Blogineering

In the previous post, we have discussed some tips about designing blogs. In this post, we are going to suggest the pages, widgets, and sharing buttons that you should place in your home page. We are not saying you include them all, but you might want to experiment to see their effect to your traffic.

• Post List Tab/Page. As early as one month, create a Post List tab or page. This will enable you to organize your posts list later.  If your blog has grown much, you may want to create a page for each ‘big’ category. An example of this is Math and Multimedia, our main blog . Oor posts are divided into four: Mathematics, Multimedia, GeoGebra, and All4Free(for freebies).
• Calendar Widget. Many blog platforms include a calendar of posts. This will make navigation easier and would likely generate more traffic. In most calendar widgets, the colored dates indicate that a post was made.

• Top Posts/Popular Posts. If people visit a blog with a lot of posts, aside from searching in the search box, they would probably take a peek at the most popular posts.
• Recent Posts. I think this is one of the most popular widgets. It displays the list of the most recent posts.
• Related Posts.  Readers who have a read a particular post are likely to be interested to read a related post so this widget will likely increase traffic on your blog. In fact, it’s my number one source of traffic.
• Search Box. This is very important since your blog will definitely grow over the years, and as a blog grows, browsing will be getting harder.
• Follow Me on Twitter Button. Twitter is one of the most popular microblogging software on the internet, so it is a must to have a Follow me on Twitter button. If you don’t want to tweet the blog on your personal Twitter account, you can create a Twitter solely dedicated to your blog like the Twitter account of Blogineering. You also have to tweet (much better if automatically) all your posts to your Twitter.
• Like Me on Facebook Button. Again, this is a very effective way of promoting, but before you can do this, you must create a Facebook Page.
• Share buttons in each post. If readers like your post, they will share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and other social networking site. Note that this should be different from the share buttons on your side bar.
• Blogroll. Your blogroll is the list of blogs that you follow.
• Email Subscription box. This is the box where your readers can follow you via email.
• RSS Feed button. This is also one of the most popular ways of following blogs.
• Tag/Category Cloud. This is not probably very popular, but this can also be a source of good traffic.
• About Me/About Blog. Most bloggers would not tell you who they are, but I think the readers would prefer to know ‘who’ they are reading.
• Public Email. One of the common mistakes of bloggers is not putting their email address on their blog. If you don’t want to be contacted via email, at least, put something where readers can reach you.

That’s all for now, see you in the next post.