Last week I promised I’d share some of the “beyond the basics” plugins I’m running on my blog. One of those is PostRank and I use it to show off the “hot” posts on my website.
Why might you want to show off your popular posts?
- You want readers to find your best content fast
- You know your readers themselves are the ones who determine what’s “best”
- You realize that if they can find more of your best content easily, they’re more likely to stick around and keep reading
So how can you figure out which posts are popular? Enter PostRank.
PostRank is very cool. It tracks not only which of your posts are being viewed and commented on most frequently, but also which posts are being shared more across social media sites, bookmarked and otherwise generating action.
They use what they call the 5 “C”s to assign points to actions (from most points to fewest):
- Creation – you’ve inspired someone to create their own post and link back to you
- Critique – you’ve motivated someone to leave a comment with their thoughts
- Chatting – you’ve given them something to talk about and they’re sharing on social sites
- Collect – you’ve been added to a social bookmarking collection
- Click – you got a page view or rss feed click
Isn’t that awesome? It’s the five stages you want to draw your readers through — from reading, to bookmarking, to sharing, to commenting and finally to take action based on what you share.
Get a more detailed description on how it works straight from PostRank at: http://www.postrank.com/postrank/
To install it on your blog:
Install the plugin and/or widget:
- For WordPress users, just install the plugin: http://www.postrank.com/publishers/wordpress (in a search it will show up as PostRank by Trevor Creech)
- For Blogger or other platforms: http://labs.postrank.com/top_posts
Once it’s installed then you can show off your most popular posts!
P.S. You can see it action over there on the right side of this page.
Hi Michelle! I like the way PostRank looks on your blog. Have you experienced any compatibility or performance issues with it?
I’m using Archivist, which grabs random posts, displaying 2 on the home page (you can configure that number).
I popped over from Twitter. Nice to meet you!
Cheers,
Mitch
Not yet. It hasn’t seemed to slow down loading speed, but I’ll be keeping an eye on that. You can customize the color and number that show up with it, too.
Michelle,
i am happy to say i have installed this plugin on my site.
Thank you for sharing.
You’re welcome, Pamela. :)
You are right, Michelle, PostRank seems to be quite a cool thing to be used.
it is also important for visitors to focus on hottest content, which is usually a guarantee for the top quality content, as well. So, both sides are winning: by reading quality content and by getting traffic.
You got it! It’s a win-win.
Hi Michelle,
Nice post. Thanks for sharing your information on postRank here and I am willing to use it. PostRank looks very valuable thing to be used.
Thanks so much for this post!
I had been wondering how to do that.
Just installed it…looks a little long at the bottom, so I’ll have to try to figure that out. :)
Thanks for such a helpful blog!
i would love to consider the tips you have given.. i think that these are indeed very much of help for me since i have just started blogging and i badly need to learn more about this kind of stuffs
Hello Michelle
Thanks for sharing here, i am happy to say with us that i install my plugins. thanks
Wow! You a a mine of wonderful information Michelle. I just tried to install it. Had no problems installing it, but the posts it were showing were not from my blog but from PostRanks blog! Not sure how to rectify this :-(
Hi Michelle, I’m moving forward to install this plugin, thank you for sharing such informative post..
Hi Michelle,
Nice post. Postrank is a good thing to be used and I think in internet marketing postrank plays an important role in finding out popular post so we should use it.