Blog Post Recycling – Benefits Of A Content Slider

It is a sad fact of blogging that over time, our older posts fall by the wayside and are hardly ever accessed by new readers. Why is it sad? Because it is a waste. Older content my be well-written and full of timeless, useful information that your readers would find just as juicy as newer content. They are missing out and you aren’t getting your readers deep enough into your blog.

So now you must be wondering, “How do I get my readers to go deeper and access those timeless treasures?”. One thing you might want to consider is a featured content slider, one that is set up to present readers with a doorway to your older, but still relevant posts. Content sliders are ideal for this purpose and there are many free sliders available for you to use on your blog.

What is a content slider you ask? Well, you’ve probably seen them around the web. A content slider is a script or widget that produces a slide show of linked images and/or text that presents the viewer with additional content that they can visit by clicking on the slide or text currently visible in the presentation window. Using the slider to feature older content is an excellent way to entice your blog visitors to go deeper into your blog and recycle older content that would otherwise be lying dormant in your blog archives.

Content sliders are highly configurable by the user and can be customized extensively. You choose images and/or text to include in the slide show and link them to content that might otherwise be overlooked. By regularly changing up the content in the slider, your readers get exposed to many more of the useful, but potentially forgotten posts on your blog. This is a very effective tool to help make your blog more interactive for your readers.

Here are a few places to find content sliders and information on how to set them up and use them:

• The Bit {repository} site; has a list of 10 Free JavaScript Content Sliders for you to check out.
• Vision Widget has a list of  15 Content Sliders that they consider to be the best. There is some overlap between this list and the list from bit repository, but sitll worth a look see.
• Dynamic Drive offers their very popular Featured Content Slider v2.4 with many configurable options.

In most cases, content slider scripts, require you to make changes to the code in order to customize the slideshow to your needs. Not everybody is comfortable doing this. If you would still like to include a content slider without having to touch the code, you might want to consider the Simple SlideShow Widget from Wowzio. This simple to set up widget will automatically display the last 50 images on your blog and link to the posts containing them. This alternative is only effective if you use images in your posts on a regular basis.

For WordPress users, upgrading your current theme to a new template that includes a content slider might just do the trick. Here are some WP themes that include content sliders:

You can find two such themes, QuenchMag and CorporateMag on the Top WP Themes site.
On the Themes2WP site you will find two more offerings, Fickle Celebrity and Blue Star Mag.

There is also a WP Featured Content Slider plugin available from WordPress.org, that can be added to existing Wordpress blogs.

Whichever way you choose to implement it, a featured content slider can be a valuable addition to your blog. It’s a great way to engage your readers and draw them deeper into your posts. Once they discover how much great content you have, they will be compelled to delve deeper and visit often.

Written by Joella Molson from Blogs With Wings
Posted on November 17th, 2009 and filed under Blogging
Do not forget to subscribe to our RSS feed for updates

3