Blogging Blog

This is an old adage that applies to blogging very powerfully. Less is more. What do I mean? Look around at the blogs you read on a daily basis. Many of them come full of all kind of goodies - calendars, social bookmarking icons ( sometimes they include ALL of them! ) , Digg buttons, blogrolls that go on forever, tons of pictures, RSS subscriptions buttons, advertising, and more. I can see you nodding your heads - you’ve seen it. I’d venture to guess that some of your own blogs have some clutter too. We’ll work on that later.

People decide very quickly once visiting your site whether they want to read it or not. Everyone has loaded up a page only to see dozens of icons and eyesores, only to click “back” as soon as possible. Do you want people to react that way when when visiting your site? Sit down, take a long, hard look at your site. What features could you do without? Do you need a blogroll with 67 entries? Is it absolutely necessary to have 12 RSS aggregator buttons on your sidebar? Think about what contributes to your site’s appeal, and remove the rest. Just take it off! Your site will load faster, you’ll use less bandwidth, and your readership will grow. Try it. Read more about minimalism on blogs at more minimal.