One simple and super effective way of making that great initial first-impression (especially since we’re moving toward a more social web) is by using “cookies”.

Yum.

For those that may not be so familiar, a “cookie” is:

HTTP cookies, or more commonly referred to as Web cookies, tracking cookies or just cookies, are parcels of text sent by a server to a Web client (usually a browser) and then sent back unchanged by the client each time it accesses that server.

HTTP cookies are used for authenticating, session tracking (state maintenance), and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of their electronic shopping carts.

The term “cookie” is derived from “magic cookie,” a well-known concept in UNIX computing which inspired both the idea and the name of HTTP cookies.

And they are, truly, magical.  Because with them you can do a whole lot of neat stuff like personalization, digital “remembering” of people’s usage, content, and browsing patterns, authentication, yada yada yada…

So for this example (which you may have already noticed) I’ve added a very cool simple plugin affectionately called What Would Seth Godin Do (Read more about Seth and his uberness here if you aren’t already familiar with this guy).

Essentially, what it does is identifies if the reader of the blog is “new” and provides an additional “Welcome Message” at the top of each blog post.  After a few reads, it disappears.

The effects can be profound: By providing that extra personal touch to your blog by the use of cookies, you can make the reader feel like they are having a unique and personal experience.

So check it out and throw me back a link of you using it, then you can officially give yourself a pat on the back and call yourself a “cookie-ninja”.