Internet Marketing Hints And Tips » blog design

What To Consider When Commencing Business Blogging

Gary Knox — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:03:55 +0000

If you are already convinced with the potential of business blogs for marketing and targeting an increase in your sales, your are now ready to start blogging. But first, you have to be in tune with your business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.

1. Several blogs are dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, READ them! Include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based too to give you an ideaon how your marketing should be structured.
2. Setup several test blogs right away.

If your initial experiment with test blogs worked well, you can now start setting up your blogs for real.

Study blog design. Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match the company’s identity and needs.
Choose a topic. It is good to have a selection of topics that you want for your blogs but make certain they are relevant to your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness since results might be going against the set objectives.
Start blogging and complete 20 posts before proceeding to marketing.
Begin marketing.
Regularly monitor the traffic to the site and get updates on what your visitors want. Then, measure your results.
Adjust if needed. You can always play with your designs and layouts of each blog site as long as it retains the company’s identity.
Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time.
Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.
Schedule updates regularly.
Remember the following safety measures in blogging:

legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities;
corporate communication and legal departments are responsible for educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business;
create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information is allowed to be made public;
avoid outright marketing blog or you might frighten away your readers;
keep content updated, relevant and fresh;
reinforce the company’s core values; and,
encourage employees to use it.

Once you have done all these things, you can now ultimately enjoy the benefits of business blogging.

The Most Important Aspects of Blog Marketing

Gary Knox — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:12:58 +0000

Blog marketing is a combination of several things all put together to construct one great blog that is successful and that has numerous readers. However, if you think that you have done everything possible, chances are that you have not. Or that you should do more. When you are working on marketing a blog, you never get to the finishing point. There is always something that you are able to do to continue to grow and make your blog well known. What are these things you ask? Keep reading to find out.

Blog marketing will keep you very busy. If you have more than one blog going that you want the highest and the best rankings for, you may have to hire some help. However make certain that you have good content. If you do not have good content, there is no reason for your readers to come back to your blog after their first visit. Keep writing good content as well. If it starts to go down hill, you may find that your reader status does as well and that could hurt you in the long run. Good content is key.

Something else that many blog owners do not realise when they are marketing their blog is that it needs to be updated. Post content on your blog regularly for the best results. Maybe once a day is good for you? Perhaps you are more comfortable with one post a week? Whichever it is, be consistent with it and know that it will pay off.

Simply having a blog about anything, or random subjects is not always a great idea. You have to have a niche market in order to market your blog successfully. Find your area of expertise and run with it. You can be an expert on that market in your blogging community. Readers will go to your blog daily to find out what it is that the expert is going to say next. It really does work this way.

Make certain that your blog design stands out. You do not want your blog to look and feel like everyone else’s, so make it different. Having your own look is a huge plus in the blog marketing world. You will find that most blogs all look the same and you can have your own look by just using HTML and adjusting the code to suit your taste. You are going to see that this will truly make a difference with your blog as well as your readers. Try to get a theme that is going to match the market that you are promoting in your blog. Doing so will make it look even more professional.

Do you know SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. If you are not familiar with SEO, you need to learn the basics fast. Using SEO will help you to market your blog to the fullest extent possible. Optimising your blog posts as well as the HTML will get you results that you will love. Studying everything that you can find on SEO will help you immensely. You will find that there is so much more to bog marketing than just making a post on your blog everyday.

If you don’t all ready, be sure that your blog has the RSS feeds. Having these feeds will allow others to be able to link to you blog. Having many links a huge part of blog marketing that you want to take advantage of as well. When someone uses the RSS feeds from your blog, they are able to get the posts that you make, and will give you a link back from their blog, or website, whichever they posted it on.

The Importance of Blog Design

Gary Knox — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:10:29 +0000

If you have informative or amusing content and good blog layout and design you are likely to recieve an increase in traffic to your blog. You may develop your blog’s content or you can also acquire the services of a web content writer to provide you with the blog articles.

The blog’s layout and design also plays a large role. While most of the companies offering free blog hosting offer pre-selected templates, there are also some that allow customisation that if you employ this feature correctly can increase your blog’s traffic.

Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of blogs out there that have standard designs.

* Customise the banner

The banner usually has the most generic designs that are common to the blogs from a blogging company or service.

You can personalise this banner by having a graphic with the dimensions of the banner. You can also edit the graphic so that it will also include the title of your blog.

