Posts Tagged ‘Design’

How To Build A Brand For Your Blog

May 17th, 2010

To create a successful blog, you need to develop a brand for your blog. A brand is essentially a recognisable name that people know information about. By creating yourself a brand, visitors can easily recognise you and talk about you which helps promote your blog.

So How Do You Create A Brand?

The first step is to offer your readers something. If you don’t have any products (or have content on your blog), it will be incredible hard to create a brand for yourself. So the very first step is having something that people want.

Have an Easy To Remember Site Name, Slogan, and Logo

For people to recognise your brand, you need to think of and create a name for your blog, a catchy slogan and logo. So when someone sees or hears about your site, they know what and who you are.

Keep A Consistent Blog Design

Find a theme, and stick with it – don’t change from on theme design to another. If your site looks completely different one day to the next, readers may get confused.

Build A Community

If you have a community around your blog, you are engaging with your readers. Ask them questions, respond to them and develop your brand to be helpful.

Be Consistent

If you are consistent with what you do, readers are less likely to visit your blog, thus promoting a negative image on your brand.

Be Out There

One final thing to mention is to be out there. If you are tucked away in your little corner of the internet, no one will find you and your brand will not exist. Interact with the online community in your niche, and help other’s out.

So how is your brand coming along?

5 Great Sites To Download Free WordPress Themes and Templates

February 8th, 2010

WordPress has to be one of the best blogging platforms there is. The reason for this is that WordPress can be customised a lot. There is a huge collection of plugins and themes that are free, and many other paid ones.

Today, we are focusing on a list of sites where you can download free WordPress themes. There are many more out there that are not covered in this post, but you can get a list over at our “Blogging Resource Hub”.

WordPress.org

Of course, the first place you are going to start looking for free WordPress themes is at WordPress itself. Currently in the theme directory, there are 1121 themes to choose from. But with almost 10,000,000 WordPress blogs, by using one of these, you will certainly find a lot of other blogs using the same design as you.

Free WP Themes

There are a few fewer themes at Free WP Themes compared to WordPress.org, but the collection isn’t that bad. The site is easy to browse and search through their listed themes. If you haven’t found one you like at WordPress.org, then this is another good spot to look.

WordPress Theme Base

WordPress Theme Base has a nice collection of free themes that you can choose from. The site is easy to use, navigate, and to browse themes. With links to the latest themes, best themes, most downloaded, most viewed and top rated, you will certainly see a theme that you like and others like.

Themes.Rock-Kitty

I would have to say that Themes.Rock-Kitty themes are more magazine typed style of themes, and some of them look quite professional. So if you are looking for magazine styled WordPress themes, then this site is pretty good.

Template Browser

This is a very basic site to download WordPress themes. With just a thumbnail, a preview and a download link, finding a theme that you like can’t be any more difficult.

These are only a few sites where you can download free WordPress themes. There are many more in which you can view a full list in our “Blogging Resource Hub”.

So what is your favourite site to download free WordPress themes?