Technology As Innovator

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…because you don’t want people to leave your page when they click a link.

People don’t want to leave a page when they haven’t finished reading either.

Describe your link and explicitly say “Click here”

Throw your RSS subscription options out

• For tech-savvy readers, RSS icon is all they need. Show off this in an easy-to-spot place
• For non tech-savvy readers, offer email subscription at the end of an entry. Since around 85% traffic comes from search / social media, readers normally jump right in one post of yours and you want to keep them by offering them the option when they finish their reading.
• To many who are not familiar with RSS subscription, the word “Subscribe” sounds like they’re being charged to receive service. Make it clear to them that subscription is free.

Previous posts

Click here to read the first 4 tips in the series.

Click here to read the next 4 tips in the series.

Putting invention(s) to practice

Re-organization: costs and risks

Origins of Innovation

Supply-pushed Manufacturer Innovation

Formal R&D

Management Innovation

Demand-led End-user Innovation

Technology As Innovator

Technology creates value

When the old economy has been saturated, technology comes in place

A Commitment

Bridging technology and business

Manual Highlight Posts

There are benefits to manage your highlight posts manually.

First, automated widgets that display popular posts base on certain criteria and may not cover all your needs. For example, you may want to attract traffic to a post with lower pageviews that it doesn’t appear when using plugins.

Next, if you do it by hand and announce so, readers will appreciate your hard works and the intimate readership is enhanced.

Lastly, you control everything about the list.

Use Images for posts

One tip is to use images for posts to create visual clues instead of all text links.

Manual Related Posts

“Related Posts” plugin works well. However, it works by detecting similar posts by using keywords including tags. It is not intelligent enough to understand that some story should continue the article you’re writing.

For instance, you’d written an article about Management and never once mentioned Leadership. Then, you write about Leadership to prove the differences and the supplementing between Leadership and Management and want to link to the previous Management article. The plugin then only displays related Leadership articles after the new article, without knowing your preference. Manually doing so may improve the reading flow of your blog.

Tell your readers exactly what they should be doing

Click here

Compare these 2 paragraphs:

1. My summary of the Enneagram, for example, summarizes my knowledge after reading most celebrated books on the topic.

2. My summary of the Enneagram, for example, summarizes my knowledge after reading most celebrated books on the topic. Click here to read the summary.

What have you noticed? Which do you think is more of a temptation of clicking?

Statistics has that clear instruction such as “Click here” increases clicking rate by roughly 8%. Do give internet users explicit and specific commands.

“Related Posts” vs. a Selling statement

Compare these 2 invitations:

1. Related Posts

Principles of leadership
Leadership today
The theory of leadership

2. Interested in this topic? You might enjoy another article I’d written named The differences between Leadership and Management and how they supplement each other. It further explores the points covered in this post.

Since it’s an invitation, make it an invitation.

Date

Show-off the date of your post. This gives reader more hints on the context of the story so comprehending the article can be easier.

For example, some readers may be surprised to read your post that praises Sony Walkman as the state-of-the-art portable music player while Apple’s iPod was dominating in 2006. If the date “1/2/1990″ is included in the post, such confusion is avoidable.

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Interested in this topic? You might enjoy other WordPress publishing tips. Click here to read the previous article.