Simple But Effective Steps in Improving Overall Blog Design

                                     

                  

Blogs today are large places where multiple topics can be stored, including its own display, which is also known as the blog’s particular design. There are a lot of things that have changed in the world of blogging over the past years that has made the activity easier to do. Good examples such as Blogspot and WordPress are excellent platforms where the themes already make designing blogs faster, but if you want a more personalized approach, there are some things that you should consider and keep in mind. A good way in order to start honing that perfect design is to take a series of steps, slowly but surely.

That is why if you are looking to edit the design of your website, there are some things that you will need to keep in mind in order to do so. Here are some techniques that you can use in improving overall blog design.

Select a More Appropriate Theme - Once you are using a blogging platform such as WordPress or Blogspot, then you can start using the hundreds of pre-made templates for blogs available. But instead of going for an old theme that has been used by other people many times, start investing a small amount of time on one that will be the best for your niche and will appear professional and organized.

Have a Banner Image Included - Zest up your blog by designing your own banner image which can be found on top of the page. Since it will be one of the first things that people will be seeing on your page, you would want to take advantage of giving them a good first impression which will be beneficial to your blog if you do. This will make them stay longer and will have a higher chance of being able to read your blog more clearly.

Customizing Themes - If you have chosen a pre-made theme within your blogging platform, it is possible to customize this easily and make it work better for you. In blogs such as WordPress and Blogspot, users can have the templates customized from the admin panel. This could include having things changed such as redesigning the sidebar or including widgets or gadgets which will monitor the progress of your blog. There are other changes that you can do as well such as limiting the amount of posts that will be shown in the home page or change if you want the public to see comments in your blog or not.

Be Sociable - One of the significant steps that you can take is to start integrating social media into your own personal or commercial blog. If you allow people to easily acquire content that is useful in your blog, then they will know that you are a useful resource and that they can refer your blog to others as well. Start placing your social media icons within your blogs whether you use it for your for own or money-making purpose as this will improve its performance as a whole.

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Ways to Increase Blog Comments

                                           

Comments are very significant to a blog for these are also indicator of a blog’s success. If a blog has many comments, be it positive or negative, it only means that in one way or another it has an impact to your readers. In addition to that, you generate more traffic to your blog since a certain comment may ignite different reactions from other readers and this may lead to a series of conversation or argument for that matter on your blog itself. 
  
Blog comments may reveal the level of engagement between the blog author and the avid readers. From these comments, you will get more ideas and learn from the experiences of other members in the online community resulting to an accumulated wealth of knowledge generated because of your blog. To experience how it feels having a lot of blog comments from readers, the following tips may help you how.       
 
1. Encourage readers to give comments. You may do this by including in the last part of your post an invitation to the readers for them to share their thoughts, reactions or experiences related to your post. Certainly it is a good avenue to learn something new from your readers and vice versa.

2. Give feedbacks too. As we all know, the Golden Rule states that you should do unto others what you want others do unto you. If you wish to receive feedbacks, then you should give comments to other’s post. Even a single comment can make a difference.   

3. Interact with your readers. How would you feel if you ask someone a question and you were just ignored? That’s precisely the feeling of one of your readers when there’s a question raised but you don’t give a reply. To ensure that your blog will continuously receive feedbacks, then you need to interact with your readers.

4. Acknowledge all the comments. As a courtesy, give thanks to those who spent their time reading your blog post and commenting on it afterwards. Perhaps you may send a thank you email to your readers for giving their valuable comments and invite them to connect with you at your personal email address. With this, they will feel a sense of belonging and the freedom to connect with you. For your part, you win their trust and loyalty.

5. Make things simple as to the commenting process. If you want comments to keep coming, then simplify the procedures and let your blog open to any comment. Sometimes readers get irritated when they try to comment but they need to fill up a captcha form. It also annoys them if they are asked to login first before they can post a comment.

6.  Give incentives to your commenters. Doing so will help increase blog comments. Maybe a page rank will do, promotion of their recent blogs or even their social media accounts. In this way, they may reciprocate your action.

7.  Display the top commenters. Use a widget that features the names of those who exerted efforts to give comments for all your posts. As a way of appreciating their involvement in your blog, you can display the names of the top commenters. This is the best way to puff up their pride and they will most likely continue supporting your blog.        
    
