segues - sentences that logically follow one another to take the reader on a journey from one link to the next (or better yet, presents the links as a natural part of the story).

Darren suggested the following:

One more quick tip on writing Sneeze Pages - don’t make them just a list of links. Readers will use them a lot more and follow your suggested links into your archives if you take al little time to introduce what the page is about and to describe what they’ll get when they arrive at the page. This little extra effort will mean your page is more useful and useable for readers.

Don’t be greedy - share the link love
The trick is to share the link love, not keep it all to yourself. In this post, I’ve linked to Darren’s original posts because they inspired me to take this next step. I don’t share those “send this email to seven people or you will grow warts on your bottom - if you do send it you will win a million dollars” emails - but I do believe that the link love comes back to me a hundredfold.