5 Essential Design Elements For A Newly Started Blog
Blogs are a great way for an individual to communicate across the internet. As the internet gets older, the rate of blog creation continues to increase. For a new entrepreneur looking to build their blog online, the struggle to stand out can be difficult.
With so much competition in the space, making sure your blog is both functional and ascetically pleasing is important. A few essential design elements in your WordPress theme will ensure this. Below are the important design elements for a newly started blog to include.
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Bio And Personal Picture
Regardless of your blog’s content, include a bio and picture of yourself. Readers will respond to your blog if they feel like they know you. The picture is especially important. It will humanize you to the readers.
Moreover, it will help readers trust you and take your content seriously. In an internet full of anonymous content, a human connection is important even for the most analytical blogs. A bio page and personal photograph will grant you immediate trust and respectability in the blog space.
Social Media Icons
Social media icons at the top of the blog page is the best way to advertise your blog. Readership of your blog is mostly increased by word of mouth. This makes social media images very important to your blog’s development. You need your devoted readers spreading the word to their friends and relatives on social media.
The best way to achieve this is to make it easy for them to share. Having the buttons at the top of the page always ensures that they’ll be in sight for the reader. The simple one-click interface of the button means your reader can recommend your blog with a tap. Optimizing this social media interaction will guarantee regular new readers reach your blog.
Archive Functionality
A strong and easy-to-use archive page will ensure your blog writings are protected. An archive page will store all the blog posts you write. This will be the main way readers will track down old posts to read. As a result, the archive page needs to be easy to navigate. Having accurate descriptions for each blog post will help achieve this.
Without a good archive page, your blog posts will be essentially lost after new posts replace them on the first page of the blog. This will hurt reader interest, since they won’t be able to catch up with the blog. A strong archive page ensures your blog’s past is as solid as its present.
RSS Feed
An RSS Feed will let you automatically update your blog. With this you can establish an email list. This email list will then inform your avid readers when you have a new blog post. The RSS feed updates itself automatically as you post new posts.
This means the email list requires no further work from you once set-up. If any of your readers have embedded the feed on their own sites, they will be updated as well. An RSS Feed is a great way to make sure everyone knows when you update the blog.
White Space
A successful blog will have plenty of white space to aide reading. White space is the technical term for space on the blog page that is not taken up by writing or content. This space is important because it helps contrast the words.
It takes a reader much longer to read a piece of text if it’s in a tightly packed paragraph, rather than spread out. The reader will notice this slow down and will resent it. For your ideas to translate best, the reader needs to forget about the words and just read automatically. White space is essential for this.
To build more white space in your blog, cut paragraphs into smaller blurbs. With the new WordPress Gutenberg editor, it will be easier than ever to insert white space. Bullet points and sub headings can also speed this up. White space will keep the reader’s attention on your blog and its ideas, not on the struggle to read them.
A handful of elements are essential to make sure your new blog is a success. Your blog should include a separate bio section with your photograph. Include social media buttons at the top of the page to optimize your social media sharing.
The archive page and its navigation should be easy to use. Include an RSS feed to automate your update process. The blog page should have a good amount of white space to ease reading. These elements will make sure your blog stands out form the crowd.