::Gussy it up a bit!::Pimp Your Blog::

First things first:
UNPIMP YOUR BLOG! That’s right. Like a pimply-faced teen with no money who puts plastic wheel covers and fuzzy dice in his grandmother’s Civic hoping to impress the hot rod babes, beginning bloggers tend to put a lot of cra… er, “stuff” on their blogs. Counters. Chat rooms. Off-site forums. Badges for every web service and social network imaginable.  LOL-Cats. Glitter art.

Most of this stuff isn’t making your blog any quicker, easier to use, or (let’s be honest) more attractive. It’s just cluttering it up and making it harder to find the good content your readers came to read. Be vicious in decluttering your blog — if a particular element adds no useful function for your readers, either a) lose it, b) move it to your “About” page (if it says something meaningful about you), or c) move it to a private page that only you have access to.

Install a new theme: While you don’t want to get into the habit of changing your site’s layout all the time, now that you’ve been driving it for a couple of months it’s a good time to ask whether your theme is everything it could be. Most popular blogging platforms offer hundreds, if not thousands of free themes — Google the name of your blogging platform and the phrase “free themes” and check out the first few search results. Put some thought into the mood you want your site to convey — is it serious and professional, fun and whimsical, tech-savvy, homey, country, urban? There’s bound to be several themes for any mood you can dream up.

Revise your “About” page: New bloggers tend to give short shrift to their “About” page. If your writing is at all good, people will want to know about the person behind the voice. Flesh out your bio with information about your background, experience, and reasons for blogging. This is also the place to put all those links to your profile on various social networks that you stripped from the front page while un-pimping.

Create an “Archive” page: Most blogging software will automatically post links to monthly (or even weekly) archive pages into the sidebar of your blog. While this can look pretty neat when you’re just getting started, after a while that list starts getting pretty long — and it’s debatable whether it’s useful to let your readers browse by date, anyway. Before the list gets too unruly, move it to its own page (put a link to “Archives” in its place on the front page). Better yet, create a page with links to your archives by category or tag as well as by date.

Add or update your logo: Most blogging programs create a nicely formatted header with your blog’s title and maybe a tagline, which is good, but if you’re in it for the long haul, you’re going to want a stronger brand image than just a title. Create — or have a graphics-savvy friend or even a professional create for you — a cool logo that says something interesting about you and your blog. This can be as simple as the title or its initials in a cool font that expresses the tone of your site, or an actual graphic (think: Nike’s “Swoosh”) that sums up the way you want your readers to feel.

FootNote ~ The ones who write well, show they’re serious, and have some staying power