Moms Network

1. Type your email and blog url correctly. Make sure that when you are submitting or providing your email address AND blog url (website address) to a website, directory or even friends and family, that you are typing it in correctly.  We see many instances of someone typing in ".com"  when it is actually ".org"  or ".info".  We also see many bloggers mistyping their blog address and email address.   By having a blog, you are hoping to get people to your blog, and will defeat the purpose by mistyping your blog address.  Instead of needing to type out your blog address all the time, we suggest that you type all your information in a short notepad/wordpad document that you can open up and simply copy and paste from.  And, if you are supplying your email address to anyone, or any website, people have no way of being able to reply back to you if you have typos in what you submitted. 

2. Don’t put too many buttons and widget graphics on your page.  One of the things we see in almost 50% of the blogs that are submitted to our blog directory is that they are overflowing with buttons & widgets.  We have seen some blogs with as many as 20 or more button graphics in their side bar.  While it is great to exchange links with other bloggers and join a variety of directories and communities, you should NOT put them all in your sidebars.  This will slow down the loading of your blog and will cause people to leave before they have been able to even view your blog.  We suggest that you have up to 12 key buttons/widget buttons in your sidebar.  Any other buttons, create a new page for them.  If you have several buttons for blog directories, you could create a page for all those links/buttons.  If you have several people you have exchanged buttons with, create a separate page for those buttons or better yet, exchange text links that you could include on that page or in your blog directory.  Don’t give people a reason to leave your blog before discovering what your blog is all about because you have loaded it down with too many graphics, or simply just cluttered your page making it hard for anyone to find what you have actually written about.

3. Don’t submit your blog to directories or promote it until it is ready.  Starting a blog is exciting and you will want to share it with everyone, BUT… you need to wait until you have it all set up with both the theme and look you want, AND including having written several blog posts.  Be patient, spend the time to get all your ducks in a row with your layout and widgets, but more importantly spend time to spend a few weeks or so blogging and getting the hang of what it is you want to be blogging about.  Take the time to let your blog take on a personality of its own. The world will still be there for you and your blog, and people will actually pay attention to your blog after it has gained some life and has some real content to it. 

Blogging is a great way to have a presence and voice online.  But if you want your voice to been seen out here, you need to remember the “basic” basics.