3 New Posts

How to Choose the Perfect Theme for Your Blog
Creating a Sense of Community With Your Blog Readership
Top 5 Tips for Blogging With Multiple Authors

How to Choose the Perfect Theme for Your Blog

Posted: 03 Dec 2012 03:19 PM PST

Customizing blog pages is a hot issue for many people on the web today. The world of blogging has been growing and expanding so much in the past few years that now everyone has their own platform for expression, business, or any other purpose. Blog software has come a long way itself, from the days of largely generic page construction to the current state. We now have multiple blog publishing services that allow us to customize our blogs to an unprecedented degree, giving a great deal more freedom than ever before. With all this freedom, it sometimes becomes difficult to choose the perfect theme for one’s blog.

Most of the more popular blogging platforms, like WordPress and Tumblr, offer users the option of different themes–basically a template for your blog pages. These range from relatively minimalist designs to flashy eye-catching layouts, so there is really something for everyone. The first consideration for deciding on a theme should be the content of your blog. Some themes cater to different writing styles such as personal, casual or business. If you’re using a blog to promote your business online, for example, you will want to choose a more professional looking theme for your customers. Personal writing pages tend to have a little more room for choice.

The average blog theme will print your blog’s title in large bold letters at the top of the page, which is something that deserves a lot of consideration. Font choices are among the most hotly debated issues for graphic designers, because the way text is printed is almost as important as the text itself. Headers that are printed in bold, simple lettering give off a more sleek and modern vibe. Flowery scripted text imbues a more rustic and elegant feeling, often more popular with travel blogs and the like. Some themes will display your blog’s title in more edgy or artsy fonts–each of these options will project a certain attitude for your blog, which should reflect its tone.

Those who can’t find what they’re looking for among a blogging platforms provided themes also have other options. Prestashop themes give bloggers lots of new options that are more unique due to their lower availability. This is good for bloggers who want their pages to truly stand out from the crowd. Nothing is more frustrating for a blogger than spending hours toying with different themes, only to choose one and find out later that other blogs are using the exact same layout. For something truly unique, consider looking into outside parties for theme choices.

Everything from colors and fonts to page layouts are important considerations when choosing a blog theme, but you may also want to think about mobile access. Lots of computing is being done through smart phones and tablets these days, and if you want your blog to bring in mobile traffic, then you should look into themes that can accommodate this. Choosing the perfect blog theme will come down to a personal choice about what is best for your blog, so think long and hard about how any particular theme can work best for you.

Creating a Sense of Community With Your Blog Readership

Posted: 03 Dec 2012 03:18 PM PST

There are literally millions of blogs out there, each trying to carve out a dedicated audience from their niche. Regardless of what you are into, you’ll find a blog written by an expert (whether qualified or self-declared), filled with readers eager to chat about all related issues. If you’ve got a great idea, the patience to sit and write and the dedication to take daily action you can have a blog. It costs almost nothing to launch, and with a bit of luck you might even gather some advertising revenue and make a few bucks from it. But none of that will happen if you can’t generate a relationship with your blog’s visitors. Regardless of how narrow your niche there are always other options, and attention spans are shorter than ever before. Success is always going to come down to creating a sense of community with your blog readership.

The key to that process is coming across in a real and authentic way to your readers. There are plenty of blogs out there that aggregate articles. They all sound like they’re written by robots. And if you hunt through their numbers you’ll find they shed readers just as quickly as they attract them. The problem is that there is no real voice behind the blog. If you want your readers to come together as a community, they need to feel there is a real person leading the charge, and that person needs to be mentally and emotionally invested. That person is you, so make sure you come across that way.

You also have to make sure the structure supports a sense of community. That will start with an open comments section on your blog posts. Sure, no one likes to see their latest post get trashed by some angry anonymous reader. But that’s the nature of the beast. There’s no bad press, and a negative comment is just an opportunity for you to respond and get the community further engaged. So keep the comments section open, and take the time to address what is posted there. You don’t have to answer every single one, but your readers should be left with the feeling that someone is reading and thinking about what lands there. That will make them take it more seriously as well.

On top of the comments section, you should find additional ways your readership can integrate your blog within the larger context of their online lives. That could happen in several ways. You could try requesting a membership of your readers, and just a simple name and email will do. That could be a requirement for posting comments, and should kill off spam. But some people will shy away from this. Optional is always better than mandatory, but set up the functionality to engender your community. Readers should be able to easily share links outside of your blog, as well as post pictures, articles and comment threads from your blog onto the social networks.

Finally, try to create a community that isn’t stuck on the blog itself. While a message board is one great option on your site, it is complicated to code. You’ll have a lot of approvals to manage, and if it doesn’t take off, it won’t be worth it. There’s nothing sadder than an empty message board either. Your best bet is to create a Facebook page and Twitter feed that link with your blog. Make sure it is clear to your readers that you are running each site, and again respond to comments with thoughtful posts and the occasional well-timed emoticons. Hunt out other sites that your regular users ‘Like’ and follow tweeters and other pages that are appropriate for your subject matter. If you take part in the larger community of bloggers, your readers will feel tapped in as well. And that will improve involvement across the board.

Top 5 Tips for Blogging With Multiple Authors

Posted: 03 Dec 2012 03:18 PM PST

Blogging is one of the most popular pursuits for writers today, due largely to the ease of publishing and managing content. Adding more writers to your team can be great for generating traffic and creating interesting content, but this kind of blogging entails certain difficulties as well. Follow these 5 tips for making multiple author blogging more manageable.

Set Up Author Profiles
One of the best things your blog can do for both its writers and its readers is to set up author profiles. Authors appreciate the exposure that this grants them and take this as a kind of motivation. When writers’ names and faces are attached to a piece of writing, they will be more likely to put their best foot forward and strive for excellence in their work. Likewise, readers of your blog will be able to connect with the writers and follow their favorites.
Leave a Note
It can be difficult to coordinate a blog with multiple authors, especially if you and your fellow writers don’t often see one another. Keeping everyone on the same page might seem impossible, and you may feel like you’ve failed to communicate important messages to all of your team. Leave dashboard notes on important matters. Most blogging platforms allow you to easily use this feature, making sure than everyone gets the information they need as soon as they log in.
Establish Author Roles
If your blog is like most others, you most likely don’t give equal power to all of your authors. Naturally, those who are more adept and more experienced with your blog should be given more control over content than newer writers and guests. As your writers gain experience with the blog, you may want to delegate more responsibility to them, such as editing and publishing power. WordPress, one of the most popular blogging platforms, allows you to assign roles to each of your writers, and define the privileges they are allowed according to their roles.
Share Material and Resources
You may often want to share documents or articles with all of your writers, and need an easy and secure way to do so. Email works in many situations, but is not always ideal. When you need to give your entire staff access to some good material, document sharing from WorkZone and other similar services is often the best way to go. You can make sure that everyone has easy access to the documents they need to see, keeping everyone in the loop at all times.
Power to the Reader
Blogs with multiple authors naturally tend to have more content than single-author pages, which presents additional difficulty in management. If you have 5 writers, for example, the job of editor and publisher becomes 5 times as intense. Just imagine the amount of work that is there are even more writers involved. For those moments when something slips through the cracks, give your readers the power to report posts. When something is amiss, you can be sure that someone will notice and bring it to your attention.

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