Essential Elements Of A Blog

Today, I decided to compile the elements of a blog that I believe are important. Blogs are supposedly better with these elements giving both the blogger and the blog readers a pleasant experience.

1. Custom Header Or Logo

Having your own custom logo/header is an effective branding strategy for your blog. Your logo or header should be customized. As much as possible, use an image in replacement of your default header.

Blogs without customized headers are not only unattractive but are highly suspected as spam blogs. Serious bloggers are expected to invest time in customizing their headers while spam bloggers settle for less… the default header setting. Without a custom header or logo, your blog is missing the opportunity to be recognized, remembered and promoted. Try using a custom header and see the difference it can bring your blog.

2. Navigation Menu

I’m surprised to find out that more than 30% of the blogs I come across with everyday don’t have navigation menus. Instead, most of these blogs use Adsense link list to trick their readers into clicking them. I don’t have anthing against these bloggers and their monetization strategy but they’re certainly missing more opportunities by not having a navigation menu. Without a navigation menu, you’re missing the chance to increase your page view, which could increase your chance of monetizing your blog.

Here are the most important pages that should be included in your navigation menu:

• Home : The truth is, link to the homepage is the hottest and most visited link in a website.
• About : The truth is, blog readers care about who they’re getting information from.
• Contact : The truth is, contact forms or contact details are essential in networking.

3. RSS and Email Subscription

Not all your readers would want to visit your blog to check for updates, especially if you don’t update it regularly. Giving them the option to subscribe and receive your updates through their emails or preferred feed reader makes it convenient for them.

While it is much better to have your readers visit your blog instead of receiving your updates in their email or feed reader, it pays to give them that option. You can always draw your subscribers to visiting your blog to leave their comments. Besides, there are endless ways to monetize your feed.

4. Social Bookmarks And Social Media

Social bookmarks and social media are very useful tools for bloggers. These can help improve your blog traffic, increase your subscribers and lead to a higher blog revenue. Most importantly, social bookmarks, increase the participation of your readers to your blog sending them the message that they’re an important part of your blog.

5. Comment

Another essential element of a blog is comment. If you’re using Wordpress, Blogger and the more popular blog platforms, comment is usually a built in feature. It’s not advisable to disable your comment system because you’re only depriving your blog of the chance to network with your readers and get valuable feedback from them.

What else am I missing?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!