7 Ways of Making a Blog Look Professional

professional blogMake your blog look professional. With thousands of blogs being launched every day, one has to offer something different from the others to stand out of the crowd. The differentiator is what the readers will remember and that’s precisely what will bring them back to your blog.

Give them a reason to remember what they saw, read, and felt while they are on your blog. There are a lot of other things besides “content” which are quite important in creating a brand for your blog.

Making Your Blog Look Professional

Let’s look at a few things which will help you make your blog more professional and create a brand.

1. Look and feel of the site are very important

Looking at the site makes the first impression on the readers and visitors. Keep it nice, simple, and clean. Make sure you install a theme with the right color combination and not something that hurts the eye. You can use services like Adobe Kuler or Color Schemer to choose a good color scheme.

Don’t have ads all over the page; let your readers read the content without any distractions. Making money should always be a part of writing great content and not the other way around.

2. Google Apps (customized email addresses)

Google Apps offers several products such as e-mail, calendar, messenger (GTalk), Google docs, etc. under your own domain name. So you can have an e-mail address at your domain name (e.g. nerds@tnerd.com) for absolutely free. These e-mail accounts are not any different from regular Gmail accounts.

Having a personalized e-mail address adds that touch of exclusivity to your domain. Go for it! Click here to register with Google Apps.

3. Customized email for registered users

When users register with the site, an automated email is sent to the user confirming the registration at the site. The New User email setup WordPress plugin lets you edit the email address, Subject, and body of the e-mail. This adds a personal touch to it. Exclusive again!

4. About and Contact page

Have a proper About page – write about the site, yourself, the team, etc. Having a good About page lets you connect with your users and blogging is all about creating relationships. It also shows how serious you are about the site/blog you are running.

Instead of mentioning mailto links, have a contact page where users can fill out a form and submit it to send an e-mail. Doesn’t it sound nice and easy? Cforms WordPress plugin lets you create forms and add them to your blog.

5. Feedburner URL

Feedburner is a great service and everyone running a blog should certainly make use of it. It offers a feature called MyBrand which lets you have the feed at your own domain name. What do you think; doesn’t that make you look good?

6. Comment Relish

Thank the first-time commenters on your site by sending them an instant personalized e-mail. This not only helps you keep the visitors coming back but leaves a good impression on the reader. Remember it’s a thank you e-mail so don’t put the visitor off by writing much – just a thank you and subscription to our feed should be enough. Get the Comment Relish WordPress plugin.

7. Custom Login Page

Having your own login page wouldn’t hurt. Don’t get me wrong, I love WordPress and give full credit to it on my blog, but I want to have my own login screen too. BM Custom Login WordPress plugin will let you customize the login screen and have your own theme running on it. It is the best in the town which lets you customize the screen.

Syed Abbas blogs on Technology Nerd (TNerd.com) and provides latest articles, news, tips and tricks on Media and Technology. He formerly worked at Google as Search Quality Strategist. Got some tips to share, you can also write a guest article on QOT. [Image credit: anniemole]

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About the Author: P Chandra is editor of QOT, one of India's earliest tech bloggers since 2004. A tech enthusiast with expertise in coding, WordPress, web tools, SEO and DIY hacks.