Starting a blog is a major undertaking. For your blog to be popular, you need to be able to produce high-quality and in-demand content on a regular basis. Or you need to pay someone who can write that content for you. Content is only one aspect of a blog, however. You must pay attention to how your blog is laid out if you hope to have the most impact. The following tips will help you find the perfect blog layout that makes visitors and readers want to stick around a while.
1. Proper Blog Format
If you were to write your blog in a big block of text, you likely wouldn’t get very many readers. Blog readers want to have a very easy time reading your content. If paragraphs are too long and if the content isn’t separated so that it’s easier on the eyes, most readers will bail by the first or second sentence.
The proper blog format is to use short and concise paragraphs and make sure there is white space between those paragraphs. You can separate the paragraphs even more with bolded subheaders, images or pictures and even bullet points.
Spend some time honing your blog formatting skills and your readers will thank you.
2. Keep It Simple
It is a natural inclination to jam as many elements as possible into your blog so that it has the most effect. However, if you want to find the perfect blog layout, you’ll always want to go with the mantra, “Less is more.” Only use the elements you think your readers will use.
This includes elements in the side bar, images, videos or anything else you feel like stuffing on the page. Your blog layout should give your readers what they want and nothing more. Find that simplistic blog format and you’ll see your visitor counts soar.
3. Prioritize Elements
Now that you’ve cut down the elements on your blog to the minimal amount you can get away with, the next step is to find out which elements your readers want more than others. If you have a widget on the side that provides a list of your most popular posts, your readers might want to access that more than they would want a widget that provides a list of all your archives.
4. Color Matters
Blog designers know that color always matters when you want to get your readers to take certain actions. Blue, for instance, will cause readers to linger just a little bit longer. Red causes people to stop and notice and take action and purple gives them a sense of calm, comfort and trust.
Study up on how colors can affect different people and use that knowledge in your blog format. You may be able to earn more visitors and readers and those people may want to stay around a lot longer just because you made use of some very strategic colors.
5. Easy Comments
This is one of the most important lessons when it comes to finding the perfect blog layout. The purpose of a blog is to get a lot of attention, but you also want each blog to receive tons of engaging comments. Ideally, you’ll want to start a discussion in the comments section. This will draw tons of attention that will spell great news for your sales.
For you to earn lots of comments, the comment system will have to be easy to use. Even people who are not very computer-inclined should be able to easily comment on each of your posts. When you remove all means of resistance, your comments section should flow.
Of course, you should entice comments at the end of each blog by asking a question, such as what the readers think about the particular subject or anything else that may get someone to voice their opinion. This is a critical step in the blog format process. Your comments system must not only be easy, but it should have a simple appearance, just like the rest of your blog.
Your ultimate goal is comments so spend some time making sure it looks incredibly inviting when you’re looking for the perfect blog layout.
These five tips will help you format your blog so that you attract more readers and so that those readers linger, and hopefully click on your ads and/or offers. Of course your blog content must be top-notch for these tips to have maximum affect. Provided that you have great content, if you put these five tips into action and you think about the reader’s perception throughout the blog design process, you’ll find that ultimate blog format that always has readers coming back for more.
Great Dean. Let us know how it goes for you. And, of course, come back here when you’re ready to start driving traffic. 🙂
Awesome article Bill! I am actually in the process of building my blog this week and it should be up soon.