Using your Blog
A few Thursdays ago I posted about the site structure and the pages you need to start your website. Today, I shall write about using your blog posts.
If you have a blog, you will find a page somewhere on the site that lists your blog posts. Many themes default blog posts to the home page, but they don’t have to be there.
The blog adds posts to the list at the top, so the posts are older as you scroll down the post page. If you click on the title of a post, you go to a new page with just that post and nothing else. This page has a unique url, which means you can link directly to it.
Creating a post is similar to creating a page and if you are familiar with word processing, you should not have too much trouble.
However, you might object you do not want a blog. You may have heard you should post every day and you really don’t want to take on all that work.
Do you need the blog for your business or project? Your online presence is not what it would have been a few years ago. Today, your site needs to be active and to be seen to be active. A blog is one way of bringing activity to your site; I’ll write about others in future posts in this sequence. If you choose to do something other than blogging, that’s fine but don’t use the work involved as a reason not to do it. If you haven’t got the time, why be online at all?
So, how can you use your blog? Blogs are personal records and there are some advantages to sharing personal experience. Equally, blogs can be for teaching and if you want to be taken seriously online, this is something you should consider.
Blog posts do not have to be learned in tone or terribly long. A brief post that makes an informative point is all you need. Posting regularly helps you become established online but it is not essential.
Some Ways to Use Your Blog
- Simply, write about your business or specialty. Be informative and offer your best information. This will in time establish you as an expert in your subject area.
- You can publicise events on your blog. Set up a category called “Events”. You can add that category to your navigation, so that “Events” appears in your main navigation bar. For a new event, simply add the details to a post and add it to the “Events” category. Visitors can see at a glance what is going on. If you set up another category, “Archive”, you can add it as a drop-down under “Events” in your menu bar. Simply move an expired event from “Events” to “Archive”. Visitors can see what you’ve been doing. You can of course add photos or videos to your archive. This is neater than simply adding events to a page and easier to navigate.
- Let’s say your website features several groups or you want to list partner organisations. You can assign these to categories in a similar way to events. In WordPress there are plug-ins that help you organise this type of information on the page.
- You can set up your blog so that each new post is automatically communicated to your social media. (More about social media later in this sequence.) So, you can use your posts to publicise your website and your work.
So, blogs are one way of organising the information you want to share on your site. Your designer / consultant can help you work out the best way to use your blog.
Have you any examples of creative ways of using blogs?