This week I have been carefully relearning all the scripting languages I know. I started with xhtml/css and I was so surprised about how much I had forgotten and how some of it had changed, everything improves and changes even when we think we have mastered it. This started me thinking, “How can I use this in blogging?”, then it hit me!

The Audience

Yes, you! Many bloggers find a style and subject that suits them and always uses it. This is good, but the readers will soon get bored. So even if a blog has thousands of readers, it may be a good idea to every so often have a change of style so that the audience does not stop reading the blog as much. A lot of people blog about areas that they know about, but if they do not always keep up to date with it they may run out of information to talk about, or maybe post about things that are very out of date.
So ways to improve what you post would include:

• Know the most up to date information about what you are talking about, or it may not be very useful.
• Compare new advancements with ones posted about in previous posts.
• Ask the readers how you could improve

They are just a few examples, though I am sure you could think of hundreds of other ideas.

Design

An amazing way to improve the readers attention and introduce new members is to, as Darren Rowse has proven in the last year with ProBlogger.net, redesign the blog. This does not need to be very often, but with advancements in scripting and new “design fashions”, it is a good idea to produce a new amazing blog design. This is a good thing to do even if you already have a massive audience and an amazing design.

In the up and coming weeks I shall be writing a very long post, or maybe a series, about Blog Design so I shall not go into any more detail right now.

I hope you found this useful,
Shane Hudson

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Grabbing a readers attention is a very important to becoming a successful blogger, it is an art that many people work on for years and still fail to perfect. There are many of tips and tricks that can be used to grab the attention that may turn the reader into a subscriber. I am going to show you some of these little tricks and hopefully you will quickly see the difference. I am going to talk about all the tips within one phrase, as many people find phrases easier to remember subconsciously (It is very important to make blogging almost like a second nature).

“From The Top Down”

This is a phrase that you often hear for different reasons, in the blogging world it helps to always remember it. I often use it as one of my Golden Rules of Blogging (which I may talk about another time).

Header

The first thing that the audience see is usually the logo or header, this means that a lot of effort must be put into it to make it something everyone remembers.

I have carefully chosen a few examples.

As you can see some of these stand out more than some of the others, so it is very important to make one that stands out as much as possible. This is the part worth spending money on.

Post Titles

The next element on most blogs is the title of the latest post. Many people, including myself, often use dull titles such as:

• Site Review -

• Latest News

• How to …

Most readers would look at the title and skip the post or even the whole website. It is very important to choose catchy titles which are unique. Some examples of these include:

• 10 Ways To Sell A Site In 10 Minutes

• A Look Into

• Ever Wondered How To Do … ?

These may sound like adverts you would see on T.V but that is exactly what you want to do.. successfully sell each post to the readers. It is sure to grab the attention. Now you have the attention you need to keep it!

Content

The content of each post is obviously the most important element. If the reader is reading a post then it means you have their attention, so straight away you need to impress the reader and keep them reading. To do this you need to make sure your post is original and unique, even if it is just from a different viewpoint that many other bloggers and posted about.

One good way of coming up with ideas for your posts is asking questions to yourself. When your walking around doing your everyday work just start asking questions which may help when you blog, for example:

• Why is my friend’s page rank so low?

• What did I struggle with when I was new?

• How could I help other people?

All these kinds of questions would help give you ideas of what to write about.

Another very good way to interest the reader and keep attention is to include pictures, clip art is often used and works very well, as this visually attracts the reader to the post. Both Shannon Lilly and Mark Cuda use clip art and both say its worth it! Maybe I should start listen to their advice..

I hope you all liked this post, I enjoyed writing it.
Shane Hudson

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