8.  Think outside the box. Be unique in every way you can. Try to do something that will incite readers to give their views regarding your blogs. You may hold a contest for the best comment and offer an exciting prize. 

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Improving Your Social Media Efforts in As Little As 30 Minutes

                                  

 Have you been utilizing inbound marketing strategies today? Are you in need of a fast way on how you can improve your social media marketing efforts? It is possible to improve your social media marketing in 30 minutes if you are able follow some important strategies. Below is a list of the important steps that you should take to improve social media success.

Identifying the Audience Being Targeted

An important part with regards to marketing inbound is that the process involves operating marketing strategies that are based on targeting specific people. This is why the success of your social media marketing efforts will be solely dependent on the targets and how the business is going to operate. If your business is found locally with full dependence on the local customers and consumers, then you may have to target people locally as well within your social media networks.

A lot of social media markets fail in their efforts because they try to cover the social media platforms as much as they do without strategics first. Instead of creating multiple social media accounts on different networks, simply target your audience where you think your brand will have the most number of followers that will be interested n your service or goods.

Encouraging Interactions

The aspect of social media marketing is very demanding for users as it will encourage the need for both brand and product to interact more with each other. This is beneficial as well for the company in many ways. That is why if you are making use of your social media accounts, be as interactive as you can. This gives the prospect customers a better view on your product or service which will lead to improved sales.

Those who are interested in doing business with your company will want to learn all they can from your website. If the website fails to do so, a lot of them will try to learn about the company through social media websites instead. This is why you should just allow your followers to ask questions through the platform and try your best to answer all of them.

Provide As Much Details As Possible

Do you have a small business that caters to just a few customers? Or are you large company that generates thousands of sales in an hourly basis? Whichever type of business you are now, potential customers would want to know about the information on your company. That is why it is important to be as detailed as possible when it comes to your products and services, as this will improve your sales as well.

Your social media platforms can be used for display of what you are offering in your company and you can update the information that you have posted as much as you want. You can declare new products and services that are now available in your business in order to keep your customers and leads up to date. This is also where you can use the interest of your followers as your strategy for business.

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3 Common Mistakes When Business Blogging

 

The rules of success for business blogging are not known by many people because of its relatively new role as a marketing strategy. This however does not mean that there are no rules for success when it comes to this. As a matter of fact, the components of business blogging to be successful are simple and straightforward. There are some business bloggers today that are having much success by developing their brand, improving their customer loyalty, creating leads and capturing the attention of their audience.

These are the ideal aspects that you should look out for. Yet there are many business bloggers that are not able to achieve this because of committing simple mistakes. The following are the three common mistakes that business bloggers do. The good thing here is that they can be easily corrected.

1. Wrong Content Posting. People that go to the Internet love to read web content that gives value to them and their needs. These needs can include finding entertainment, searching for data or learning how something can be done. Since there are a lot of content on their end to deal with, these individuals do not have the patience to check each of those that are not helpful to them.

That is why you should not make the mistake of writing the first things that come into your mind. If the audience that you are targeting is composed of elementary teachers, you won’t think that you will be able to attract their attention by providing them a play-by-play account of your latest football game.

2. Rapid Posting. You would want to be known in the Internet as a dependable source of information for your consumers and that is why you should post regularly. It is not a requirement to post something on a daily basis, but you have to be consistent with your content. Posting on an irregular basis will not leave a good impression with people. In order to stay on track, you have to develop your own editorial calendar which is going to tell you what to post and when to have it published.

These editorial calendars are going to be very helpful for you especially if you have different writers providing content for your blog. This is because you can keep your assignment delegation more organized without having to worry about duplication and oversight.

3. Addressing the Wrong Target Audience. If you are thinking of utilizing your business blog for your marketing purposes, you should ensure that you are addressing the right audience beforehand. This is because you may be accidentally developing a blog that is improving the ranking of your competitors instead of for your clients.

Let us say that you are a company that outsources its services and that you spend most of your time providing content on how the business is being managed. Many of your competitors are going to find your tips useful but will not attract a lot of attention for your blog. Instead of doing this, write about the benefits that your business has to offer people including tips.

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