How to Build a Blog Seminar - Sarah Bates - Start Up Wednesday

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In order to become more informed about how to create content for a website or blog I attended a 'Start Up Wednesday' session by Sarah Bates. One of the key pieces of information I gleaned from this was to create a personal brand and to keep it consistent though-out, making it clear who you are and what you can offer from the outset.

http://www.sarahbatesdesign.co.uk/ - Sarah Bates' Website

The most important thing to do is to identify your audience before you build the blog.

Benefits of blogging:

1. Promote work.
2. Engage with the customer on a facing level.
3. Express yourself and your passion.
4. Build a professional network.
5. Build an online portfolio.
6. Earn exposure for commissions, employment and projects.  

Follow some websites and blogs to inspire your own blog, e.g. eye magazine, the design blog (TDB), Shillington Education.

Make sure you have a benefiting statement rather than just who you are, how you will be able to help them.

Think about the hierarchy of information, different thicknesses, italics, column lengths, pictures - if it's not engaging people will click away. The chunks of text should be in small paragraphs with headings, minimum of 300 words for a post.

The information needs to be accessed quickly and easily.

Stay away from one solid background colour, go with white and then soft greys and blacks for the headers.

Don't display the date if you're not going to be posting regularly. 

Tag all images in order for people to find your work.

Avoid swearing, people don't like it in a professional capacity.

Think about the values of your business and make sure the website reflects this, it should be consistent and personal to the business. There should be select key words that people can type in, and your business will come up as something associated with that. The blog should be filled with that key phrase.                      

Make sure the titles of the blogs are considered and interesting, this is what will come up initially, it's what the public and google will judge you by. 

Make sure that if you are linking to other pages, link specific words - don't paste the actual URL. This is ugly and distracting and will detract from the content.