What are Recommended Blog Features?
Blogs are excellent platforms for offering insight into your organization. Create an excellent impression by designing blogs and blog posts with these key characteristics:
Readability. Readability is one of the most important elements in blog design. Take care to ensure that background and foreground colors are selected that have sufficient contrast that makes text easy to read. Line-spacing for paragraphs needs to be sufficient so that longer blocks of text are easier to read.
Navigation-friendly. Design your blog so that it is easy to find other content/posts on the site. A navigation-friendly design will encourage visitors to click on other parts of the site. Tiered/hierarchical navigation schemes can be used employing JavaScript-based navigation menus. The sidebar (auxiliary/secondary content) can contain recent and popular posts, making that other content easily accessible. Integrating a search feature into your blog application allows your visitors to have a more user-driven experience.
Engaging comment section. Communication is the purpose of every blog post. Whether your goal is promotional, informational, or to spread the word about your products and services, providing an inviting and engaging space for feedback, debate, and interaction will demonstrate that your organization is interested in their visitors and their thoughts. There are applications available to help with this feature.
Integration with socials. Make it easy for your visitors to share your content within their social networks. There are applications available for this feature too!
Dynamic. This is what separates a blog from a website. Unlike a static website, blogs require regular updates that include publishing dates and meta tags. New entries and regular updates are critical to demonstrate that your organization is committed to maintaining ongoing communication and interaction with your visitors.
Reverse order. Display posts in reverse chronological order so that the newest entries appear first. Newer posts push older posts down on the landing page until they disappear. Older entries are typically archived on the pages that follow, but they can also be organized by publishing date.
Blog layout. Most blogs have a similar structure with a header with the menu or navigation bar, then the main content area where recent entries will be displayed, to the right there will be a sidebar with socials, calls-to-action, etc., and a footer will include the legal stuff. Following the standard design of blogs makes navigation easier for your visitors, as they are not tasked with learning to navigate something new- which could prompt them to exit your blog out of frustration.
Headlines. Headlines should be attention grabbing in order to drive traffic, generate clicks, and to capture the attention of your visitors so that they will stick around to read what you have written.
Links. Internal linking ensures that your visitors have a comfortable reading experience with intuitive navigation between mutually relevant posts.
Visuals. Make data more interesting by using effective data visualization techniques such as graphs and charts. Cohesive imagery across your blog gives users the impression that your blog, and your interaction with blog visitors, is something that you value.