To build and grow a great blog that will attract sponsors requires a significant investment in both time and effort but when you make that commitment the potential rewards can be spectacular. But that will only happen if you build upon the right foundation, using the right framework.
This starts with a few key ingredients that are common with every successful blog you’ll come across.
- You need great content that delivers value. There are no exceptions to this rule. Even the best designs will fail without content that draws an audience in and holds them.
- You need an audience. Even the best content will come up short if it can’t be found by the right audience.
- You need a blog design that keeps the focus on the content you are delivering. A blog that is too busy, with too many popups and other distractions, will cloud the value of your content, confuse your potential audience, and drive the reader away.
In this article, we’ll focus on the impact design has on your ultimate success or failure.
5 Blog Design Rules to grow your audience and attract sponsors
Rule 1 – Common Design Elements . The best blogs have common design elements that help them build their subscriber base and grow sponsorships and all of these focus on delivering a rich user experience, starting with the inclusion of a search option that helps your audience find what they are looking for. Don’t make them scroll around looking.
Also, be sure to place the search where it is most commonly found. This isn’t where you want to get creative. Search bars are most commonly found near the top right of a web page and it most commonly highlighted with a magnifying glass icon. Give them what they expect so they can find what they need.
Rule 2 – You want to encourage visitors to scroll around so they can discover new content and one of the best ways to do that is through the placement of article snippets that deliver a few key details.
Your main page should be a collection of the most recent articles and each listed article needs to include some eye-catching and interest-grabbing elements.
- An image that is relevant and that grabs attention will cause visitors to pause long enough to discover what the content has to offer.
- A title that is equally attention-grabbing and you’ll notice that this follows the image. We are drawn by the visuals and then grabbed by the anticipation the title creates, in that order.
- The title should always be followed by the name of the author and the date the article was published. For subscribers, this can help them quickly zero in on content they may be particularly interested in reading.
- A brief synopsis of the article. If the article has been well written, this can be the first paragraph since that will outline what follows.
Rule 3 – Make it exceptionally easy to share your content by including share buttons. The only question is how many places should they be placed and which absolutely must be included.
If you look at the stats, you’ll find that nearly 90% of all blogs have share buttons and they consistently include Facebook and Twitter. Most also include Pinterest, Reddit, and an email link. For business-focused and professional blogs, you will almost always see a share for LinkedIn. There are certainly others that may be included but which are best may come down to a bit of experimentation. Try one and see if it gets used. If yes, keep it. If not, take it off and try another.
As for placement, there are three main places where these are positioned, with each position being used almost equally. On an individual blog post page, add these at the top of an article so someone that likes the content but hasn’t quite gotten to the end can easily share it. For longer articles, put the share buttons at the bottom too. Don’t ask someone to scroll back to the top just to share what they’ve read.
On your main page and any other listing pages, let the share buttons float on the left-hand side of the page. This will keep it visible without stealing space from the actual content or the space you’ll set aside for sponsored ads.
Rule 4 – Don’t forget to set aside space for a sidebar for sponsored ads. You may also put a list of recent articles here so no matter where a visitor is, they can find something else they may be interested in taking time to read.
Remember one basic rule. The time spent on a site and any single page within a site will play a major part in determining how interested a sponsor may be in placing an advertisement on that page so you want to give visitors every possible reason to stay with you.
If you have a good archive or related content that you are confident in, put these in a list that’s also placed in the sidebar. These could be the most read articles or maybe those that have had the most shares. These are your money makers so be sure you’re keeping them in focus.
Rule 5 – Use calls to action so you can effectively convert visitors into subscribers. This allows you to build a more consistent flow of traffic while being able to independently reach out to your subscribers directly.
You will find that as your list grows, so does your access to sponsorships. Blog sponsorships are driven almost exclusively by the number of active subscribers you have signed up.
Just take care to place calls to action in places and at times that don’t break the user’s focus on your content. For example, you don’t want to bring up a popup that asks for a visitor to sign up just as they begin reading the article they’ve clicked on. The impulse to read that article is interrupted and will often be lost.
Instead, use a popup on the main page if you detect that the visitor is new to your site. Also, put it on the page when the visitor has done something that will take them away from your site. These have proven effective and reasonably risk-free.
Be sure to put calls to action buttons at the end of each article. That is a moment in their visit that you need to take advantage of. It’s following the old rule of striking while the iron is hot and honestly, that old rule remains relevant in the digital world too.
5 Reasons Why You Need Sponsors on Your Blog?
- Reason 1 – This applies to every sponsor you earn that is related to your product or area of expertise. Each brings you greater credibility as a trusted expert. That trust factor carries through to social engagement and search results. They become an important part of your growth engine as a new potential subscriber is drawn to your blog content.
- Reason 2 – They turn into revenue. When a sponsor is paying to place ads they’re providing a vote of confidence and rewarding you for building an audience they need to reach. That reward can help you build more and better content, expand into other areas of interest, maybe pay a few bills, and fuel your growth engine.
- Reason 3 – Many sponsors will offer you free products in exchange for your reviews. The best of these offers you the opportunity to write unbiased reviews on products or services that your audience is interested in. Besides just the fun of receiving presents, these also provide opportunities to create even more fuel for your engine in the form of more interesting content.
- Reason 4 – Sponsors can help you deepen your relationship with your audience by extending special offers that are unique to your audience, and the stronger your relationship becomes, the more valuable the sponsorships will become. It also helps build momentum as you work to continue growing your subscriber base.
- Reason 5 – Beyond your blog, building sponsor relationships can pay dividends like job offers, invitations to do public presentations, and chances to get in early on new opportunities as these sponsors work to build and introduce new products and services. If you look at your blog as a stepping stone to bigger and better opportunities, sponsors are your best and brightest opportunity.
How Do You Build a Blog That Will Attract Sponsors?
Follow a handful of simple rules in building your personal website. Populate that blog with some outstanding content. Make it easy for visitors to share your content. And finally, keep feeding the engine until you’ve built the momentum you’ll need to reel in the sponsors that will reward your effort.
To understand a bit more about how to build a blog that will attract sponsors and why those sponsors are so important, you can have a read through some of our other content on which website building tools are best. The best of these will help you stay true to the rule through the use of premade templates that do everything but write your content.
With the right tools, you’ll get this done quickly and with hardly any initial investment. That means you can jump right into building the great content you’ll need to build a great audience, and attract an outstanding set of sponsors.