July 27th, 2010 — Blog Tips, Blogging, Readership
One of the most critical parts of your blog is the section that is visible in the browser window without requiring any scrolling on the behalf of the visitor. What this means, in no uncertain terms, is that the most important and most critical elements need to be in this “above the fold” area, because many visitors who come to your blog are never even going to scroll down. Unfortunately, people make a lot of really common mistakes regarding this area of their blogs. Here are five critical mistakes that you need to avoid if you want each blog visitor that comes to your site to find reasons to stick around.
- * You are making a critical mistake if your header is too large. People will be able to tell what your blog is without you flashing it in 128 point font. Your header can be small and professional and speak volumes more than 128-point screaming in an annoying font.
- * You are making a mistake if you have useless things in your sidebars. The tops of your sidebars should be utilized by the most important things to your readers. Give them the most recent comments, links to your best blog posts, links to related websites, your blog roll, anything that has real meaning. If you put a calendar, pointless ads and other stuff in your sidebar, you are going to likely upset your visitors more than gain their interest in your blog.
- * You are making a critical mistake if you are utilizing a poor visual style, bad colors or annoying fonts. Your blog should be visually appealing and pleasant to each blog visitor that comes to see it. If your blog is not visually appealing, especially when it comes to the “above the fold” area, then your blog visitors will not stick around.
- * You are making a critical mistake if you have music or video that starts instantly on your blog. Yes, this is something that can be considered to be an above the fold part of your blog. Music, video and anything else that creates noise absolutely should not begin automatically. Let your blog visitors click on a start button. There’s no telling how loud your visitors have their volume turned up, and you may end up startling someone if they are not expecting music.
- * You are making a critical mistake if there is no focus on your blog. Your blog needs to be about what your blog is supposed to be about. If people come to a blog about a certain subject, and the top post in your blog is about something completely different, do you think they are going to stick around, or maybe never return? This is an important consideration if you want visitors to keep visiting, end of story.
Photo Credits: Bagryan
Originally posted 2009-07-29 05:36:19. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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June 26th, 2010 — Blog Design, Blogging
4 – To reiterate… Some of your blog posts are going to be more popular than others. Once you recognize which blog posts these are, keep them from being buried by finding a way to highlight them. You may have a popular posts section in the sidebar of your blog, for example, keeping these specific blog posts from getting lost in the shuffle. Another option is to have a popular articles section in your sidebar where you list your most popular blog posts so that readers can continue to find them. You can also tag or categorize blog posts to reflect their popularity so readers can go back and easily find them later.
5 – Do not make a blog banner that is big or unwieldy. The banner is the top portion of your blog, spanning across from right to left. There is a lot of information that you can put here, like a graphic, the name of your blog or even your picture. If your blog banner is too big, and someone who is reading your blog has to scroll down in order to find your content, then its time to make a change. Your blog banner and how readable your content is are two details that will make or break your blog when people visit for the first time.
6 – Make sure that your blog is visually appealing. If you cannot come up with a design that screams “visual appeal!”, at least make sure that your blog is not ugly. You should avoid bright colors or seriously contrasting colors, and you should stick to fonts that are reasonable, such as Arial and Times New Roman. If you are looking for something with a little bit of flair, Calibri is a good choice as well. Once you are done, let a professional designer look your blog over and give you feedback before you start taking things live, because what looks okay to you may not look okay to the rest of the world.
7 – Get rid of anything that isn’t serving a purpose. If you have random widgets and other junk in your blog sidebars and they’re not serving any real purpose, get rid of them. Blogs can become too busy really quickly, and one, two or three sidebars can quickly become too much. Go through every widget and remove the ones that aren’t benefiting you or your readers in some way. Cut down on the clutter, because visual appeal and good blog design are your friends when it comes to attracting readers to your following.
* Keep in mind that not only is empty space allowable, but it can also serve a great purpose because it helps your readers focus on what truly is important: Your content. These concepts are really simple but they pack a punch when it comes to delivering the content your readers want without forcing them to be bogged down by poor blog design.
