6 tips to make your blog look better

one of the simplest ways to get a return visitor to your blog is to have a blog that’s appealing to the eye.  when you see a blog that looks like the owner doesn’t care, is that one you bookmark to revisit? probably not.

not a professional blog designer? no worries. i’m not either, but i designed my own blog, the blogs of a few others, and I promise, when I started, I knew nothing!! I guess to some I may be a computer geek, but WordPress was not my thing.

so…here are just a few tips that just about anyone can implement into their blog to make it more appealing:

1. color your blog around your business.  if you, your business, and your blog are more on the formal side, using neon greens and blues probably wouldn’t fit. take a look at a few news based, business based, and creativity based websites. what color schemes do they use?

below i’m going to show you 5 different color schemes and the blog/website i think they would work with.

personal blog

creative business

non-formal business

business or news based

creativity based (maybe kid crafts)

2. have an easy to follow layout.  some bloggers believe that more is better. they think that the more topics they cover on the blog, the better it is. not so much! let me tell you what it does. it causes confusion in most cases, and a sense of being overwhelmed in the rest. there’s no reason to have 20 different tabs to 20 different pages or categories. when you have too much, people won’t click on anything thinking that there could be even more on the next page.

3. be mindful of your sidebar stuff. i look at a lot of blogs, and see it all the time. there are so many blogs out there with what i call ‘sidebars with hoarder like tendencies’. when people come to your blog, you want them focused on two things: your content & your newsletter /opt-in.

the sidebar should be relevant, but it shouldn’t be in competition with your content for the focus of  your reader. if you have more than 1 or 2 tools that you’d like to promote, or that you use, create a tools or resources page. you can see mine here.

4. sign your posts. every letter you’ve ever received from a company or business person has come with a signature. your blog posts are no different. go to http://mylivesignature.com and you can get your own customized signature! i’m not saying there’s some rule on having a signature, but go look at any of the blogs that you’re inspired by, and let me know if they write to their readers and don’t sign their posts.

5. your header matters! if there’s a header on a blog, 9-times-out-of-ten it’s the first thing you see. it’s the first impression, and we all know you don’t get a second shot at a first impression. have a header that represents the blog.

we’ll quickly analyze mine. it’s extremely simple, compared to others i’ve had, made, and seen. there’s a picture of me, my short tagline, and a nice design. the end. that’s what i suggest. Not to copy mine, haha, but to, as my 7^th grade science teacher would say… “k.i.s.s. – keep it simple stupid”.

professional can be fun, and that’s why i use more of a whimsical design in my header…along with the fact that this blog is about being creative in your businessing!

6. become friends with spellcheck and avoid typos.  blog readers want to read. they don’t want to have to decipher what word was left from the sentence or what word you really meant in that space where your fingers apparently slipped. even if your message is amazing, if it can’t be read, it can’t be received. so check, go away for a while, and then come back to double check.

now I know what someone is going to say:

but Kadeejia, technically, your blog full of typos. you forget to capitalize just about everything that should be capitalized.

you’re right. i do… but i do it for a reason beyond just not wanting to press the shift button every few seconds. i do it because it says a few things without me saying them.

1. it shows that capitalization has no impact on valuable content. valuable content is valuable content.
2. it shows that business doesn’t have to fit every standard that other people have set. we all know that in terms of grammar, things go this way and that way. but in business, it doesn’t. nowadays, you don’t even have to leave your home to start a business. So, if business can shift to a more non-conventional way of functioning, then my grammar can be slightly unconventional as well.
3. i’m a bit quirky. i do things different. that’s just one.

besides, in terms of grammar, that’s the only rule I intentionally break, so it’s not that bad. =)

these are just a few of the simple ideas i’ve thought of that you can implement right away. they’ll do nothing but make your blog a more professional website. you’ll have more return visitors and your credibility will grow.

if these tips help you, please share them with your friends! i also love to hear feedback, so feel free to leave a comment.

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Filed under: blogging

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