How to Master the Art of Blogging
I normally take things as they come and learn from the results. As you can see the design of this blog is a bit different from most other blogs in the blogosphere. As I said before I will take things as they come by..
First things first:
1) The Design Matters
Having an effective and elegant design is the most important thing in attracting new readers to your blog. Have something different, get designers help and make something that is really eye catching and simple too. Let it not bit too much and don’t overload it.. The design of your blog will keep the things going even when you are not at your best.
2) The Commenting System Matters
The most commonly used commenting system is where the latest comment is displayed at the bottom but having something wherein the latest comment floats on top would be more effective. If there is not much of commenting activity on your blog and you don’t receive much of spam, then please don’t stuff like Word Verification, Moderation and Spam Filters. Using all these things will actually discourage the readers to comment on your blog.
3) The Presentation Matters
The most important thing after your design and content is your presentation. Be polite in your posts as well in the comments section. Take both the sides of the argument and present your ideas on them. The other thing that comes to my mind when I talk about presentation is the way your display your content. Most Blogs use a 2/3 column method to present the blogs entries and the other stuff and is the best thing to do so. Have your archives, feeds, comments and other stuff easily accessible so that people don’t have to search for them.
4) The Add-ons Definitely Matter
I know many blogs that use a lot of fancy stuff like social bookmarks, tag clouds, related entries, flickr feed, shout boxes and stuff like that. I don’t recommend these things unless you desperately need them. One thing I would like to say about Social Bookmarks is that never have a row of all those icons under your blog post. It makes your post look ugly. Keep it simple and add things that you need for sure and leave out the other stuff.
5) Finally the Content Does Matter
What can I say about content. A Blog with excellent content can work wonders and the content makes everything that I said above look smaller in front of it. This is the only thing that requires you to work everyday, every minute but the other things don’t really need so much of time. I don’t really want to talk on how you can write quality content as there are lot of other blogs that tell how you can produce quality content.
Have anything else to say. Feel free to join the discussion.. Blogging is definitely an art and it requires both patience and experience to become a master. If you have taken that first step towards becoming a blogging master then I would be the happiest person on this planet.