In this case, you can create your own graphic or you can purchase professional looking graphics online for less than $10.

* Personalising photos

Of course, most of the photos that you will be posting will be your own. However, if you do not customise the photos before posting them, you may miss maximizing the enhancing benefits graphics can add to the page. Adding photo borders can help the photo stand out from the page.

It can also add to the design of your blog. You can choose a standard border or you can also create your own border which can be associated with your blog’s templates.

* Add a favicon

Don’t you think sites with icons on the address bar before the website’s URL are cool? Many people do. These favicons add a professional look to the URL. These are easy to produce using photo or graphic editing softwares.

* Check out blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins from sites

There are sites that offer free blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins. You can make use of these so your blog will not look generic like most of the blogs hosted by the service provider.

* Include RSS feeds

This is a cool way to inform people with newsreaders about your blog headlines. Tutorials on RSS feeds are available on the internet.

* Audio makes your blog more personal

Not only does audio personalise the blog; it can also keep your visitors coming back. You can try having streaming radio stations, mp3 file or playlists loading with your blog.

* Advertisements

If you have signed-up with Google Ad-Sense, which I am sure you would like to do, make certain that the adverts are conveniently placed that these will not hinder your readers’ ease in accessing the information on your blog.

Try using these tips and you can definitely increase and retain traffic on your blog.

Learning about Blogging

Gary Knox — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:05:14 +0000

There are a number of different reasons for a blogger to start and maintain a blog. Some of these reasons include generating revenue, promoting a cause, providing useful information and staying in touch with family and friends. Although these reasons for beginning a blog might be quite different, all bloggers should spend some time learning about blogging before embarking on a blogging experience. This will help to ensure the blog achieves its intended purpose and will also help to prevent the blogger from making mistakes which can be detrimental to a blog.

Studying Successful Blogs

One of the simplest ways for prospective bloggers and new bloggers to learn about blogging is by studying successful blogs. Those who have recently started a blog or are considering starting a blog can learn a great deal simply by reading and studying successful blogs. Bloggers may choose to study blogs which focus on a similar subject but this is not necessary. Bloggers can learn a great deal about maintaining a successful blog by studying blogs related to any subject. This is because factors such as writing style, blog design, font type and colors can all contribute to the success of the blog.

When studying other blogs, the blogger should pay particular interest to aspects of the blog which attract their attention. This is important because these aspects also likely appeal to other blog visitors and contribute to the success of the blog. Modeling a blog with these aspects in mind can go a long way towards contributing to the success of a blog.

Using the Internet to Research Blog Tips

The Internet can be an excellent resource for learning about the subject of blogging. There are a variety of different articles related to this subject. These articles may contain tips for starting, maintaining and optimising a blog. They may also contain tips for generating traffic to a blog and keeping visitors interested in the blog. Bloggers are advised to study the information available online carefully and to always consider the source of the information. Considering the source of the information is important because it can help to ensure the information gleaned from the Internet is reliable. However, this can be difficult sometimes because it is not always possible to ascertain the source of information available.

Another option for verifying the validity of information available online is use other sources to confirm the information. This means a blogger may find one article which provides several tips for operating a successful blog but still searches online for information which will corroborate the information available in the original article. This may sound redundant but it can help to prevent the blogger from accepting false information as being correct.

The Importance of Promoting a Blog

Finally, bloggers should understand the importance of promoting a blog and should investigate methods of promoting their own blog. Promoting a blog is so important because it is through this type of promotion that a blog gains traffic. Gaining traffic is imperative to the success of a blog in most cases. The few exceptions include blogs which are maintained solely for the bloggers personal use as well as blogs which are maintained for the purpose of keeping friends and family members up to date on events in the bloggers life. All other blogs can benefit from increased blog traffic.

Bloggers can learn about how to successfully promote a blog by considering how they learned about blogs which they read frequently. This is significant because Internet users who read blogs likely have similar methods of finding these blogs. For instance a blog reader who learned about an interesting blog through participation in a relevant message board will likely consider remaining active in message boards which are relevant to his own blog as a method of promoting their blog.

