If you want to attract a family oriented audience to your blog, or one that is likely to read it while they are on their lunch break at work, then it is important that you clean up your blog’s image. When you make your blog appear more wholesome by removing offensive material and language, you will make your readers more comfortable reading your blog, and more likely to recommend it to their friends and families. Below is a list of the best ways to make sure your blog is clean – and it stays that way.
1.Clean Up Your Language
Using foul language might be your, or your writers’, way of showing enthusiasm or frustration with a topic, but it also makes your blog less family friendly. Clean up your blog by removing offensive language. If you are unsure about a term, err on the side of caution and switch it out for a more family friendly word or phrase. Try using different font sizes, or bolding or italicising words for emphasis, if you feel that the family friendly alternative is too mild to get your point across. Another option is to employ the use of different coloured fonts for emphasis. Just remember not to go overboard, since you want to keep your blog posts legible.
2.Watch Your Ads
While you may have signed up with a blog advertising service that puts advertisements on your blog without your review or approval, your reader do not know that. To someone visiting your blog, everything on the site, even advertisements that are clearly marked as such, has been reviewed and approved by the owner of the blog. This means that if your blog shows advertisements for pornography, gambling, sexual dysfunction medications, or even alcohol, your readers will associate them with your blog – and think of it as being less than family friendly. Contact your advertising service to find out how to get rid of these potentially offensive advertisements, or consider using a different means of advertising which will give you the ability to approve or reject each advertisement.
3.Exercise Editorial Control
If your blog is made up of a group of writers, then exercise your editorial control by setting rules on appropriate topics, and acceptable language. By adjusting the parameters that your writers worth within to produce your blog posts, you will be able to give your blog a more family friendly image in the content that visitors read. Keep out posts that discuss or mention sex, drugs, alcohol, or gambling. If you feel that you must discuss one of these items, clearly mark the link to the post as leading to adult oriented material, so that a reader is not surprised by what he or she finds after they click it. Remember, as the blog owner, you are responsible for the content that is on your blog, even if you did not write it.
4.Show Your Credibility
Don’t leave your readers with any doubts about how you feel about things like child pornography, or pedophiles. Put links on your blog to the authorities and other sites with information on how to protect children from predators. Consider also linking to resources to keep drugs out of schools, or having a widget on your blog’s sidebar with alert updates on missing children. A strong commitment to protecting children is an excellent way to increase your family friendly image.
5.Clean Up Your Links
Look closely at the links that your writers put in their blog posts. Make sure that none of them lead to blogs or other websites that are not family friendly. While your blog’s content may be family friendly, if it leads your readers to a website or blog that is not family friendly, the reader may associate the unpleasant surprise with your blog, and stop reading it. Continually evaluate any links on your blog’s main page, such as a side bar with a blogroll. Make certain on a weekly or monthly basis that a formerly family friendly website has not decided to switch gears and include inappropriate pop up advertisements for pornography or gambling, or to produce content that is not family friendly.
Your blog’s image is important in determining whether your visitors turn into readers, or if they continue to browse the web for someone else’s blog. While it is important to change your advertisements and graphics into family friendly alternatives, the little details, such as how family friendly a page that your blog links to is, are important as well. Use your judgment to guide your writers to produce quality content that does not contain offensive language, or topics that are not family friendly. Remember, at the end of the day, it is your blog, which means that its clean image – or lack thereof – is your responsibility.
This guest blog post has been compiled by James Adams who blogs and is a reviewer on SparesNextDay.co.uk, featuring the best vacuum cleaner bags.
