Creating a blog is easy and so is getting your blog design right. Avoid these seven mistakes and you should have a blog design that is all set for your content. Get your content right and you will have a blog that is well on the way to success.
MISTAKE NUMBER ONE: Not Using Your Own Domain Name - The biggest mistake many people make is in simply not believing in themselves so they head of for a blog hosted blog like WordPress.com or blogger.com. If you are serious about blogging then get your own domain name and hosting. In this day and age the annual cost is quite small.
MISTAKE NUMBER TWO: Not Defining Your Niche - A lot of bloggers use a scattergun approach when it comes to publishing content. Settle on a genre, even if it is a broad one, and stick to it. Make sure each post that is published relates to that genre.
MISTAKE NUMBER THREE: Not Creating An Identity - Readers will want to know who you are. One of your first tasks should be to write an ‘About Me’ page. This can be edited over time. A photo is also a nice touch.
MISTAKE NUMBER FOUR: Infrequent Posting - You may write the best material on the web but if you only publish when you feel like it you will not build a reader base. Establish a posting routine, preferably every day. If you cannot post every day then at least establish a routine that readers can expect. This may be every Friday, or every second day – so long as it is predictable.
MISTAKE NUMBER FIVE: Poor Post Titles - Make the the title of every post stand out so that it attracts readers. The more attractive or luring the title, the more readers you are likely to get.
MISTAKE NUMBER SIX: Burying Your Hits - You are sure to write some great articles. Make sure they are always promoted and readily accessible from the home page. It only takes a carefully crafted list of links.
MISTAKE NUMBER SEVEN: Dead or Mysterious Links - There is nothing worse that reading an article that has a link with no reference to what the link is about or where it is going. Users can hover a mouse over a link and when they do they expect to get some feedback as to where the link is going. Worse still is when the link proves to be a dead link. Check your links on a frequent basis.
Think about these seven blog design mistakes and then think about your own blog reading experiences. You will see that most, if not all are relevant to what you would like to see when visiting a blog. You want to know a bit about the author, you want regular on topic posts, you want to know where the links are going and often you will want to check out some of their older titles. Start to leave these out of your blog design and you will find that your blog reader base will not grow.
Starting a blog is easy, getting your blog design right is also easy – we often just make it hard on ourselves.
I definitely agree about having your own domain name. Having your blog hosted by blogger or some other type of blog host carries a stigma that you are not serious and just blog on your spare time. This is bad because some people might not even take a look at your content. I created a blog that focuses only on blog designs that I think you will be interested in.