Blogging Tips: 10 Must Have Blog Elements (And 10 Things You Should Never Do) #LearntoBlog

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How is your blog coming along? Kelli and I (from 3 Boys and a Dog) have been sharing our best how to blog tips over the last two months over on our Google+Hangout.

Yesterday we covered the 10 Must Have Blog Elements. We break them down for you and tell you the places you need to be looking on your site to ensure you’re utilizing your space to maximize your readers experience.

10 must have blog elements

And then we go a step further and we share the 10 Things We Hate About Your Blog.

Can you believe I just wrote that? Is that super mean?

We really do not hate your blog. We did not visit any of your sites and critique them. But, in our years of blogging we know what those blog elements are that drive us NUTS! And I promise you they are driving your readers nuts too! We really just want your site to be smokin’…. really!

The tasks this week are to go over these 10 Must Have items and 10 Get Rid of items. We promise your readers will be thrilled!

Join us next week (4-2-13) at 10:00 am CST over on Google+ as we discuss How To Get Giveaways for Your Blog and How to Promote Them.

Let me know if you need an invite so you can RSVP. You will need to be in either my circle or Kelli’s circle to get an invite, but we can totally make that happen for you!

More Blogging Tips

 

20 Comments

  1. I love these! Thankfully I have or don’t have most of these. I’m hoping in my redesign I can integrate my search box into the header at that time!

    1. HI Kelly- thanks for stopping by and taking the time to watch our video. We are glad you found the information useful.

      How exciting, redesign time can be so fun. (And sometimes a little stressful.)

  2. Julie @ 70WPM says:

    Thanks for the tips. Thank goodness I didn’t need to address any of the bad stuff! yay! Feel free to double check. =) The Must have list was great too. I have made a few changes and I will be work on the GT metrics because I didn’t get a very good YSlow grade.

    1. Julie- yay! Glad you’re good to go with the must haves and the things to get rid of.

    1. Awesome! Thanks for the feedback and thanks for watching.

  3. This was really fun to watch…I watched the whole thing. 🙂 I came across your link at the Tatertots & Jello link party. I’m glad you guys introduced yourselves at the beginning. 🙂

    ~Sarah

    1. Sarah- thank you so much for taking time out of your evening to watch it all. I know we covered a lot!

      We are thrilled you found it helpful.

      (And we love TaterTots and Jello!)

  4. Thanks for taking time to put together this video! I’m pretty new to the blog world, and the information was really helpful!

    1. Hi Emily. Welcome to the blogging world! So happy to have you here at Crystal & Co., and thrilled you’re finding these blogging tips helpful.

  5. Thanks girls! This was a great presentation. I have a lot of the same pet peeves! I took something away that I need to think about changing.

    Warmly, Michelle
    Faith, Trust & Pixie Dust

  6. Thanks for linking up at Whatever Goes Wednesday! These are definitely some great tips for bloggers! Thanks for taking the time to share them 🙂

  7. Hi Crystal, I have to say I stumbled upon your website and enjoyed watching some of your videos you did with Kelly. I liked the way your site looked. I then went to Sharon’s site, who designed your site and read her recommendations too. I think I now know why she offers so many expensive services…because you will need them in order to bail yourself out from her recommendations. I made the huge mistake of going with Dreamhost and it is not user friendly at all. No one to talk to either. I am now canceling it and going to check out Hostgater that has much more to offer newbie blogger. How can you tell folks how to set up their blog when you hired Sharon to design your blog and do it for you? She charges 1,300 for designing a blog!

    1. Hi Turnip-

      First, thanks for stopping by, watching our video and taking the time to read our blogging tips. I wish you had linked to your site so I could visit your blog. I love new blogs to add to my reading list.

      I started out on Blogger which is free and there was no need for a host. When I transferred to WordPress 2 years ago, Sharon my blog design gal, did the transfer for me for free. That was a service she offered at the time. This was in her earlier career in blog design. She did recommend Dreamhost at that time. I was content with Dreamhost until about 4 months ago, at which point I chose to leave and go with a private host. Dreamhost responded to my tickets in a decent manner, for the most part, until about 4 months ago, at which point I decided to leave. I have no idea who Sharon recommends today, but honestly is has no barring on her ability to design a gorgeous blog for endless number of clients.

      With that said, when Sharon designed my blog 2 years ago, her prices were not what is reflected in your comment above. I could not afford that. As her demand has grown she has been able to increase her hourly rate. Much the same as when you have a corporate job and as your expertise increases, your value to the company and your salary can increase.

      As a blogger you know that design is only one element of blogging. Kelli and I have not done a Google+ Hangout on how to design a blog. Our Hangouts thus far have focused on learning to blog in general covering aspects from managing and growing your social media to networking in a tribe as well as growing your pageviews and content. Now, Kelli has designed her own blogs. She is a guru on many levels. But, for me I am not savvy in that area and would rather focus my time on content and photography when it comes to blogging.

      As a fellow blogger you know there are many other facets and elements to blogging other than design. You can have the most gorgeous design, but if you do not have valuable content that draws readers in, brings value or solves a problem, your design will not do much for you. Content is king and that is just the beginning. There is editing, managing, photography, social media promotion and the list goes on and on. You must do all of these things when you blog.

      In the end, because Kelli and I have successfully grown our traffic, pageviews, social media profiles, reach, as well as grown our content development with over 5 years of blogging under our belts. We do feel we are qualified to teach others how to blog.

      Thanks for stopping by. Hope you walked away with valuable information even if you do not agree with my hosting decisions.

    2. Hi Turnip! Thanks so much for watching our hangouts. They are so much fun if a bit stressful. 🙂

      Crystal and I feel like we are a great team to help fellow bloggers to learn the ins and outs – our style of blogging and our blogging knowledge is so different from each other that it is great to show what we are each doing!

      When I started blogging, I started with a free site on blogger – it took me just a tad over 3 years to make enough money to move. I spent my life savings getting a blog moved and designed. Then, I wanted changes. LOL! I didn’t have a friend to do it for me so I managed to snag a job with a web hosting and design company and learned TONS of the back end of a blog from CSS and HTML5 to enough coding and such to change my blog and eventually build 2 more from scratch.

      Hosting is a big problem for many bloggers – as we grow we out grow what cheap companies can offer us and we begin to experience problems. Many of the large blogs use DreamHost but they have worked their way up to it over time. So, they started with them with a working knowledge of the back end of a blog. I, personally, don’t use dreamhost and never have so it is not something I recommend.

      Crystal and I are BOTH very open to questions. If you has asked, we could have given our recommendations – it is why we are doing our weekly hangouts – to honestly answer the questions you guys have. For hosting, I have been with edesign for about a year and have been extremely happy with her. She knows how to “dumb down” info and plus (the big plus) she is a mom blogger just like me and understands my needs. You can find her at: http://edesign-pro.com/

  8. I think the two of you are great! I have had my website for five years and I designed it myself, but that doesn’t mean that the two of you aren’t teaching the skills needed to create a great blog. I think it was very smart to go and find someone to design it for you. Keep up the great work! -Virginia

  9. I’m a very occasional blogger. I do it for fun. I do it for me. I do not make money at all but I do want to improve and I’ve gotten lots of good tips from this video! Thanks for you ideas. One of my pet peeves is bad grammar and typos!

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