10 Ways To Make Your Blog Professional
If blogging is your profession, then appearance is everything. An employer wouldn’t hire a potential employee if he came dressed in jeans without a tie – but that employee could have been the best employee he would have ever hired. On the same principal, a potential subscriber to your content could pass over your blog because it simply doesn’t look the part.
So I’ve been racking my brain to find 10 guaranteed tips that will help your blog look professional, and help you make money online.
1. Find yourself a good theme layout.
Word Press has a theme directory, use it or lose it. Or better still, hire a designer!
2. Use spellcheck and grammar check.
Nothing creates more of an eyesore than bad spelling and grammar. The odd mistake probably won’t cost you, but anything more could repel readers. Word Press has spellcheck built in.
3. Post consistently and on a schedule.
Every day, every other day, every week. It doesn’t matter how often – just make sure you publish posts on a schedule, your blog will become a reliable read. In Word Press, you can schedule posts to be published.
4. Use permalinks.
Set up Word Press to make use of permalinks. Permalinks give your URLs meaning. What would mean more to you: ?p=351 or /2009/04/07/blogging-tips/?
5. Make use of categories.
Too many and your blog becomes disorganised, too few and it becomes pointless to even have them. Create several main categories, anything else should be tags.
6. Keep the surrounding features on the down low.
Why will people read your blog? For the content. Having a counter on the side that shows how many people have visited your blog, or a widget of links to your best friends’ blogs takes away from what you have to offer.
7. Make use of content focused plug-ins and widgets.
Make use of plug-ins and widgets that prompt the visitors to read more. Using tags and statistics, plug-ins can display popular posts or posts that are likely to interest the reader.
8. Let them know who is behind the blog, and how they can contact you.
If you’re in it for the long run, creating an ‘About Me’ takes barely any commitment. Provide photographs, in depth information about yourself, and link to your personal blog if you feel a necessity.
9. Spend time choosing a domain name.
You’re going to be stuck with it for a long time, so picking a good domain name is a good idea. Some domains name automatically sound authoritative.
10. Don’t cut corners on good hosting.
You wouldn’t rent a shop with a moat around it, so why would you rent a server that is inaccessible half the year? Bad things happen when you cut corners on your hosting.
Spend time building your blog from the ground up, the more time you invest the better the return on investment will be.