What Makes An Attractive Blog?

You know you want a blog, but how do you make one that’s appealing to your audience?
Starting your own blog is not only an exciting and challenging experience, but it is also a great learning opportunity. It involves technical challenges while equally demanding a balance of appearance, functionality and content.
 

• First Impressions Counts

We only get to make one first impression, and the same applies to your blog. The visual aspect of starting your own blog is just as important as the content. Even if your blog is filled with great ideas, thoughts or advice, if at first glance it looks unprofessional and chaotic, many potential visitors are likely to navigate away instantly.
The look of a ‘homemade’ website can give people the impression that you are not serious and that your credibility is doubtful. Layout, color themes, placement of functions (such as email capture) and professional-looking photographs can transform your blog from a homemade look and feel to an internationally acclaimed work of art. All of these elements need to be in line with your chosen field of interest, of course. Before you make any choices it is essential to define your target audience within a given field. It is good practice to ask yourself questions such as “what age range am I targeting?”, “is my audience male or female or mixed?”, “is my audience refined or young and edgy?”, “does my audience look for creativity or organized structure?”. These types of questions will give you direction when making color choices, classical or modern layout, image content, and the overall look and feel.
Investing in a professional template is highly recommended. The number of templates available to download and install varies depending on which blogging platform you have chosen, But they are worth every penny as they add that professional edge to your blog. The other option is to invest in a web developer/designer to create a bespoke site for you. This way you have the luxury of incorporating as many or few features as you wish to have in your template and you have full control over layout, color schemes and any innovative features you might think of. These two options will give your blog an ‘expensive’ feel which immediately implies quality and trust, as your readers assume investment means professionalism.

• What Does Your Blog Do?

When starting your own blog you need to decide on all of the features you would like it to contain. Depending on your field, the levels of functionality will vary, but all blogs need a basic level of technical requirements.
One of the most important features on any blog is an email capture function, usually in the form of a newsletter signup button. To successfully grow a blog you need to grow your subscriber list, as these followers are your primary group to turn to with new offers, news or products. By signing up to your blog, these individuals are consigning to this field of interest, meaning that half the battle is already won.
Other features of great value are social media share icons, a live Instagram/Twitter/Facebook feed, image galleries, contact forms, sticky menu bars and ecommerce (where appropriate).

• Content, Content, Content

Now you have a visually stunning and feature-filled blog, but without engaging content not many viewers will stay on site and explore your blog. Content needs to be highly relevant to your readers: ideally it should provide readers with useful information, and if possible offer solutions to any problems they might be experiencing. Perhaps you can provide tips and tricks as well as keeping them updated on the latest news and developments in your field. Ideally you want your blog to be the place to go when a user is faced with a dilemma or need of information in your field.
The other requirement for relevant and engaging content is just as important as keeping your readers happy: good content will bring you new readers as it has a direct impact on the search engine optimization of your blog. Search engines, especially Google, use content as one of the main factors when it comes to assigning rankings to websites for search terms. It is no longer enough to have a few keywords mentioned along with more technical SEO, the actual content around the keywords is of great importance.

Let Midphase help get you on the road to blog success today!