This is a series of posts about starting your own blog in 5 minutes or 5 days. In my last post, I wrote about picking a blogging platform to start your blog and conquer the world. Before that, I wrote about questions to ask before starting a blog. In this post, I’m going to talk about branding your blog and tweaking the look and feel.
Step 3: Brand Yourself, or The Internet Beauty Contest
Ok, most of what lead up to this point was not particularly glamorous. Now that you’ve decided that you have something worth reading and figured out how you’re going to get the word out, it’s time to pick just how your name will appear in lights.
There are volumes of books and blog posts on branding out there, so I’m not going to repeat what you can read elsewhere. Instead, here are a few key points you need to consider when picking your blog and domain name:
- Your Name May Haunt You (Or Bring You Riches) – If you’re writing great content and being social in the blog world, you’ll probably start getting some links and people may even add you to their blogroll. The text they use to link to you, aka anchor text, can have some influence on how well your site ranks in search engines. So, if your blog is called SearchMarketingGurus people are more likely to use those words when linking to you and, thus, the search engines will be more inclined to rank you for those terms (assuming you actually have related content on your site). Conversely, it may be more of an uphill battle to rank for phrases like “web analytics” if your blog title doesn’t include that phrase.
- Less Typing is Better – Pick a short and easy URL when you can. The more memorable and typable it is, the better off you are. Al Ries once recommended no more than 8 characters with some repetition of letters, a la Zillow. I’d argue that’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but some wise words to consider, especially if the URL is to be reproduced in print.
- Go Domain Hunting – It would be grand if we could all have the exact right domain, but many have been snapped up, so check through any of the major domain registration services to make sure no one has snagged alexloveskittenpictures.com yet.
Once you’ve picked the perfect URL, register it (~$10/year). Usually the host you choose will let you do this as you sign up for service and this is definitely the most convenient option, because you don’t have to keep 2 sets of records or deal with domain mapping (it’s a few easy technical steps where you point your URL to your site host, but why do it when you can avoid it?)
Pick Your Theme and Give Your Blog a Makeover
This is where you might start to go a little nuts. A theme is the visual look and feel of your site. It determines what visitors see and how they navigate throughout your blog. There are literally thousands of free themes available to download. If you’re particularly crafty, or you’re setting up a business blog and you have a creative team at your disposal, you can even design your own theme.
The exact choice and details will vary by which blog platform you chose. Personal taste aside, just remember to pick or develop an uncluttered theme that makes it simple for people to do what you want: read and interact with you and your content.
- Steal Other People’s Hard Work – For the technically and artistically disinclined, the simplest route to aesthetics is to adopt a theme that someone else developed. Here are some good resources for Wordpress: ThemeViewer, Minimalist Themes, Free Wordpress Themes, Themes from Pearsonified, 83 Beautiful Themes.
- Make Sure Your Theme is SEO Friendly – You may love search engines and all of the ways it can bring you fame and fortune, but your theme may be holding you back.
- Tweak Your Blog – Once you pick a theme, most of the platforms will let you add in 3rd part developed plugins to add to the look or functionality of your blog. For example, I use cforms as a simple tool to add a contact form to my site. I’ll cover this more in another topic, but there are plenty of ways to add to your site. If you’re really neurotic, like I am, you can even create your own favicon (specific to Wordpress here).
That’s it! Now you’re off and running with a slick and ever so personalized theme. The good news is that if you change your mind, you can always change your theme without trashing all of your content. I think full control over your theme is one of the particularly strong selling points to skip the fully hosted version of a blog and strike out on your own. Tune in for the next post where I’ll cover some of the tips and tricks to make sure your blog hits the ground running.
