This is the first in a series of five posts that I have written on blog promotion for beginners.

Introduction

Blog promotion is important if you actually want to people to read your blog. No matter how good the content or design of your blog is, if you do not tell people about it, it will not be read.

Should I Promote My Blog?

Firstly before your promote your blog you should consider whether it is worth promoting at all. Is your blog worth sharing with the whole world? Does it have good content? Good design? Is it different or better than other blogs already out there?

You might also consider whether to keep your blog a secret like an online dairy. If you use blogger you can do this by setting your blog to private in the basic settings by selecting “no” for adding your blog to listings and letting search engines find it, and then in the permissions section selecting only the blog author can read this blog.

If you decide that your blog is worth promoting and that you want to share it with the world, the next four posts will be useful to you.

Next Post: Submitting To Search Engines

What Is This Blog About?

CrashedUp.com is a magazine style blog with videos, podcasts and reviews (to be added in the future).

Design

The design of CrashedUp.com is different in that it is powered by Joomla, which is an unusual choice for bloggers. The header looks good and the overall feel of the blog is very clean. However, it definitely needs an about section, as it is very difficult to decipher initially what the blog is about.

User Friendliness

This blog is easy to navigate due to a brilliant navigation bar located at the top of the blog. It also has useful latest news and popular posts sections.

Content

The content of this blog varied, which is good to see in a blog. However, it is difficult to judge because this blog is only a few weeks old.

Overall Blogtasticness

6/10 so far…

Below are three essential pages that most blogs cannot live without:

1. About

This is possibly the most important page (other than your homepage) on your blog. It should tell the reader who you are, why you blog and what your blog is about. For many it is the first page that they go to when they visit a blog.

2. Contact

A contact page is another essential feature of a blog. Too many blogs do not have one. It allows you to get feedback from your readers and enables you to interact with them.

3. Archives

This page is important so that readers can browse through your older posts and delve deaper into your blog. Without one it can take a reader a long time to find a post that they are looking for and because of this they may get bored and leave your blog.

Note For Blogger Users: If you use blogger you cannot create stand alone pages. However, if you make these pages by using posts when you first create your blog, they will be at the end of your blogs archive and you can put a link in your blogs navagation to them, making them seem like stand alone pages. Or, you could just put about, contact and archives widgets in your blogs sidebar if it suits your blogs design.

What Is This Blog About?

Small Steps to Health is the blog of a 30 something and how she tries to balance her weight while dealing with the demands of her career and family.

Design

Small Steps to Health is a good example of how customizable blogger can be. It has a two column sidebar which includes some decent widgets such as popular posts and recent comments. However, although it has an about me section at the top of the sidebar, I would prefer that it had some text rather than a link to the blogger about me page. It also has a bit to many amazon adverts on one page, with a total of five. However, another good point is that it includes some good photographs integrated into its posts.

User Friendliness

This blog is easy to navigate despite the fact it has no navigation bar, as it has an archives widget at the top of the sidebar closest the content. I also like the use of feedburner headlines, which helps to point readers to other posts.

Content

The content of this blog as the title suggests is very specialised and therefore will not appeal to all. However, it does have some good advice for those who are interested in loosing weight and it is well written.

Reader Enjoyment

Despite the fact that I am not trying to loose weight I did find the content of the posts very interesting and I especially enjoyed her honestly.

Overall Blogtasticness

7/10

To quote Asithi “Until next time and thanks for stopping by.”

Every new blogger should definitely check out the technorati top 100 blogs for some inspiration. Technorati ranks them by how many links that they have to their blog, or as technorati calls it “authority”.

Check out these blogs for content and design to see what makes them popular, as well as how you can apply some of their tricks to your own blog.

Two of my favourite technorati top 100 blogs are Boing Boing and Smashing Magazine. Enjoy:-).