Features your blog should have
Nowadays, Blogging is more convenient and common. It’s appraised that there are nonetheless 146 million blogs concealing topics from technology to culture-theme restaurants. Although, irrespective of the diversity of blog topics, and the vastness of the blogosphere there are a minority of site features that you’ll probably find in most of them.
Moreover, bibliophiles have come to expect these site features to be accessible to them when they visit blog posts they like the most. Today we are going to cover the prevailing features that all blogs should have. These features are intended to enhance the user experience by boosting content sharing, community engagement, findability of posts, and more.
Content is the key to success:
many websites post different types of posts, although most of them depend upon the power of the written word. Depending on the intention of the author, a blog is usually an instructional guide, an opinion piece, or a news post. Repetitive portions of the text are separated by videos or images.
A blog post can also be a represent with minimum or no text. It’s a communal trend in travel blogs and fashion, Although it’s also not erratic for business-associated niches to post infographics as an alternative of instructional articles. But irrespective of the medium, a blog is mainly demarcated by the excellency of its published content.
Relevancy is captivating!
Engaging content has to be relevant; this rule particularly relates to blog posts. They might fluctuate in formats, styles, types, and mediums, in order to provoke interest or arouse debate, they have to be unique, engaging, and original.
Picture perfect Length
One of the most frequent questions about blogs is” what’s the perfect length for blogs”? the modest answer is long enough.
The main point of this matter is that as long as it answers your audience’s questions, on the condition that your post is informative, it doesn’t matter how long it is.
If you limit to 800-word but have much more to write on the topic, you can continue to write as it’ll not be a problem. Conversely, don’t increase 800 words worth of content to 2000 words.
The center of your attention should be the quality of the content. With the understanding that the blog post provide value to the reader, its length is insignificant.
Tags and Categories
Tags are not compulsory, but they are quite important for the success of your blog. tags are like the index of your blog posts. It’s best to add tags for any details or topics that are cited in your blog posts, specifically if they’re likely to be terms or keywords that your viewers are concerned about. By this, your readers can click right on the tag in order to find more specific content.
Categories offer your reader to select a topic that attracts them and explore all the posts that fit that topic. You have to make sure your readers can easily grasp your categories through your blog archive page.
Include images
Many blog posts comprise an image that is presented at the top of the post, on the blog feed, and every time a link to your post is shared on social media platforms. An image that is featured on your post can help upsurge clicks to your blog by captivating your reader’s attention and appealing to click through. The image can back up your written content, make it more interesting, and break up the text.
Blog Archive
normally, when users land on the homepage, they’re welcomed with the blog posts that are the most recent ones, typically sorted from oldest at the bottom to newest on top. This is what readers want to see, but that’s not the only thing they want to see. Many readers enjoy reading your older posts.
With the assistance of a Blog archive a section in your blog that lists previous posts, habitually sorted in a logical manner such as by category or by date. This is an admirable way to enhance the ability of readers to discover content on your site and draw in more page views. It’s not challenging to create an archive of past blog posts; most good content management systems and blogging platforms have the proficiency to list your posts.
RSS Feed
RSS initiated as a modest way to collect content all over the web, whereas most people didn’t see the imaginative nature of the distribution medium until now. With blogs being updated regularly, and with the uncountable blogs out there, RSS has allowed readers to keep up with the latest content posted on their favorite pages deprived of visiting them frequently to check if they have posted something. With the assistance of free RSS feed readers for example; Google Reader, it’s more convenient for web users to stay in touch with their favorite blogs.
RSS also gives opportunities readers to develop a devoted following and grow your group of followers.
You can build your own RSS feed with the help of the SimplePie PHP class If you’re a developer.
Communicate by Commenting!
The advantage of having a blog VS. old media like TV is that users of blogs have the sole opportunity to communicate with the content provider. From a reader’s point of view, it’s desirable to leave a small comment or have a conversation on topics after reading a post they like. capabilities of commenting on your blog also boost community building by offering your readers to converse the topic of a blog not only with the blogger, but also with other readers.
Spam Protection
Although this feature is mainly for site owners and administrators, but now it’s also a feature that benefits readers. If you have no precautions contrary of comment spam, your comment system will decay quickly because of presentation of comments that are just addition weight on your blog.
Spam comments cover genuine comments and leave readers quite enticement to read the comments on a post.
Don’t let spam eradicate the discussions in your blog. Make sure you have protected your blogging platform with spam protection, not only for the sake of success of your blog, but also for the sake of your followers.
Search
Apart from dropping on your archives, readers won’t have many other possibilities for finding content presented in your blog. They can search your site’s indexed content via search engines, but for accessibility and convenience, you should not expect readers to use any other site to find certain blog posts.
With the help of placing a search feature on all pages of your blog you’ll give proper user experience to your readers.
Social Media Integration
Content presented on the web is intended to be shared. Make it convenient for your readers to share your blog posts in their social media platforms with the assistance of integrating social-media-sharing capabilities on your blog.
many social networking services comprise APIs that you can gain leads from. For instance, Twitter provides widgets and buttons that you can install and customize on your blog.
Contact Method
If you want to grow successfully, make sure you have a good contact method to communicate with your readers. The aptitude to contact a blogger is crucial because the human element of a blog is what makes it interesting to its readers. Readers should be able to contact you to make comments, or questions that they’re hesitant to ask publicly, to report issues they are facing with the site, to share ideas or tips for future blog, and to offer collaborative prospects to you.
The features that are mentioned above are the elements you should keep in mind when creating a blog design.
