This is a guest post by Bilal Ahmed from TechMaish.com, blogging today to tell us some basic tips to keep in mind while creating/managing blogs.
Blogging is a very profitable and stable business, but the competition has made it very difficult for newbies to enter in this field.
The reasons are so many, e.g lack of knowledge and confidence, less experience, desire of getting popular in short time, expecting things is short span of time, coming up with competitive topics, not reading and following recommendations of the popular bloggers, monotony and having no proper business plan and so on…..
The only way for a newbie in this competitive environment is to stand out of the crowd.
In order to stand of the crowd, newbie is advised to start with a effective business plan and continue with the right steps. In blogging, blog is the first thing that will differentiate you from the rest. Blog must be very creative and well designed so that your readers can enjoy while reading it.
There are some tips, if you keep them in mind while blogging, you may create magic in the readers mind:
1. Attractive Design: We like anything on internet, if the matter is soothing to our eyes. Hence, this is very important to design your blog well not only that but it should be user friendly also.
2. Font Style, Size and Colors: Fonts that you use in your blog must be clear and easily decipherable never use the fonts such as Old English Text MT, Magneto etc. Even remember the fonts are not very large or very tiny while you are writing a blog must use the 12-14 size. We are aware that light color suits to dark background and dark to the light.
3. Images: Always add some images in your Blog that gives visual effects to the reader as we know that only reading can bore you and your eyes.
4. Proportionate the Sidebar: Give equal weightage to each and every portion of the blog. Do not enlarge the sidebars it makes the blog look yuck. Always keep the important points in the sidebars. This also helps you at the time when you get any advertise to post on your blog.
5. Don’t Overload the Blog: While writing a blog, remember that you write point to point. Do not use long sentences. Never use excessive images or description.
6. Highlight the Links: Always remember that the links given in the blog must be highlighted well. Thus, the links will stand out from the other contents.
7. Let Readers Make The Choice: Never keep the auto start music or videos in your blog. Let you readers decide if they want them or not. The auto playing music and videos take too much bandwidth and slow down the speed of PC. Always keep your videos in the sidebar, so that they are in sight.
8. Generate Sitemap & Navigation: It is advisable to create a sitemap in your blog. By doing so your blog will enable search engine spiders to know where to go. You can provide a search box in your blog where readers can search for keywords and find the relevant matter they are looking for. Always set your archives by category and by months.
9. Approachable Contact and Subscription Links: If you want to have followers, readers and subscribers who can visit you on regular basis, locate your feed, social-networking links and subscription links easily approachable for readers.
10. Remove Captchas and Have a Favicon: Captchas can create a trouble for visitor in leaving comment as sometimes, the text is very small & unclear to read and sometimes it takes more than one attempt to follow Captchas procedure. So you should remove Captchas to get maximum visitors’ comment. More over your blog should have identity which facilitates readers to search your blog in a big clump. For this propose, creating Favicon is perfect choice.
I hope you would have found this article nice. Please share your comments below and let us know if you consider some more basic tips that a blogger should know while he is blogging.
From the visitor’s point of view, you covered the most important elements. However, since the start of the article was related to competition in the blogosphere, I would like to add that on page and off page SEO will be extremely important, especially in the start. Once you will establish your authority than the viral marketing will do its magic and these SEO elements are not so important.
I’m practicing on creating a great blog. I’m research on some ideas on how to do one. I’m glad I stumbled on this page. Thanks for the tips. I’m sure I’ll bear those in mind. 🙂
That was a great advice. Beginners could really benefit from. I’ve never started a personal blog and not I’m thinking of having one.
I think the most important tip for new bloggers is to pick a niche and stick relatively close to it. There are some blogs that cover everything, but for new bloggers, it really helps to stay focused.
Some very good information here.I would like to ask a doubt regarding optimization.Do we have to buy special plugins or is it enough to have free plugins for proper optimization of our blog.
I agree with Sammy. Good vocabulary and content is the main thing we look in a blog. Knowledge should be in a very simplified format so that readers can understand and interpret. I don’t take interest in technical blogs but there are some bloggers who write so well that you like to read the stuff.
Perhaps even more important than all the excellent tips provided above is –
* Have a Clear Understanding of the Blog Purpose.
What is your main goal? What are you trying to accomplish?
And once you have clearly identified all your goals – design away and place call to action in appropriate locations, based on the goals weight!
Design is really the first thing that catches the eye, so optimizing it is a must. Finding catchy colors, which at the same time are not flashy at the same time is what one should be striving for. The most important rule in my opinion is keeping things simple and clean, yet effective. You have provided some great tips. Good read for novices in blogging.
Favicons is a visual branding opportunity that many people are missing out on when planning their marketing campaign. It can also create better usability for your site, as visitors to your site can easily and quickly identify it in browser tabs without even having to read what it says in the tab
Great tips especially for newbie bloggers! Little by little I’m beginning to understand that blogging is definitely hard work, not everyone can be successful in it just because they only have the capability to have their own blog. It certainly will take lots of time, effort, know-how and extreme patience in order to see good results in the stats of your blog. Thank you for sharing! I also appreciate the additional information about Captcha.