1. Follow your basic email etiquette. Typing in all uppercase letters, even when stating a point or stressing a few words in a phrase, makes it seem like you're yelling. Better to use bold or italics.
2. Be sure your content flows. Not everyone is a champ at writing. But varied disconnected thoughts, will cause your readers to get frustrated and move onto another post. Spend enough "time" on each point and be concise and clear. Run on sentences without punctuation are a huge no-no.
3. Watch your punctuation, spelling and grammar. Misplaced periods and commas are not only confusing, they can cause you to lose credibility. The same goes for spelling and grammar. If you have a program such as Microsoft Word, pay attention to the red and green lines that appear below the words and follow the suggestions.
4. Paragraphs please! No one wants to read a "wall of text". People need a breather. Separate each idea into paragraphs. Be sure to segway smoothly when introducing a new idea.
5. Keep it interesting. Writing the same content over and over with a just few word changes will create boredom and prevent people from returning to your site. To get ideas on content, you must always be reading. Articles inspire us to write new material. Be sure to give other writers credit. If your article looks too much like someone else' your credibility will go down.
6. A picture is worth a thousand words. An inspiring photo or a quote will draw people to your article.
7. An interesting title creates interest. A title does a lot in selling material. Catchy titles include buzzwords in your industry, asking a question or offering a solution to someone's problem. People like "how to's".
8. No fancy fonts. Some fonts are difficult to read. The best fonts to use in a blog post or article are simple sans-serif fonts. Some examples would be Arial, Helvetica, Verdana or Trebuchet. Times and Times New Roman has serifs, but most people are used to this font, as it's mostly used in books and newspapers.
9. Keep the blog simple and clean. Some blogs come in such funky colors and the articles are hard on the eyes. It's obvious that yellow type on a green background is an eyesore, but a few other color combos are difficult to read, these include:
- Light pink font on a hot pink background or sky blue on a royal blue background. Tonal themes may be easier on the eyes, but they sometimes blend and the type has a way of "shrinking" into the background. If you must use tonals, try using the lighter color for the background and the type should be the darker color. Also, earth tones work better than bright colors and pastels.
- Anything on black. Yes, blogs with a black theme seem to be very popular these days, but most likely people will look at your page and forgo reading it. Black grounds with the white type or even worse, hot pink or yellow type, is difficult to read. Sure, the white type may "jump" off the page, but that's the problem. It's jumping at you and the characters seem to "swell", making it difficult to read. Too many people are using the dark themes and yours will look no different.
- You can use color and should, but the ideal blog would have white type in a white field. Save the color for the header, sidebar and blog post titles.
- A very busy theme is also distracting and conveys the "all style, no substance" message. Your photos in your blog, should carry the most visual interest.
- Keep ads in one spot on your page. Most blogs display their ads on the right side bar, beneath the "table of contents". Since this is the most popular place to place the ads, people are used to finding the ads there. Placing the ads on the top or breaking up your page with ads gives people a feeling of uneasiness.
- Be sure your ads are relevant. If your blog is about the Law of Attraction, don't place ads for a sporting goods store - even if your best friend owns that store.
- Don't have ads for products or services that are too similar. No one ever has an ad for Coke and Pepsi in the same place, unless it's a supermarket.
- As I mentioned above, no pop ups! You also don't want your ads to take the reader off your page. The ideal format is to have the ad open in a new tab with a message to the reader that clicking the ad won't cause them to lose their place on your page.
- If possible keep the ads consistent in color or appearance. Your readers will get turned off if there's a competition for their attention in your side bar.
