Enticing readers with related blog posts

If you’ve ever gotten trapped in an adorable kitten loop on Huffington Post’s Cute Animal Videos feed, you understand the power of the related blog posts. If you haven’t, I’ll give you an hour to experience the marvels of kittens playing with baby goats, but then get back here. Seriously. We have work to do.

Time’s up!

You see what I mean? You clicked on that one video. The one with the kitten and the baby goat because who can resist? Just one, you told yourself. But then you discovered through the power of brilliant marketing that – gulp – other awww-inspiring kitten and baby animal mashup videos exist out there. And then it became a whole thing that was really hard to disentangle yourself from.

You can actually harness this power for your food blog using some pretty easy-to-use plug-ins called – you guessed it – Related Post Plugins.

Why should I add a Related Post Plugin to my WordPress blog?

The answer is obvious. It’s not too difficult to get someone to your food blog. If you’ve added Rich Pins, your posts are probably already circulating on Pinterest. That means you’ve got hungry readers coming to your blog to dig into your particular style of dishing.

But do you want them to read one post and then leave? Or do you want them to unwittingly fall in love with every post you’ve ever written and spend a whole day sharing all of them with their friends and family?

That’s where Related Post Plugins come in.

What do these amazing plugins do?

In general, a related blog post plugin will add a section at the end of each blog post that you create (or sometimes in the sidebar), sharing additional posts that the reader might be interested in. Usually, these are contextual, offering posts with similar tags or categories, which means the posts are exactly what your reader was looking for when she first visited your site.

Which Related Post Plugin should I choose?

Contextual Related Posts

If you’re looking for hands-off, magical convenience, this is your related post plugin. Contextual runs automatically, offering features like thumbnail images and CSS stylings with very little effort on your part.

Jetpack Related Posts

If you’re looking for something easy to install and get started using, Jetpack may be the right plugin for you. It’s easy to customize, which is good for you, and it works contextually to provide readers with the most relevant posts, which is good for them.

Editorial Assistant by Zemanta

The Editorial Assistant takes related post sharing to the next level, suggesting related posts and images as you write. Not only does it offer relevant posts from your own blog, but it also offers suggestions from other blogs in the Zemanta network, providing an opportunity to build relationships with fellow bloggers.

Inline Related Posts

You’ve probably seen inline related posts on larger sites like Huffington Post. This plugin allows you to suggest relevant content throughout your blog posts rather than waiting until the end.

Yet Another Related Posts

YARPP has been installed on more than 300k WordPress sites, so it’s not just another related post plugin. It’s one of the most popular, and there are a few reasons for its popularity. It’s highly customizable, easy to use, and it even supports RSS feeds.

If you’re not sure which related blog post plugin is right for your food blog, get in touch with us today. We’ll help you find the tool that does exactly what you need it to do to keep your readers discovering even more of your posts.