Three Steps to Strategically Focusing a Blog

Articles, Concept, Guide, Tips | on Oct. 23, 2011 | by 0 Comments

There are a large number of blogs on the Internet. Therefore, putting together a blog site and design which is successful at capturing viewers requires a strategy for putting content and design together to ensure that visitors are retained. Here are three considerations for a strategically designed blog.

Topic: a clear idea of what the blog is about

Sometimes the topic of a blog is obvious, but other blogs suffer for not having a specific direction. Great blogs speak to a specific audience, and the design of the blog should assist in providing visitors to that site with an idea of what the topic is, even before reading the content.

This is true where generic templates are used. Often these sites don’t keep visitors as the visual arrangement doesn’t invite users to explore the content. Existing blog owners can see in the analytics of the site whether or not the site has a high bounce rate. If so, the theme and design of the site might help keep users on site for longer.

Audience: understand who the audience is, and what they want

This comes back to writing basics, but it is so important that it bears repeating. The blog should understand how the audience are interacting with the content. A blog on green technology is likely to have a broad audience, but a blog examining sustainability in buildings might have a more specific and specialist audience.

The audience is key for choice of language and how topics are filtered and approached. Blogs which explore specialist subjects can include greater jargon and more technical elements. They should also incorporate focused ways of getting new members of the audience “up to speed”, so that they can engage with the content. However, more generalist blogs should keep language open and jargon free.

The effectiveness of understanding the audience will ensure that visitors who are targeted understand they are at home on the site and want to stay. However, sites with unclear audiences will have difficulty convincing people to stick around, as they don’t understand why they are on site.

Value Proposition: why stick with this blog over others?

As with the topic and audience, the more the blogger creates an explicit value proposition, the easier it is for visitors to understand why the site is useful to them.

This is especially true of general subject blogs, where there is a competitive market for readers. These kinds of blogs should reach out to specific parts of the market proactively by enhancing their value proposition.

If the value proposition is immediately available in the design of the website, this will make the targeted reader much more comfortable and curious as to what the site has to offer them. They are more likely to explore, but also share the site with friends.

If these three considerations are incorporated into the site, the targeted visitor should intuitively understand that this is a site for them and their like-minded friends. This will keep viewers returning, the best and most sustainable way of ensuring a blog lasts. It also provides the focus to the site that makes sure that content has direction.

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