What could and should appear in blog sidebars

When it comes to business blogs, our day to day focus is what goes on in the middle of the screen, the place where we write and display the posts for our readers. That’s where our effort goes and rightly so.

Nevertheless, there is more to a successful business blog than just the writing. The blog will have a business aim and we need to both maintain and direct our readers’ interest according to what our business aims are. The blog posts will do some of this but a lot of the activity will also go on in the sidebars and the header of a blog. Some of these will be to add additional life to the blog, others will help them navigate the posts of the pages of a blog and others will highlight certain aspects that we want to encourage them to look at.

There are lots of different options that we have to choose from (and space is after all limited) but here are some ideas which you might like to consider as you develop your blog:

• Contact Details: could be on a separate page linked to from the sidebar but should be prominent. It’s no good someone liking your work and then not being able to contact you!

• Author Profile: blogs are personal so it’s important to let your readers gain an insight of the blogger whose articles they are reading. Give them an overview and let your writing fill in the gaps;

• Purpose of blog: it’s often a good idea to give readers a snapshot of what you are writing the blog for and what you want to achieve with it - it can help to give context to the posts and encourage them to read further;

• Photo of blogger: taking the idea of blogs being personal one step further. Let them see what you look like!

• Most commented posts: one possible way of demonstrating what has created most interest with your readers and inspired most comments;

• Last 5 posts: let people have easy access to your latest posts. This is particularly good on the individual post pages rather than the main blog page where, of course, the most recent posts are generally visible;

• Recent comments: whether you show the last 5 or last 10, let people see who is commenting on which posts. Additionally, it can act as a small “thank you” to those who have taken the time to leave comments as well as inspire others to;

• Blogroll: a list of sites from the blogger which are being recommended to the blog’s readers as well worth visiting. Adds value and helps make your blog a central resource of information;

• RSS Subscription (RSS reader and email): you’ll want to encourage readers to sign up to receive your regular blog updates, so make it clearly visible and make sure that they can do so via email too!

• Newsletter Signup box: hopefully, you’ll be running a newsletter in conjunction with your blog so explain what it offers and then get the signup box clearly visible.

• Links to other sites: not all sites may make your Blogroll but these would be other ones that you would like to recommend with links or logos;

• Promotion of future events: if you are running seminars, courses or presentations, then this would be a great place to make your readers aware of them;

• Promotion of products and/or services: in the same way as you might promote your events, then you can also link through to your products or services and promote them (in an appropriate fashion!);

• Categories: one of the key structural elements and a principal tool in navigating your blog is through the categories, generally divided along main topic lines;

• Monthly archives: again a key structural element of a blog though probably less used by readers now;

• Search: the search box should be a standard feature on every blog so make sure it’s easily accessible;

• Tags / Tag Cloud: a way to demonstrate the areas that the blog focuses on and a second navigation method to supplement the categories;

• Testimonials: either testimonials or even customer logos can be a good way to link through to case studies or project overviews;

• RSS Feeds from other sites: bring in relevant industry news from other sites can be a good way to add specific information to your blog;

• Favourite books: recommended books which will interest your target audience, perhaps linked through to Amazon with or without affiliate code in the links;

• Adverts: if you are looking to monetise your blog then adverts will feature prominently … but remember the distraction value;

• Industry News: perhaps using the RSS feeds as suggested previously or using other inputs.

As you can see, there are wide variety of elements that you can place in the sidebar or sidebars of your blog and this is probably only scraping the surface. What you place there and the order you show them will depend very much on the goals that you have for your blog, though, so choose wisely. What do you have on yours?