I HATE it so much when people say no design required. I believe that this is absolute crap and completely misleading.
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Tip from Podcast 53: I am afraid to say
Blogging is a lot of freakin work and I try and tell everyone that. Right now I am teaching a blogging course at SMU and I just had my first course. I think that I may have scared the crap out of those people because I told them how hard this is going to be. The key to blogging is truly having a plan. Blogging takes a great deal of time, to do it right. I myself did not dedicate enough time when I started this blog.
Now let’s get down to it and discuss: What Makes Me Angry
When it comes to the world of digital, there are always design decisions to be made. No matter what you are working on, you will have to make choices. When someone says my landing page software requires no design, that is completely a lie.
What I cover in this Podcast:
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- You still have to have an idea.
- You still have to have a color palette even if it is a color palette of sorts.
- Unless your website is going to look like Craigs List you have to have an idea.
- Do I want an arrow that points?
- Do I want a box as a button or do I want my button to be round?
- Do I want it to be green, blue yellow or?
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RESOURCES AND LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS BLOGCAST INCLUDE:
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A Blog Design Tip from About.com
2. Know Your Audience
Your blog’s design and content should reflect the expectations of your audience. For example, if your intended audience is teenagers, the design and content would be quite different than a blog targeted to corporate professionals. Your audience will have inherent expectations for your blog. Don’t confuse them but rather meet and exceed those expectations to gain reader loyalty.
This is such a crucial point when it comes to designing for the digital. It is so easy to get caught in the trap of designing for yourself instead of your audience. Even on the “simple” design tasks such as a landing page, you must consider the audience.
Do you struggle with who your audience is? If you do then do some competitive research and see what others are doing. if you are about to building out some pop-ups or landing pages, don’t do it blind. Go ahead and scope out the competition. Also, you should have a good idea of your audience is so don’t just go to the competition but go to where your audience is. Your audience has other interests besides your offering, so go to the “other” places and see what their color palette is like and what their design is like.
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Thank you so much for stopping by my show notes for the I Teach Blogging Podcast series.
I would love your comments and feedback. Also, if you have any questions that you would like discussed in future episodes, please either leave them in the comments below or shoot me an email at [email protected].
[su_box title=”What do you think?” box_color=”#81c11d” radius=”6″]So that is my rant. What do you think? Am I alone in this one?[/su_box]
You can listen to all of my podcast at:
Don’t forget to clickety on my PDF download of Tips on Blogging for Business. It covers some tips about the Yoast Plugin and a few others that I install on all of my clients’ blogs.
Hi Renee. As a web designer and fellow blogger, I have to agree with you that there is indeed designing involved when creating a website or blog. Thankfully there are quite a few resources out there to help with that, like the ones you listed here. With the blogging platform I use with my clients, there really is very little design skill needed which is very nice for beginners. But I agree with you that you still need to consider your audience even if you are using a pre-designed theme. It needs to fit your niche and appeal to the right audience. The target audience should always be a blogger’s first concern!