As promised in my “How to earn from your Jewelry blog post” here is the post on how to design and organise your blog better to attract more readership and more opportunities.
As designers (Fashion/textile/jewellery) we tend to spend hours selecting the right colors and materials for our collections. We pour over different layout and patterns until we are extremely satisfied with the result. But when we blog, sometimes, maybe due to lack or time, we tend to let go of these very same concepts. At the most, we tend to work hard on creating interesting content and post regularly; but is that enough?
Content, no doubt is the soul of your blog but appearance does matter. By designing your blog using particular colors, logos and template that is specific to your blog, you can convert your blog into a brand. A brand is thus established, which can be easily expanded for impact and promoted for profit.
So today I will be talking about creating maximum impact with your blog.
How to Design your blog for maximum impact
1. Brand recallÂ
Companies and brands work to create an image of their brand or product which first comes to a consumer’s mind when that brand name is heard. As bloggers, we too need project our blogs ( and ourselves) as brands. So while choosing a blog design decide on the sort of branding you want – Colourful, cheerful, quirky, naughty, minimalist, sober, natural or high tech. Once you decide this it would be easier to pick colors, widgets, banners and graphics
2.Color it
each color corresponds to a particular mood or feeling and has a story to tell. If you blog about craft or design like I do then you can choose a neutral color scheme with one bright accent color to complement your colorful posts. I currently have a soft beige – mustard color palette with bright pink and purple accents as pink is my brand color. My previous template was achromatic – gray, white and black with pink and green accents. Accents colors can be used for hyperlinks, banners, social media icons or for ads. I have made some color palettes for you here
3. Be responsive
Sometimes we wonder why our sidebar ads don’t make any money even when the blog traffic is good. The reason could be simple – People dont see them.
For your blog to make maximum impact everybody must see your blog as the same way you do. Unfortunately in most cases they do not see it that way. While some of us like to read or pin on our big desktops or laptops others are glued to their mobile phones which might have different browsers and screen sizes that portray your site very differently. Blogging platforms do offer a mobile view but it only shows the main body of your blog post and not your sidebar and in the normal view your reader has to scroll to endlessly to read even a single post and which leads to frustration and high bounce rates. To avoid this, convert your blog template into a responsive template. A responsive site adapts itself to provide optimal display across a range of devices which means that your blog looks the same whether viewed on a small mobile screen or a big monitor.There are several free templates for both wordpress and blogger with a multitude of options that can be customised to suit your needs. I use and recommend Templates from Templateism as the service is good.
4. Remove Captcha
The extremely annoying word verification pop ups people have as comment moderation on their blogs is called captcha. If you have it please REMOVE IT!! When you are reading and moderating every comment for spam links or unnecessary comments, you really do not need that pesky captcha. The only reason to have it is if you dont want people to comment on your blog, so if you want interaction, just get rid of it; If need be add a profanity filter to filter out cuss words or indecent language being used in the comments..
5. Have an About me
Whenever I chance upon a jewelry artist’s blog, I immediately look for an about me button or a page link to read more about them. I am often disappointed as I dont find them. To be fair, I didnt have one when I started blogging but as the years passed, I felt the need to speak up for myself, about myself. My About me page has undergone many radical changes since and current one is almost like a story. An ‘About me’ doesnt have to be super personal – but it needs your real name, one decent photo, your contact email and a little background about your work (brand) and your blog so people can understand your voice better.
# Reader’s Tip: use short paragraphs with double-space in between, to make it easier for the reader’s eye to quick scan your text.
These are the top five tips on How to Design your blog for maximum impact. Do come back next week to read the part 2 of this series, next 5 tips that will make your blog fabulous.
Part 2: Tips to Design your blog
I hope you find it interesting
Cheers
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