What You Should Know About Blog Marketing

Gary Knox — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:20:56 +0000

Whether you are a new blogger, or one that has been blogging for a while, you are probably wondering how to get more sales, visitors, and readers to your blog on a weekly basis. Marketing your blog the right way will give you the results that you are looking for. You are going to find that you can not just make a blog, post in it a couple of times, and then expect for the world to find you. That just will not happen how much you wish for it. However, you can market your blog effectively, and get the results that you are looking for.

To begin blog marketing you first need a blog. The next step is to ensure that your blog is updated frequently. Post content in your blog regularly for the best results. Some will post once a day and others once a week. Whichever it is, be consistent with it and know that it will pay off to continue posting as you should. This is a great way to get started with blog marketing. You wont have a blog to market if you do not post in it regularly.

While most free blogs all look the same, you can make sure that your blog design stands out. You don’t want your blog to look and feel like everyone else’s, so make it different. Having your own look is a huge plus in the blog marketing world. You will find that most blogs all look the same and you can have your own look by just using HTML and adjusting the code to suit your taste. You are going to see that this will truly make a difference with your blog as well as your readers. Try to get a theme that is going to match the market that you are promoting in your blog. Doing so will make it look even more professional. You don’t want your readers to confuse your blog with others do you? If this is something that you are concerned about, you will definitely want to make sure that you change yours to make more personable. However, if you are not worried about it or concerned about it in the least, you can leave the design as one of the free templates that you see so frequently used.

Something else that will help you with your blog marketing is exchanging links with authority blogs and websites that are in your same market is another great way to get the word out about your blog. The authority sites are going to have a higher page rank, and will also be listed high in Google’s search results. So do some searches and check those out and see if they are up to exchanging links. If they are not, you could always just add those into your blog roll. You do not need permission to do that if they are not into linking. However, in the world of blogs, most blog owners are thankful for all links, and are willing to return the favor. This is a great way to market your blog that some do not think about or use. If you use this technique to get your blog seen, you will not be sorry. You can even use this for website marketing, and you will see a lot sites do that.

Design Elements of a Blog

Gary Knox — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:25:03 +0000

A blog may be fundamentally an online journal displayed in reverse chronological order but it is also a website which calls for the same attention to detail any other website requires. It also requires the same design elements of a regular website which does not function as a blog. Bloggers have decisions to make concerning design elements of the blog such as colours and layout, fonts and wether or not to include adverts. Although many of the blog software programs provide a variety of templates which make designing a blog rather simple, blogs can also be highly customised by bloggers who possess some programming skills. Let us consider some of the factors we need to consider.

Colours and Layouts of a Blog

The colours and layout of a blog is among the most obvious design considerations bloggers need to consider when starting or re-designing their blog. Bloggers may employ a solid colour background, blocks of different colours for the background or pictures in the background. These background elements can be any colour imaginable. When, you are considering the use of colours on your blog you should consider employing colours which will be aesthetically appealing to most blog visitors. This is important because the use of garish colours which are harsh on the eye could result in diminished blog traffic.

The layout of the blog should also carefully be considered. The blog, again, should be arranged in a style which is appealing to blog visitors, suits the subject of the blog and is laid out in a coherent manner which is easy for visitors to follow. Again, this is important because failure to employ a layout which meets these criteria might result in blog visitors deciding not to visit the blog any longer because the layout is confusing or unappealing.

Fonts Used in a Blog

Bloggers have a number of options available to them when selecting fonts to use in their blog. These options include the font chosen, the text size and the color of the text. Bloggers should consider selecting a font which works well with the overall design of the layout of the blog and suits the subject matter of the blog but also is a font which common. This is important because blog visitors could have trouble viewing the font if the blogger chooses a unique font which is uncommon. The text size and colours of the text should also be carefully considered. These elements are primarily important for readability. Text size should be set so members of the target audience can easily read the text. The colours employed for the text should also be chosen to enhance readability. One way to do this is to select colours which are appealing to the eye but also contrast with the background colour.

Inclusion of Advertisements in a Blog

Bloggers must also consider the inclusion of adverts when they are designing their blogs. This includes determining whether or not to include them. Once this decision has been made, bloggers who choose to include advertisements must carefully consider how and where they wish to display these adverts. Advertisements can be displayed in various locations throughout the blog and can be designed to be discrete or obvious depending upon the preferences of the blogger. Adverts can also be a variety of sizes and shapes and are highly customizable in a number of different ways. But care needs to be taken not to include to many adverts as this may be detrimental to the blog itself.