As you may have seen already, we recently won the gold award in the 2012 Best Blog Design category from The Blogshop’s recently launched Best Blog Awards. Said to be “perfect’ by the judging panel as they believe Conspire to be “professional, accessible, [and] interactive”, it’s fantastic for us to receive confirmation on something we truly believe – that Conspire is a blog that stands out globally and is the leader in its field.
Today we draw on the three areas where we were marked highly for on our design, to help you develop your own business blog design and see the same success we have.
1. Professional, branded appearance
One of the main points that all of the judges noticed about Conspire was that it was obviously a Mindjet resource. A business blog is all about communication, but it has a number of positive by-products, such as raising brand awareness.
For example, when you head to the Conspire blog, no matter which page or post you view, you are greeted with the ‘Mindjet bar’, a red strip that runs across the top of the page. This not only gives you access to all parts of the blog, but it keeps driving home the fact that all of the blog’s informative, useful and thought-leadership content comes from Mindjet.
2. Everything is easily accessible
We know you should never make assumptions based on appearances, but we’re living in a fast moving world where time is very often of the essence (whether that means you need to find a website with the information you’re looking for within five minutes before you present to the Board or you’ve simply got 20 minutes to spend reading some information on your lunch and you want to ensure it’s the best information possible).
As this is the case, we very often – usually unknowingly – make our mind up on a website within a matter of seconds, which is why it’s crucial to ensure you’re doing everything to keep the visitor on the page.
With Conspire, as soon as the home page appears, you’ve got instant access to everything. Whether it’s the latest blog post, one of our discussion / topic areas or our social media profiles, we provide you with all of the relevant information needed in one quick and easy-to-digest way to ensure you can make the decision as to what you want to see or do immediately.
3. It’s visual
At Mindjet, we’re all about utilising visual resources to develop a more effective and efficient way of working. If you’ve read any of our blog posts before, you’ll have noticed we love using visuals in them too – but these aren’t simply to make the blog posts look good!
It’s been proven time and time again that the use of visuals increases user-interaction. It improves the experience for the reader. As great as simple copy can be, throw in some related images and you have a piece that is not only interesting to read, but which is aesthetically pleasing and therefore more attractive to the reader.
As a note, however, don’t just use any images – keep them related and on-topic otherwise you risk distracting the reader, confusing the message and making the piece more unsuccessful than if you weren’t to use any images at all.
Anyone can develop a blog, but not everyone can do it effectively. We’re delighted that the time and effort we’ve invested into Conspire has been recognised and we truly believe anyone can see the same benefits we do through a properly developed, designed and maintained business blog. For more information on how to create a successful business blog check out The Blogshop’s website!
Got other tips or ideas? Let us know what you think below!
