When I first started blogging I had no idea about what would be right or wrong about the design layout of my site. I thought if I could come up with a cool header picture and randomly attach some links and banner links to the sidebar I would be off to the races.
As I have continued my blogging education and paid attention to the how and the why of what some of the top bloggers out there are doing, I realized I had made some serious newbie mistakes.
I have come up with a list of the Top 3 Design Elements that put you on the right track with your design. There are many more elements to consider but if you get these 3 core items correct you are way ahead of the game.
- Graphic Header with the name of the site, tagline and authors name. One of the things you are trying to accomplish is to have your visitors know what your blog is about immediately. You can achieve this with a relevant header picture and a tagline that explains the blogs purpose in a concise, catchy few words.
- Email subscribe form with an offer to get subscribers. The best place to put this form is the upper right hand corner of your page. It is also a good idea to have a subscriber form on every page. The best way to do this is to put the form in the sidebar. There are also plugins that will attach a subscriber box to the end of your post, as I have done on this blog. That way when the reader finishes reading a post they like they have the option right there to sign up for your list.
- About page with photo and a good description of what the blog is about. This will help to personalize the blog and engage your readers at a different level with a “get to know you” feeling. It also allows you to further pinpoint, with keywords, exactly what your blog is about.
Check out these details on this blog and you will see that I have satisfied all three of those items.
Leave a comment on what you might consider vital elements of a successful business blog or maybe some mistakes you made along the way so we can all learn from them.
Blog and thrive.
When you start to consider blogging for your business one of the best things to do is to find out what the competition is blogging about. I talk to my clients about the necessity to begin blogging about their business because their competition is doing it. This is when the lights start to go off on how important it is to start a business blog to keep up with the competition. There are three very important reasons for this. 
