Keeping Your Blog Interactive and Busy

A key factor in being successful in blogging lies in your theme. If your theme is sloppy and underdone people will disregard it as an authority be driven away. If you don’t put anything on your website, and keep just the bare minimum, it will look naked. Try spicing things up by throwing in some interactive objects or just something interesting in the sidebars. People love interaction and if your site looks busy and gives them something to do, they will come in droves.

 

Advertising On Your Blog

Ads are definitely a positive move as far as a business goes, but don’t force them. If placing ads on your website greatly conflicts with your theme, try different advertising schemes. Always keep your ad boxes full - that’s valuable space and if you fill it up people will see that others are advertising and will want to advertise themselves. Try creating an advertise page that people can navigate towards to purchase their ads from you. If you have 8 spaces available, you may want to consider filling seven of them and leaving one open for your “advertise here” button, so people will know the opportunity is available. Looking for something more maintenance free? Try Project Wonderful.

Never Give Away Free Advertising

As I mentioned, each bit of space on your blog is valuable. Avoid giving away free advertising without exchange for something. A nifty idea to fill up your ad boxes is to run a contest wherein exchange for a review, you could receive a certain amount of time in an ad box, depending on the content created for the contest. This can range from 5 days for an RSS subscription, to 20 days for a full review. People will eagerly review and subscribe for their ‘free’ advertising, and in exchange you get a form of free advertising as well.

Filling up the ‘White Space’

Many times you’ll be conflicted with having too much white space in your blog, and nothing to fill it up with. If this happens look for widgets that are fun for the users, or try using Entrecard. Entrecard will bring in a stable flow of traffic every day, and if you keep your advert above the fold of your page, so users don’t have to scroll down to get to it, you’ll have an increased view rate.

Remember the Feng Shui

Keep your blog in tone with itself, try and prevent it from being over-flooded with one color. Try keeping the content boxes a separate color from the background, which in turn should be complimentary and easy on the eyes.

By following some basic rules, just a few are outlined here, you’ll be able to keep your blog looking and feeling fantastic. Your fans will love you for it!

Leave a comment and let me know what you do to keep your blog shiny.