These 10 Things Will Make Your Personal Blog Better

Do you know that you can make your personal blog better than what it currently is?

Yes, my friend, it is possible for any personal blogger to raise their standard of blogging.

As a matter of fact, your personal blog should improve for the better as time passes (Any blogger who has been blogging for the period of two years and over will admit to you that they are way better at blogging than when they first started).

So, without further ado, I am going to share ten simple methods of making your personal blog better with you.

1.) Create An Amazing “About” Page For Your Personal Blog

Too many personal bloggers have neglected to think about the positive effect that it has on readers.

It is no huge secret that:

1. Visitors to personal blogs will want to learn a bit about the owners of the blogs.
2. Vistors to personal blogs will want to get an idea of what types of blog posts that they will encounter whenever they visit those blogs.

In most instances, a person will decide to follow (or not to follow) your personal blog by simply reading the content within its About page.

By the way, there are people who would not follow any blog without an About page.

So, never underestimate the importance of adding an About page to your personal blog (If your personal blog does not have an About page, you should add one).

2.) See To It That Your Personal Blog Is Easy To Navigate

It is a sad fact, that a lot of personal bloggers do not take the navigation of their personal blogs seriously.

Yes, my friend, it is true!

On many occasions, I landed on the homepage of a blogger and I was unable to find:

• Where their blog posts were located.
• The location of their About page.
• Where their Contact page was located.

It was as though the blogger wanted me to play the guessing game (Apparently, they wanted me to guess where things were located on their personal blog).

To put it bluntly, a visitor should not have the cause of going through the trouble of guessing where things are on your personal blog; you should make it easy for them to know where things are located on your personal blog.

I am also passing on part of the blame to WordPress.com because they have made the homepage setup somewhat complicated for new users (A lot of the newcomers to WordPress have left their homepage in its default state; which displays a so-called example of a blog’s homepage).

My goodness WordPress, what did you do? What in God’s/Goddess’s name happened to the old way of doing things?

In the past, WordPress bloggers did not have to guess how to go about setting up their blog’s homepage because, by default, it displayed a sample of their recent blog posts.

So much for changing things for the better.

3.) Avoid The Mistake Of Using Too Many Plugins And Widgets On Your Personal Blog

Some newcomers to blogging have made the mistake of using too many plugins and widgets on their personal blog (There is really no need for them to use all of the proverbial bells and whistles).

Having too many plugins and widgets on your personal blog will only slow it down.

Therefore, the best action to take is to use the plugins and widgets that you actually need.

As a rule of thumb, your blog should not take more than two seconds to load.

If your blog takes too long to load because of the huge quantity of plugins and widgets that you are using, you will end up losing potential visitors (They will simply go somewhere else; preferably to another blog that loads faster than yours and provides them with the information that they want).

4.) Fill Your Personal Blog With High-Quality Blog Posts

High-quality blog posts are:

• Devoid of misspelled words.
• Without grammatical errors.
• Filled with lots of knowledge that readers themselves can actually use.

It should not come as a surprise that most people would prefer to spend their time reading high-quality blog posts.

If you need assistance with spelling and grammar, you can utilize cloud-based writing assistants like Grammarly and Ginger.

And, researching your chosen topic in advance will make it easier for you to create a knowledgeable blog post.

Dear friend, publishing high-quality blog posts on your personal blog will make it better.

5.) Create Images For Your Personal Blog

Using royalty-free stock images on your personal blog once in a while is okay.

However, creating images for your personal blog is even better.

Why?

Because it helps your personal blog to visually stand out from the rest of the other blogs in the blogosphere.

Canva comes highly recommended for creating images for your personal blog.

Kayleigh Alexandra’s article, How To Create Featured Images For Your Blog Using Canva, will provide you with some pointers on using Canva.

6.) Respond To Comments That Were Made In The Comments Thread Of Your Personal Blog

Commenters love it when you respond to their comments.

If a person can take the time to leave a thoughtful comment in the comments thread of your personal blog, the polite thing to do, of course, is to respond to it.

Also, the blogger who has a high track record of responding to comments tends to receive more comments whenever they publish a blog post.

Whereas, the blogger who does not respond to comments is viewed as being an uncaring type of person; someone whom most people will want to avoid at all cost.

Do you respond to comments that were made in the comments thread of your personal blog?

