Starting and managing a blog is both exciting and challenging. The competition is incredibly high, and it might seem impossible to reach the target audience. However, students can keep their blogs going with a clear marketing strategy. In this article, you’ll find out how design can enhance your marketing strategy for a blog.
Why Design Matters?
Marketing is much more than just creating good content. Although content is king and will always be, it is important to present it most effectively. This is where design plays an integral role.
Of course, if you are not a design major, you might think that you do not have enough time to learn all the intricacies that come with the great visuals of a blog. Students have to balance studies with part-time employment, social life, and content creation. This creates a pretty busy schedule. Only college assignments can be a huge obstacle in this. However, there is a way out. Students can “pay someone to write my paper” at any moment. Professional academic platforms offer fast and qualified writing, editing, and proofreading assistance with all types of college papers. So you can delegate polishing your essay or case study to a professional author and get more time on your hands.
Experienced writers can promptly deliver excellent results and offer valuable advice on academic writing. This helps build advanced skills and get a better grip on this subject. Also, they can create a unique and excellent paper from scratch, even on short notice. So there is no point in postponing deep marketing dives.
How important designs in the success of a website? Here are the main factors to consider:
- It creates a first impression. A lot of users click away immediately if the website is slow, overloaded with elements, or simply unpleasant;
- It directly impacts the load speed of a page, which is an essential factor in SEO ranking. This is one of the major parts of successful digital marketing;
- It ensures the readability of the content. No matter how good your post is, if it is unreadable due to fonts, colors, or sizes – users are not going to stick to the end;
- It emphasizes the content itself. Such factors as blank spaces, fonts, and layout help keep the focus on the text;
- It endorses shares with social media buttons or interactive elements;
- It builds brand awareness and recognition;
- It ensures easy and comfortable navigation.
To put it directly – design is a fundamental part of user experience. And this is exactly why student bloggers should care about it. How users see and interact with your blog defines whether they will like it or come back. You can build a loyal and supportive community by taking care of small details.
Work on Content Structure
It is a creative field with a lot of room for expression. But some marketing practices have proven to be extremely effective. Here are some tips on improving your blog’s appearance from a marketing and UX standpoint.
The first step to take care of is how you present your content. Whether a how-to guide or a listicle, it needs to be readable, visually pleasing, and comprehensive.
This includes:
- Font style and size;
- The format in terms of headings;
- Adding bullet points;
- Highlighting important parts or citations;
- Incorporating multimedia;
- Color combination on the page;
- Heading dimensions;
- Usage of brand elements (logo or colors).
Ideally, students need to develop a collection of templates and guidelines to streamline this process for their site. A good way to structure content is to use a table of content with links to specific paragraphs.
Incorporate Essential Elements
According to the best practices, blogs need to have specific design features for a better user experience. These are:
- Search bar;
- Author’s name and photo on the main page;
- Date of publishing;
- Share buttons;
- Email sign-up tool;
- Subscribe feature;
- Related articles part;
- Comments;
- Approximate reading time.
All of them provide more comfort for visitors. And they make your website look professional and credible.
Build Brand Awareness
Some might not consider blogging suitable for branding. But it is not true – this is your personal brand. Visual representation of it helps stand out from the competition and become memorable.
Take a look at beautifully designed platforms and take note of what makes them so likable. Pay attention to consistency when it comes to brand colors, logos, formats, and fonts.
Consistency is the key to brand awareness. Work on these visual elements and define the guidelines on what type of imagery to use and how.
Increase Engagement
High-quality visuals significantly increase engagement. Content with imagery is more shared and reposted. The best way to achieve that is to use original images.
It is also essential to have social media share buttons as design elements of the page, of course.
Take Care of Readability
Typography is vital for readability. It means fonts, sizes, and blank space. All successful pages have a significant amount of blank space. Why? Because this way, it is easier to read the text. Besides blank space, you can incorporate images, infographics, or citations to break huge chunks of text into manageable pieces.
Otherwise, the page looks cramped and unreadable. The ideal font size is between 15px and 18 px. Medium uses 21px, which is also effective. Overall, the larger it is, the easier it is to comprehend.
As for the style, it is better to choose traditional fonts that perform perfectly on various devices and operating systems.
Consider Additional Elements
It is essential not to overload the page with too many things. But some other elements might be useful in blog design. For example, students might incorporate filters for content or progress bars for pages.
In Summary
The design of a blog is an integral part of successful marketing. It directly influences user experience, load speed, SERP, and SEO performance. Also, it helps stand out from the competition and reach the target audience.
