Proven Power Tips For Your Blogging Start: Theme, Layout, Colours

The Bottom line is what is going to help you get your blog going. What do you need to put into place so that you have a good handle on things right from the beginning to achieve some blogging success?

Why do you even need to worry about this subject and these points?

You are obviously focused and excited about starting your blog. Great, congratulations.

Imagine, however, that in a few weeks or sometimes months the novelty of being the new kid in town will have worn off. How will you feel then if the only person who is dropping by your blog is your buddy?

Not great. But don't worry it's happened to all of us in some way at some point and I have some fantastic proven tips that will ensure that you have an upwardly mobile blog start-up.

I am frequently asked by new bloggers to come and visit their new blogs and offer ideas and or pointers that I may have or feel are relevant to help them get a good start on their blogging experience. For awhile, I helped small business' set up their blogs to ensure they used the most appealing and traffic generating designs and layout.

I quickly learned that my experience from retail marketing and merchandising was a great benefit. And since I love everything about design, layout, and researching audience appeal, being involved in the start of blogs was a lot of fun and very rewarding. Okay, enough chatter, here are your power tips.

Proven Power Tips For Starting Your Blog- For Theme, Colours, and Layout;

Theme;

Copy the most popular kid in town! Yes, you read that point correctly, I said copy someone. This might be the only time I ever say it's okay to copy anything! Specifically, I mean BORROW. The idea, of course, is that naturally, the most popular blogs became that way for good reasons. Indeed, a lot goes into making a blog a success, but if you look at successful blogs in any niche including personal blogging they tend to also look good. Obviously, many reasons can explain such a phenomena like experience, feedback, time, and trial and error. Either way, you can't go wrong following the example of the popular kids in town.

All blogs and websites have to be mobile friendly and responsive! Over 80% of people access the internet via mobile devices so this is imperative.

Stick with simple themes and it's often best to avoid themes that feature things like sliders, too many widgets, and other extra bells and whistles. Themes with more gadgets load slower which tends to put off readers.

Check out this great infographic from Kissmetrics about website speed or loading time.

Although this infographic mentions business or professional blogs, it can apply to all blogs.

You can test the load speed of your blog at sites like WebPagetest. 

However, don't get overly caught up in all of the information that a website speed test gives you, but it will give you an indication of any serious problems.

One of the easiest things to do is remember to optimise all of your images, they usually take up the most space and the load time. There are plenty of online tools to resize images and plugins that will "smush" images if you are self-hosted.

Layout;

Always, without a doubt, the best way to set up your blog's layout is with a KISS. "Keep It Simple Stupid." The vast majority of people are very internet savvy. However, remember everyone wants the simplest, smoothest and most seamless navigation around your blog. Pretend that everyone visiting your blog is on the internet for the first time.

For example, if your blog is all about home cooking you are much more likely to have visitors who are not as proficient online as readers visiting a tech blog. Therefore, a home cooking blog would need to have a lot more "Click here to……"  labelled buttons as opposed to generic symbols on the buttons.

Keep your layout out in a logical sequence. Greet your reader with an engaging introduction to your blog. This introduction can either be a static page or a neat set-up of your recent posts.

Keep all of your miscellaneous site pages and menu items like the About page and category list under a tab or behind the scenes. These items are functional, and often not aesthetically pleasing.

Colours;

Every year there is a release of the "Colour" of the year. Sometimes it's a lovely colour that is easy to work with and appeals to a broad cross-section of people. Other years the colour is extremely unique, difficult to find and not familiar. If at heart you're a trendsetter in life then, of course, be a trendsetter with the colour of the year for your blog.

2017 Colour of the Year.

However, for most people, staying with primary colour principles works best.

Here is an excellent introduction to web design colours.

There you have it, the easiest and most effective tips for initially setting up a blog or website. Good luck and have fun.

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