Company Blogs – Do's and Don'ts

If you have a website and you're considering putting together a blog there are a few things you should keep in mind when building it.

First, continue your branding techniques from your website to your blog. If your website is blue and gold, make your blog blue and gold. Include logos, catch phrases and similar navigation. Don't confuse people by thinking they've left your website. Don't settle for a 'template' blog if you can help it, because putting no effort into your blog design says you put no effort into the blog content.

Always link back to your main website and make reference to it in the blogs profile or about us page. I go so far as to include links in your sidebar that are the same on your website. Make it easy for people to travel back and forth between your blog and website.

When choosing a blog format, consider the ease of use for updating posts. If you've created a blog for someone but they have to know how to code or there are too many steps involved to make updates, you'll upset your client. Keep it simple. This is one reason I perfer Blogger over Wordpress, Blogger has a very simple, very easy to understand layout. For those of you who think Wordpress is just as easy, ask your grandmother to make an update and watch as she gets confused by the navigation.

Use images, to break up the constant stream of blocky text so that visitors are not overwhelmed by information. After all, a picture speaks a thousand words and will often be the factor that decides if someone will ready that post or pass it by without reading the title.

Use labels so that you can organize your blog posts by category as well as date. Most people are not going to be interested in what was posted on May 22, 2008 but a label like 'Knitting Tutorial of Doom” is descriptive and far more interesting.

Make sure that any widgets you use are user friendly and not terribly obnoxious. Avoid music widgets that blast songs at you as soon as they load, animations that draw the eye away from your posts or poorly designed widgets that don't fit the 'look' of the blog.

Allow Commenting, always. A blog is supposed to be a communication device between users and owners, use it. If you wanted to just post up info with no feedback, then create a newsletter on your website. This is a blog, let it live up to it's full potential. That being said, monitor your comments daily for spam and crazy people.

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Alex Seigfried; Owner
Philadelphia, PA

Using Blogger Instead of Web Design from Scratch

Google's blogger is the herald of a coming “do it yourself” web design revolution. Although you still need someone who is a little tech savvy to get the most out of Blogger, it's the precursor to something much bigger. It's the first service where you can put together a reasonable website for your business, without the need of a professional web designer. My wife and I have done some experimenting with this idea and found that with a little tweaking, you can convert a Blogger blog, into a fully functioning website.

Here are a few simple ways to make the conversion:

1. Think about the typical pages you'll want for your website. Services, About Us, Contact Page, etc. Now write one post for each of those pages, inserting pictures, copy and links as needed. Label as you normally would.
2. Now the twist. Blogger assigns each one of your blog posts their own 'page'. If you go to your blogger blog and click on the title of any post, you'll be taken to a page that has just that post on it (all others disappear). You can then take the link for that post, out of your address bar (the thing at the top of your browser with the www) and save it as a link (copy it down somewhere for later, like a notepad file).
3. After you've saved each of your post's links, you want to go into your Blogger blog's Layout. Choose the Page Elements tab. What we're going to do is create a page element in your sidebar, the Links List element. Take each of the links to your posts, title them and add them to the Links List element. Don't forget to make a link for your Homepage, which you can either type up a static post for your homepage or just use the main link of your blogger account (insertname.blospot.com).

Now you've got a navi bar just like a regular website! It's a simple concept, but it's very handy since most people who use the internet are used to a certain format when they come to websites. Now that you've got a navi bar, people will start using your blog like a website. The best of both worlds, wrapped up in one.

Of course if you want your blog to have it's own unique look, instead of using the standard templates, you're going to have to get someone who's knowledgeable in CSS and Editing Images. This is where you can hire a web designer or web company to really make your new blog website shine.

Seigfried Designs provides web design services for blogger, wordpress and any other blogging format you care to use.

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Alex Seigfried, Owner; Philadelphia, PA