7.) Spend At Least Fifteen Minutes A Day Brainstorming Ideas For Future Blog Posts

Every blogger on the face of the Earth is aware of the fact, that they need to continuously add new blog posts to their blog in order for it to remain active.

Therefore, engaging in the act of brainstorming with the sole intention of coming up with ideas for your future blog posts is a must (Devoting fifteen minutes to this particular task will enable you to come up with useful ideas ― the type of ideas that you can use to create blog posts for your personal blog).

You can store the ideas that you have brainstormed for your future blog posts in:

• Your traditional notepad (The one that has actual pages that are made of paper and that you can write on with a pen, pencil or marker).
• Your smartphone’s notepad.
• A word processing software of your choice on your desktop computer, laptop computer or your tablet computer.

One of the main reasons why a lot of personal bloggers watch a blank screen and panic is because they do not have a clue as to what they would like to blog about (So, in this case, having access to ideas for your future blog posts will prevent you from getting a panic attack).

The good thing about having access to the ideas for your future blog posts is that you can begin transforming them into actual blog posts at a time that is most convenient to you.

8.) Make It A Habit Of Yours To Complete The Draft Copies Of Your Blog Posts

A lot of personal bloggers have unfinished drafts in their blog’s dashboard area (Do keep in mind that every draft is a potential blog post).

Cultivating a positive habit; such as completing the draft copies of your blog posts will ensure that they will be published within your chosen time frame; for example:

• One blog post daily.
• Three blog posts weekly.
• One blog post per week.
• One blog post fortnightly.
• One blog post monthly.

It is up to you to choose how frequently you would like to publish blog posts on your personal blog.

Your unfinished drafts are akin to a goldmine and finishing those drafts is the figurative mining process.

Believe it or not, I do not have any unfinished drafts in my blog’s dashboard area.

And, why is it that I do not have any unfinished drafts in my blog’s dashboard area?

Because I have developed the habit of completing the draft copies of my blog posts (Dear friend, you can do the same as I with a bit of self-determination and practice).

A lot of bloggers would have sufficient material for their personal blog if they made a sincere effort to complete the draft copies of their blog posts.

So, promise me (starting from today) that you will make a sincere effort to complete the draft copies of your blog posts.

9.) Get Some Of Your Real-Life Friends To Read The Draft Copies Of Your Blog Posts

You can use your real-life friends as your test audience; their task would involve reading the draft copies of your blog posts thoroughly and telling you what you need to improve on afterwards (You can think of it as getting a dose of constructive criticism from a bunch of people).

Dear friend, the whole purpose of this exercise is to find out what is in need of changing or adding before you actually press the Publish button.

Getting the perspectives of your test audience has the potential of making your personal blog better.

10.) Critique The Draft Copies Of Your Own Blog Posts

A lot of us have been critiquing the draft copies of our own blog posts from day one (Some of us have been way too harsh when it comes to critiquing our own work, while some of us have been a bit too lenient in the area of critiquing our own work).

If you often view the draft copies of your blog posts as being never good enough, there is a high probability of not publishing them on your personal blog.

Whereas, if you have the anything-goes attitude, you run the risk of publishing substandard content on your personal blog.

The best approach, of course, is the middle way; which involves not being too harsh when you are critiquing the quality of the draft copies of your own blog posts and making sure that the draft copies of your blog posts are up to standard.

One must always remember, that perfection is a myth and the most that any blogger can really do is to publish a blog post that is in alignment with their high standard of blogging.

Final Thoughts

As you have learned, bloggers can make their personal blogs better by:

• Creating an amazing About page for their personal blog.
• Seeing to it that their personal blog is easy to navigate.
• Avoiding the mistake of using too many plugins and widgets on their personal blog.
• Filling their personal blog with high-quality blog posts.
• Creating images for their personal blog.
• Responding to comments that were made in the comments thread of their personal blog.
• Spending at least fifteen minutes a day brainstorming ideas for their future blog posts.
• Making it a habit of theirs to complete the draft copies of their blog posts.
• Getting some of their real-life friends to read the draft copies of their blog posts.
• Critiquing the draft copies of their own blog posts.

Please feel free to share your opinion on what you have just read (You can do that by leaving a comment in my blog’s comments thread).

Also, if you believe that this blog post would be helpful to others, you are more than welcome to share the link to it on your favourite social media account.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to having you here on Renard’s World in the near future.

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