When my co-blogger and I started our blog–www.onviolence.com–nearly eight months ago, we wanted to blog differently. One of the first things we decided to do was to tell our readers what posts they could expect for the coming week. We call it the Upcoming Articles Widget.
On our sidebar underneath our widget buttons, we have a small box with the titles of our next three posts, and the dates they will be posted.
Why do we do this? Mainly because we can. We write our articles ahead of time and make a point of not wanting to “chase the news.” The widget keeps us disciplined. Even when we don’t want to edit a post, we know we have to.
Are there any downsides to this widget? Maybe. A famous blogger warned us other people could steal our ideas. We also lose some flexibility in posting.
But we like it most of all because it changes our mindset for us and our readers. We are writing in a planned, structured way, and our Upcoming Articles Widget conveys that to our readers.
(If you’re wondering how we did it, we don’t know. We use pivotx, and someone else designed our website for us. Sorry!)
Eric Cummings writes about for On Violence, a blog on counter-insurgency warfare, military and foreign affairs, art, and violence, written by two brothers–one a soldier and the other a pacifist.
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I like the idea of using an upcoming article widget, but I think using it really depends on the type of blog you are running and how often you are publishing.
Nice way to be unique with your blog!
I agree Seth that it is totally a matter of what type of blog. Blogs that chase the news or update frequently and randomly, not much use to them. But for blogs that review art or film, I could see them using it. Particularly any blog that prepares content ahead of time.
Also, I think twitter has made this feature more useful, because bloggers share links via twitter now, instead of blogs.