Starting Your Blog

Starting Your Blog

Keep your blog organized and attractive.
Who is your audience? Who are your readers? How often will you be posting to your blog? How often will your average reader be visiting your site? Think about the type of content you will be writing and what the best way to organize it will be. Ask yourself if your blog should be more date oriented or category oriented. And make sure you ask these questions from your reader’s point of view.
Keep your blog postings relevant. Your blog should have some kind of theme or topic. Every time you post something on your blog, ask yourself if it’s relevant.
Don’t just fill your blog up with content. Consider who you are trying to attract then stay with your topic and don’t lose focus. Write for the reader, not the writer.
Customize your template and keep your bog organized. Everything you need to know to customize your blog can be found online. To organize by date or to organize by content. If your blog is just a diary, you write about anything and everything, it’s an update, news, or latest goings on of your business or personal life then a date organized blog is usually best. If you are developing your blog into a site of resources or providing content that will be valuable weeks from now, then organize by category. Again, think about how your visitors will use your site and what will be easiest for them. If you think they may find value in your previous posts, make it easy for them to find those posts.
Blogs have easy to plug in categories and calendars, so use them! Set up a handful of categories on your blog and remember you can easily change them as you begin to develop your blog. Also, organize your calendar.
Use a search form. A search form enables your visitors to easily find exactly what they are looking for. You do not want your visitors coming to your site in search of a post they saw and then force them to wade through post after post to find it. Using a search form is easy to use and is default on most blog templates.
Don’t make your visitors blindly click links on your blog to find what they are looking for. Make the categories and titles of your posts as descriptive as you possibly can. Following this single tip will make a huge difference, especially once your site has numerous postings.
Make a clear navigational path for all parts of your blog. Just like a website, you need to make a directory of your blog. You want to make it easy for your visitors to find all the categories, as well as additional pages of your blog.
Left or right side navigation? Placement on either side will work. You can even do both.
Keep your blog simple and to the point. Keep your blog layout focused on what your readers and visitors want it will reflect a layout and organization that fits them.