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Friday, January 11, 2008

How to Make your Blog Cool and Attractive

Top 20 Blog Usability Tips

Tom Johnson, the blogger behind the cool blog, I'd Rather Be Writing (great name!). Johnson researched dozens of blogs and came up with a list of the top 20 tips for bloggers. Be sure to read his original column with specific software suggestions and illustrations of each tip.


In summation they are:
(Helge's comments about this blog)

  1. Pick a topic for your blog (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome)
  2. Encourage comments (Need to do a better work)
  3. Make it easy to subscribe (Should be easy)
  4. Include an About page (Have to improve on that)
  5. Present your ideas visually (Continuous improvement)
  6. Keep posts short and to the point (CTS has to improve)
  7. Use subheadings for long posts (Okay!)
  8. Link abundantly (We talked about that with Veijo in Helsinki this week)
  9. Make headlines descriptive (Sure, this is important)
  10. Archive by topic (Need to improve on that)
  11. Include a list of related posts under each post (Improve)
  12. Allow users to contact you offline (Need to encourage connectivity)
  13. Present your real viewpoint (I try to do it)
  14. Write for your future employer (Okay boss!)
  15. Include a top posts section (That's a great idea)
  16. Provide an index (OK)
  17. Get your own URL and match it to your blog's title (Yes!)
  18. Include a recent posts section in your sidebar (Done!)
  19. Reward commenters for commenting (I do!)
  20. Post often (I do)

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