Building Your Blog 102 - Spice It Up!

Blah blah blah... BLAM!  Blah blah blah... KABAM!

Don't let your blog be all... blah blah blah... blah.  Your visitors may come once and never come again.  Instead spice it up a little.  Don't know how?  Well aren't you in luck, because I'm here to teach you!

Four ways to spice up your posts:

1) Original Content

Yes, odds are everything you can think of is on the internet now.  So your job is to put it out there in a new and exciting way that nobody has done before, or at the very least, do it in the best way so that people will be drawn to your site instead of somebody else's.  Don't just copy other people's dog training tutorials... make your own and make them innovative if you're going to put out a dog training blog.  Get people talking about your blog because it has the best and most interesting content around!

2) Text

You might want to spice up your blog by using bold, italics, and different font colors.  Just be careful and don't over-do it.  The concept behind using these devices is to make important or unusual information stand out from all the rest.  Look at the numbered section headings in this article for example: they're all bold.  Not only does this break up the plain text throughout the article, but it gives the eye a place to travel and distinguishes the different informational sections.

3) Images

Grab any print magazine or newspaper and you'll see that they generally have at least one image (especially on the front page of the newspaper).  If you can find an image to match your content, stick it on there.  Just make sure you aren't using copyrighted material or you could get yourself into trouble.

Experiment with different image placement throughout your article.  Try putting it left, right, and center, and at the top, middle, and bottom of your articles.  Blogger allows you to put captions on images you use, so you can give credit where it's due, or you can put special information under the image.

Images are eye candy that users like to see, especially if it's a useful visual aid to your article, but they also help break up text so that people don't come to your post and just see tons and tons of text.  That can look daunting to readers, but if there's an image here or there to break it up, it looks more reader friendly.

Just be careful not to over-do it.  You don't want too many images unless it's necessary, and you don't want images that have absolutely nothing to do with the article.  It's also ok to post some article without images, but longer articles especially should have one.

4) Videos

We live in a day and age where just about anything can be found on YouTube.  If you're making a website about cats, then grab some funny cat videos and embed them into your post.  Like an image this will help break up text, and it also gives readers a reason to stay on your page longer.  Just be sure that the videos you embed have something to do with the post as well.

Check out our post HERE about how to post YouTube videos into your blog.

Average readers will spend between one and two minutes on your page before moving off to another site.  Some will stay longer, some will be there for only a few seconds to assess whether or not this is where they want to get their information.  An embedded video in your post will keep the reader there that much longer.

As with images and other devices, be careful not to overuse this feature in a post.  Not every post has to have an image or video, but it's nice to have a few here and there.  It gives your posts and website some sparkle and it gives your readers some eye-candy to look at!

Be sure to check out our posts about what to avoid in blogs, as well as our other great tutorials!

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