What Are The Pillars Of A Blog?

Posted on 10. May, 2010 by Anil Gupta in Tips

This post will explain the crucial components that a blog should have. These pillars are what really make your blog a special one and make it so much more amusing and fun for your reader to read. A blog should have an effective combination of the crucial components that I am mentioning below.

1. Plugins:

Plugins are the life-line of your blog. They are the blood that runs through your blog and makes it function so well. Plugins allow you to add top-commenter widget, meet your SEO requirements, social media buttons and blog statistics. All this and much more make plugins a crucial and incontestable part of your blog’s functioning. If there were no plugins then you would have a tough time to even add a search-engine optimized Header and meta-tag description.

You can get any plugin to enhance the functionality of your blog or according to your need. They are easy to find as you can simply search for them within your blog’s WordPress dashboard. Of course, you can search for them in Google. Either ways, you are sure to be spoiled for choices –as there are hundreds of plugins that provide the same functionality with a few differences.

The best part of WordPress plugins is that most of them (the one’s you just cannot blog without) are free! As is WordPress – the best things in life are free.

2. Theme:

Themes are another very factor that constitutes your blog. They offer the face value of your blog to your readers and new visitors. A good theme can make your blog successful at the same time, a poorly selected theme can get you the reverse results.

If you are the kind of person who gets frustrated when you have trouble searching the archives of a blog you visit – then you can blame it on the loser theme that the blogger used. A poor theme apart from being visually unappealing will also create a lot of trouble for your visitors to navigate. It must be easy for your visitors to look through your archives and your previous posts. There must be ample of white-space if your blog is content intensive and your font family and size should be easy to read.

WordPress makes it very easy for you to choose a suitable theme for your blog. You can search for thousands of free themes right through your WordPress dashboard. There are lots of WordPress theme developers who create themes that suit different niches of blog. So you do not even have to spend money on premium themes until you feel you are ready.

3. Articles:

Articles are what your blog speaks. Poor articles will kill your blog even if you have the best theme and the most effective SEO plugins installed. Articles you create must be well-written, well-researched and provide good insight to your readers.

When you are writing articles try not to simply fill it in with keywords. Always write for your readers – just keep search engine optimization on the back of your head. When you write articles do not be obsessed with SEO as it will affect your writing quality adversely. Also another point that is worth taking note is that you need to be regular in your delivery of articles. If you are poor at providing posts to your readers regularly, then you will lose even the readers which you have created.

Let your article be original and be available exclusively on your blog.

4. Value-Added:

This is another important part of your blog as the blog-sphere is evolving. Many authors offer WordPress services to their readers. Some of them may provide you with blog consultation, Blogger to WordPress migration, content writing services etc. These services are important these days as it will help you establish a strong revenue model on your blog apart from the obvious sponsorship money which you may be aiming at.

You can provide value-added services on your blog depending on what your strong point is. Suppose you are good at coding then you can offer services of modifying and editing themes. Or if you feel that you are better at freelancing then you can show on your blog that you offer content-writing services. Value added services allow you blog to stand out from the rest – which is very important considering the number of blogs out there.

5. Author Reputation:

A good reputation of the blogger automatically makes the blog more magnetic. Readers automatically begin to trust you more and follow you more closely than when you show you are a novice blogger. It is important that you become authoritative in your niche. If you have an authority over your niche, then your blog will automatically draw more readers. Of course, it goes without saying that your content must also be strong enough as your reputation. This should be built over time and I must say it takes time, unless your among the grades of Guy Kawasaki or Seth Godin.

The above points mentioned as “pillars of a blog” will complete your blog and they offer a powerful combination to help you succeed online. Hope you enjoyed this post.

Image Credits

• WordPress
• Woo Themes
• WP Web Host

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Tags: Blog, Blogging, Tips, WordPress