Why You Need a Beautiful Blog
You have a blog. It works okay. You may even be making an income from it. But you need it to look great if you ever want to take it to the next level. For years, I have been instructing bloggers and content creators on various basic graphic design skills. In this post, I will explain why you need a beautiful blog. Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links.
I’ve been blogging for close to three years, and designing for five. When I first started, I didn’t understand why some blogs were so hard to navigate, and seemed so cluttered. Their photos were simply not up to par with the basic standards. Then , as I connected with other bloggers more and more, they started to ask me design related questions. I saw questions posted in groups, and some were directed right at me. I realized that, many simply did not know how to do it, or that they needed to.
This brought to my attention that there is very little design direction out there for bloggers.
I decided to take it upon myself to educate fellow bloggers on basic graphic design principles – starting with the WHY.
That’s why I went ahead, and after working on it for over two years I published the book How to Build a Beautiful Blog.
I decided to share some of it with you here.
Why you need a beautiful blog…
1. Your Audience – You are writing to reach an audience. Having a pretty blog means that it’s easier to reach your audience. It means your social media images will stand out OFF of your blog too, pulling in readers, getting you pageviews.
It makes your posts easier to read. Using the right balance of legible text with a clean design will allow readers to stay, read, click around, and subscribe. In my book, I discuss blog legibility, which fonts are best to use, and how to find them in depth.
2. Your Brand – But there’s a lot more to it than that. Your blog is your brand. Your brand is determined by your branding style, the graphics you use as you go along. You want it to be customized to your target audience – to attract sponsors, and of course, to attract the right followers to your blog so that sponsors will want to pay you.
If you plan to earn money off it, you need to have a solid brand in place. You need others to recognize you outside of your blog because they see your face in whatever it is you’re posting. In How to Build a Beautiful Blog I take you through branding your blog, and creating a high quality logo, for a tiny fraction of what it would cost to have one made by a designer.
3. Professionalism – Want people to take you seriously? You need a professional looking blog, following basic and proper design use. You want your “resume” (that is, your social media profiles, top posts, and more) ready and handy so that you show everyone you mean BUSINESS.
4. Sponsor work – Beyond just showing you have a specific audience by defining your brand, you want to showcase sponsored products in the best light possible. Learning the basic skills for presentable photography, plus some amazing (almost magical) photo editing skills will get you ahead of the game with sponsored campaigns. In my eBook, I teach you the basics of photo editing using Photoshop, and suggest a few free alternatives.
I see blogs primarily in two categories.
The first hired a professional to design and build it. How to Build a Beautiful Blog will ensure that you know how to guide your designer to create something that suits YOUR brand. It will teach you how to work individual posts, how to capture readers with imagery.
It will teach you how to pull people in via Pinterest – what type of imagery works best for which type of post.
The second is, like me, stuck with little or nothing to invest and is doing everything on its own. How to Build a Beautiful Blog is here to teach the DIYers how to DIY. Learn how to do things on your own so you don’t need to hire a designer, for a fraction of the cost of having a designer even think of doing a job for you.
It educates – teaching you basic design rules and principles. It will train you in a huge range of design-related skills, as it applies to your blog – from creating pin images that get repinned AND clicked, to fixing up your photos to make them look more professional. It will train you to understand the basics of design programs, while teaching you what to do if you can’t afford expensive software.
The best part? It has a whole section dedicated just to Pinterest!
Purchase How to Build a Beautiful Blog below.
I really admire bloggers. So much work goes into it. I don’t know how they do it all-blog posts, giveaways, FB & IG posts. It makes my head spin!
It’s our readers who keep us going 🙂
Thank you. Yours is nice.
Thank you for doing this post. I’m fairly new to blogging and appreciate all the help I can get.
With pleasure! Good luck with your blog – I love running mine!
I’m really loving this series too! Great tips.
An ascetically pleasing blog is one of the anchoring points of engagement. Readers and visitors are visual creatures. The appearance of the blog helps them poke around a bit longer.
I’m really appreciating your posts as I’m on the way on creating a new “not just another” blog, thanks a lot!!
Yay, good luck!
Fantastic post! I am the blogger you were talking to that is doing everything on his own. I just finished my blog/website and I feel as though I did a pretty good job. Insightful information and great tips on the photos to use on blogs. Never thought about taking my own photos instead of seeking the services of stock photography company.
Thank you, Joshua! I’ve found more than once that someone else had the same stock photo as me – way to be unique! I love taking my own photos, especially when the concept is simple.
Great post! I’m planning my blog at this moment and reading yours gives me inspiration, as well useful information. Thank you.
Thank you, Philip! I’m glad to hear – best of luck!
Fantastic tips. Hopefully my website meets some of the criteria you described on your post. Great work!
Joshua, I’ve taken a look, and your website looks beautiful! Congrats 🙂
Thank you so much. There’s a ton of work to do on the website. But I finally came across this design and I feel it is working out. I fell into the same category you fell in when designing your website. I don’t have the funds to higher a professional design company so I am stuck figuring things out. But I am realizing that I am more creative than I thought I was by undertaking this project on my own. Well wishes!
I feel like I am never done redesigning, tweaking 😉 I like doing things myself, even because that way I know I like it best!
I feel like that every time I look at my website. But I know I have to move on because the next thing on my list of things to learn is how to monetize my website. There’s a lot to do!
Thank you for this, it’s just what I need. I’m building my blog site alone and really struggling with the technology. So now at least I have some help with making it look beautiful!
Good luck with everything! A pretty start is a good start 🙂
I’m New here. I’m loving what I’m reading. Your very helpful and a good teacher. Thanks for the Info starting my blog soon 🙂
Good luck!
Thank you! This is just what I needed! I’m just starting out and have been wondering how I can take better pictures and edit them for my blog. This is fantastic! Have it pinned! Thank you again!
Good luck with everything!