Photo Credits: 1
Originally posted 2009-02-06 08:20:32. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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June 24th, 2010 — Blogging, Link Building
A blogroll is a list of blogs that is usually placed in the sidebar or along the bottom of a blog, reading as a list of blogger-recommended blogs and other websites. A better way for bloggers to share this information with their readers is through the release of a Blog Carnival. A Blog Carnival is a blog article containing links to a number of articles around the web that cover a specific topic. Most Blog Carnivals are put together and hosted by a rotating list of the most frequent contributors to the Blog Carnival, and their primary purpose is to generate new posts by contributors while highlighting new bloggers who are posting subject matter in the chosen area.
If you are interested in a specific topic and there is not already a Blog Carnival being run on the subject, then it may be a really great opportunity for you to start your own Blog Carnival on the topic at hand if you already have a blog that can host the carnival. However, it is important that you are only starting a Blog Carnival on a topic if it has not already been done before. If you are competing against somebody else’s carnival, then you may not get the number of post submissions that you need in order to create a high quality carnival.
Give yourself plenty of time to launch your Blog Carnival. You want to give yourself enough time that you can guarantee a good launch, because rushing yourself is never going to create positive results. Additionally, you should decide ahead of time how often your Blog Carnival is going to run, and also what day it will be published with each new edition. You want to have details like this planned out completely and fully so that there are no surprises along the way. Surprises may be fun, but they may also keep you from publishing your Blog Carnival on time, which is sloppy.
For at least the first edition, you should not count on receiving a flood of submissions but instead should plan on having to search out posts on your own. If you are willing to go out and find posts for your carnival, the results will tip toward your favor more easily.
Once you have a Blog Carnival planned out, submit yourself to http://www.BlogCarnival.com. This is a free aggregator and manager of Blog Carnivals that is already the home to hundreds of carnivals. If you want to get the buzz going to increase your submission count, this is a good way for you to get the ball rolling.
Finally, do not be too concerned if it seems as if the flood gates are not opening too quickly. It will take time for your Blog Carnival to build up some steam. A little bit of resistance is completely normal, but if you are patient and hardworking, the results will absolutely pay off in the end.
Photo Credits: twoblueday
Originally posted 2009-06-22 05:31:28. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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June 9th, 2010 — Blog Design, Blog Tips, Blogging
Most of the open source blogging platforms out there are going to come with at least a few different basic blogging designs. Some platforms call them themes, others call them templates, and others still have completely unique names for them. Most of these basic themes or templates have nothing inherently wrong with them, but customization is somewhat necessary otherwise everyone would have a blog that looked exactly the same as every other blog. Most blogging templates are really basic, and adding your own flair to them is easy. Still, many people get the whole customization thing wrong, and need to be steered in the right direction. There are some basic mistakes to how people go about customizing their blogs, and hopefully we can dispel some of them in this series on principles for good blog design.
1 – Whether you really want to or not, it is vital that you have some information about *you* in the blog. Either create an about me page, or have some information about yourself displayed in the sidebar of your blog. This should be a prominently placed section so it can be easily found, and it should be truly about who you are, rather than read like a resume.
2 – Make sure that your personal contact information is readily available, and even more importantly, easily visible. You need to at least have an e-mail address visible, and a phone number would be even better. If you want to prevent spammers from harvesting your e-mail address, use an image to display it rather than text. You can always use a free web based e-mail address such as a yahoo, gmail or hotmail address to keep from having your true personal address displayed, if you like. By posting real contact information, you are going to make yourself appear much more real. Although people may not really find reasons to contact you, you’re still indicating to your readers that you are available, which is a good thing.
3 – You should absolutely include a picture of yourself in your blog. All blogs, even business blogs, are personal, and the people who visit yours are going to want to know who you are and what you look like so that they can get to know you, and can benefit from the personal nature of your blog. It is much easier to build trust between yourself and your readers if your picture is visible and your readers feel like they know you. You do not absolutely need a picture, but it is still strongly recommended that you do have one in order to get the most out of your blog.
4 – Some of your blog posts are going to be more popular than others. Once you recognize which blog posts these are, keep them from being buried by finding a way to highlight them.
Continued in part 2 of this series.
Photo Credits: 1
Originally posted 2009-02-06 08:15:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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