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Blog Design for Business

Written by: Carma Spence-Pothitt

Article Overview: A blog for business is a bit different from a personal blog, as you probably already guessed. When you plan your blog for success, you should also give some thought to what your business blog will look like.

Blog Design for Business

A blog for business is a bit different from a personal blog, as you probably already guessed. When you plan your blog for success, you should also give some thought to what your business blog will look like.

Your blog’s layout and design plays a big role in how effective it will be. Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of other blogs out there.

* Your Navigational Structure
How do you want to structure your navigation? What is the hierarchy of your pages and posts? How do you want people to move about your site? Do you want navigational links to be across the top, down one side or the other, at the bottom, or a combination of these? Do you want the home page to be unique or the same as all the other pages? What will appear on your home page: a static page or your blog posts? Before you even think about design, you need to have a good idea of how you want people to navigate your website. This information, as well as who your audience is, informs the design of the site.

* Personality
What is your brand’s personality? Is it perky? understated? creative? professional? The colors and layout you choose should help communicate the personality you want for your blog. For example, I chose vibrant colors for this blog because I felt they expressed the “turbo-charge” nature of the information, along with my quirky personality. The Women’s Business Gallery uses a more down-to-Earth color palette because it is much more “business” focused. Because I’m going with a “vamp” theme for WordPress ReVamp, I chose a sultry, simmering color combination. Get the picture?

* Advertisements
Will you have advertising on your site? What kind? Will you be advertising your own products and services, like I do on the home page of this website? Will you advertise other peoples products through affiliate links? Will you sell advertising space? What about Google Ads? You need to know what kinds of advertising, if any, you want on your website so you can incorporate space for them into your design.

* Your Header Banner
This is the image and text that appears on the top of every page. In the case of this blog, it is where the name of the blog appears and has the imagery and tag-line beneath it. This is where you put your logo and most of your branding imagery. It also sets the tone for the rest of the layout. When I’m customizing Wordpress themes for my clients, this is the first part of the design I work on.

* Give Your RSS Feeds Some Flare
Using FeedBurner, you can give your readers two ways to subscribe to your RSS feed: through their favorite RSS Reader or via email. Giving them this option can increase the number of RSS subscriptions you get. Also, if you use Aweber, you can create a “Blog Broadcast” and automatically send summaries of your blog posts to your subscribers.

* Audio and Video
You don’t have to limit your design and content to just static images and text. You can incorporate audio and video components to liven up your site. It is better to know you are going to do this up-front, so that you can work these elements seamlessly into your design. Podcats and Vidcasts are one option, but you can also post interesting video from YouTube, as well.

* A Favicon
This is the little image that appears next to the URL in the address bar. Having a unique, branded favicon makes your blog look that much more professional. There are lots of ways to add one to your website, but, at least for WordPress websites, I’ve found using the MaxBlogPress Favicon plugin to be the easiest. And, generating a favicon in the correct format is pretty easy, too. Just go to www.favicon.co.uk, upload the image you want to use as your favicon and follow the directions.

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Article Tags: advertisements, audience, blogs, business gallery, color combination, color palette, down to earth, earth color, google, hierarchy, navigational structure, peoples products, personal blog, personality, turbo charge, vamp, vibrant colors



Related Forum Posts
Re: what position to request? - Hi Michael, Great suggestion from David, or you could try something around a design consultancy, How about Website Design Consultant, Design and Development Manager, Website Support and Development Manager or maybe Internet Business Development Consultant. Ultimately whatever you are comfortable with and good luck for the future, Mal.
Elevator Pitch in 10 Words - "Winning Business Design For Aspiring Entrepreneurs Based On Their Idea"
Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategy - Hi David, I agree about the Blogosphere. You have a smaller group that Blog, but do so on the premise that they think they should, but have never really considered the purpose of their Blog. Then I think there are a few SEO or Internet Marketing types that see Blogging as just another link building strategy. But the largest group of Bloggers, tend to be people who enjoy writing and discussing their topics of interest. Blogging is good for link building, but the true Blogger is a breed apart from the rest. They want to dialog, to debate, to have feedback and they are very willing to link to other worthwhile conversations that are relevant to their topic. I agree with you. These group of Bloggers obviously are passionate about their writing and together, they create huge conversation trails interactive and travel from Blog to Blog. But the evidence is clear with this group that loves what they write about. With comments enabled on a Blog and having a Blog tuned to a specific purpose you already have the evidence of original Social Media.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Alexa Ranking Goals - That's great GT! What method did you use to put up the Entrepreneur Blog Network in your Wordpress Blog? We're always looking for the easiest methods to help bloggers who are not techies get involved.


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