Blog Network Watch

Tips for Using Color, Images and Graphics In Your Blogs

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While the majority of your blog may be comprised of text, it’s really the images, colors and graphics that are going to intrigue your audience enough to read your words. Knowing this, it’s vital that you take the time and attention to use these elements wisely to create the perfect mixture of visual elements and textual elements. To make this endeavor a bit easier on you, here are some tips to follow when using color, images and graphics in your blogs.

designing a blog

Working With Color

Color is a very powerful thing, especially when it comes to marketing and advertising. For blogs, picking the right theme and color can be extra important because you want to do all you can to encourage more readers and followers to your blog. According to Jennifer of TheBlogMarket.co, choosing the right colors for you blog takes a lot of thought and insight. Some of the things you might want to consider include color psychology, common colors within your industry, and colors that both you and your audience will enjoy. [Read more…]

Originally posted on July 21, 2016 @ 9:42 pm

How Blogs Get to Engage an Audience

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Every blog needs to engage its audience if it is to be believable when boasting about its high number of visits.  When a reader visits one page and then leaves without checking other pages, that is not engaging the audience. That is what is termed as a bounce which is not considered positive by search engines.

Bounce Rate

Blogs are and should be concerned about bounce rate.  It is a reflection of how engaging a blog is.  Since a bounce happens when a visitor enters and exits through the same page, there is a conclusion that its contents are not that relevant so as to encourage further reading in other pages. Relevance is usually associated with quality and this is where the problem in categorizing a visit comes in.

It is necessary to have appropriate analytics in place to measure bounce rate.  A low bounce rate can be an indication that targeted users are finding just what they are looking for in a site and that they are finding it in more than one page. Providing related content is a simple way of leading visitors to spend more time in the site and therefore lower the bounce rate.  A high bounce rate on the other hand, indicates that users are not finding anything relevant and are therefore going back to search engine result pages to find other options.

A high bounce rate is not always bad since it is possible that the information required by users has been obtained on the first page visited.  The opportunity to further engage the visitors should not be wasted.  Relevant content has been provided so it makes sense to provide more reasons for return visits.

Engaging the Audience

So we go back to the basic question of how to engage an audience.  Aside from providing relevant and related content, there are a lot of things that site or blog owners can do to engage their audience.  Engaging an audience basically pertained to effective relating to readers and visitors.

Asking questions and running contests are two of the most common strategies of simple audience engagement.  They only require the performance of easy tasks and promise results in terms of the chance to air their views and being responded to as well the chance to win prizes which is always something positive.  Engaging the audience through various social network platforms is another way of going about it. Engaging an audience requires talking and listening.

Teresa is a researcher-writer who covers a wide range of topics in search of useful information.

Image: bloggingexperiment.com

Originally posted on March 31, 2013 @ 11:52 am

The Benefits of Time Indicators In Blogging

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Though you might consider that blogging is essentially a timeless activity, there are definitely benefits to having at least indications of times inside of your marketing efforts. Yes, browsing through blogs is a non-linear activity for people searching on their desktops and mobile phones, but, if you give a sense of flow within the navigation, that helps maintain a consistency on your part.

For example, look at how to use things like release calendars and dated posts. Additionally, there’s the SEO benefits that come from dates and times. And then there’s always the fact that you can list store hours, as well as personal contact hours along with phone numbers or email addresses of client use as well.

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[Read more…]

Originally posted on July 6, 2016 @ 10:11 pm

The Blogging Industry Today

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Image: socialstrategy1

From a mere online journal that was started in the 1990s, blogs have formed a formidable industry that resides in the online environment.  Blogs have ceased to be a venue for self-expression only although it still continues to provide that.  Blogs of today have likewise become venues for leadership, expertise, and professionalized work.  So how does the blogging industry stand today?

If we are to base our answer on how blogs are behaving, it can be surmised that the blogosphere is very much alive where thousands of blogs are opened each day for varying reasons including personal use and business.  There are already millions of existing blogs and to see this number increasing by the minute is a true testament to the life of the blogging industry.

What keeps this industry alive is the continuing interaction that is happening by regular postings, commenting, marketing, or just reading.  This has been made livelier by the presence of businesses maintaining company blogs, although personal blogs still continue to lead in numbers.  There is however a tendency for many blogs to be neglected or abandoned after some time thus creating a lot of inactive blogs that simply clog the industry.

Blogging and social networking are happily co-existing at this time junking the fear that the latter might drive the former to extinction.  It would appear that these two were able to find their respective places and function in close relation with each other.  A big chunk of participants in blogging do not earn enough from it to consider it earnings but they continue for the love of it.  A very small percentage has found blogging as a highly profitable profession. English continues to be the main language with Spanish following but still quite far behind.

Originally posted on January 26, 2013 @ 7:27 am

Create Your Own Blog Network

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Having a blog network where one can expect support and sharing from other blogs offers numerous advantages for a member blog.  A blog owner can choose to join an existing blog network or create a new one.  This can easily be done by forming a network of different blogs owned by one person or by different blogs owned by different persons preferably of the same niche.

When a blogger wishes to set up a network composed of his own blogs, it is important for the blogs to be relevant to each other although they need not be exactly the same .  This simply means providing a sound basis for linking them and not only for the mere reason that they are owned by one person.  A good example of this is a blog network composed of a child care blog, child health blog, and child activity blog.  Although distinct from each other, it is still very easy to connect them because of a common factor which is the topic of child.

When forming a blog network that includes blogs of other people, membership should be limited to the same niche.  Attention should also be given to getting member blogs that maintain quality in content.   There must also be a firm commitment from all member blogs to maintain a level of activity that is beneficial to all such as linking to each other’s site in different capacities once a week.  Those who remain inactive for sometime should be removed from the network since they do not serve any purpose to the group.

More is not exactly better than less.  A network with 20 members with 50% active participation suffers in comparison to a 15-member network with 100% participation.  It should also be run professionally if it intends to achieve credibility among peers and the online environment.

 

Originally posted on October 5, 2012 @ 7:51 pm

Blogging and Marketing: Some of the Invisible Costs

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cost of blogging

When it comes to blogging and online marketing, not all of the costs are going to be immediately visible or even able to calculate for various reasons. So if you’re planning on doing some sort of branding project, make sure that you understand that there will be details going on with the process that are outside of your typical ability to create numbers and hard data for.

A few classic examples of these invisible costs would be the amount of time certain activities take, long-term subscriptions, hosting costs, searching engine indexing value, and creating webs of social network that add value to your business. [Read more…]

Originally posted on July 1, 2016 @ 9:20 pm

3 Ways Blogging Can Help Your Business Be More Successful

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In society today, most business are only as successful as their Internet presence. With so many consumers making purchases online, reading online reviews, and communicating with their friends and family members about different products or services via the Internet, your business’s online presence can either make or break the success of your business.

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One area that many business can take advantage of that will immensely help their online presence and business in general is blogging. However, many might not see the direct connection between having a successful online business blog and having more success in your overall business. To help you draw those connections, here are three ways blogging can help your business be more successful both on and offline. [Read more…]

Originally posted on December 24, 2015 @ 2:50 pm