1. Your Homepage is Your Magazine Cover

The goal of every magazine is to get me to purchase it, but the problem is that it only has a few seconds to entice me as my eyes glance around the magazine stand. Your homepage should strive for the same goals. Show the best of yourself in a few seconds. If it doesn’t look nice or if I can’t see what I’ll find inside, I’ll bounce right out.

Helpful Reading:

First Impressions Matter

2. Navigation Shouldn’t Aggravate the Reader

One of the most frustrating types of magazines are the ones that have intriguing article titles on the front but you must search through 30 pages of ads just to find the table of contents. I don’t even bother looking for the articles in those types of magazines anymore. Your blog’s navigation should be effortless. Different readers might want to search your blog in different manners also. Plan accordingly.

Some navigation ideas: most recent posts, most popular posts, posts by category, posts by date, and search bar.

Helpful Reading:

Book: Don’t Make Me Think

3. Work Your Tagline

You aren’t “Just Another Wordpress Blog” and your tagline should tell your readers that. Your tagline should be brief and tell what your blog offers.

Notice how a few of these magazines use their taglines.

  • Maximum PC, “Minimum BS” - The magazine caters to a more advanced reader. It strengthens that with its tagline, and it gives some personality.
  • Consumer Reports, “Expert, Independent, Nonprofit” - It says the quality of content and that it is from an unbiased source. Very effective use of 3 words.
  • Computer Music, “Make Music Now” - Portrays an idea that the articles can be used immediately to accomplish what is desired.
  • Open Office.org, “Excellent Alternative to Microsoft Office” - Explain what it is by juxtaposing itself to a known competitor and offers itself as an excellent alternative.

Helpful Reading:

How to Create Rock-Solid Taglines

The Importance of Blog Taglines

4. Talk to Your Target Audience

While perusing, I noticed these phrases on a few of the covers, “Jargon Free” or “Plain English”. These magazines knew they were catering to beginners. They also know that beginners biggest fear is not being able to understand what is being written. Get a grasp for who is reading your blog. If they are beginners, explain things in more detail. If they are more advanced, don’t waste time on the basics.

I like how Blogsolid divides their blog into 3 different categories that cater to different types of readers.

5. Practice What You Preach

As I was looking over the magazine rack I noticed how beautiful the cover was for Advanced Photoshop. This makes sense. If the cover can’t convey that they have design skill then why should I read content that wants to teach design skill. To borrow the old saying, “You can talk to the talk, but can you walk the walk.” Make sure the things you are telling your readers are things you actually do yourself.

6. Layout and Design Must Match Your Goals

Different blogs have different goals. Some want to get readers, some want money from ads, some want to sell a product, some want to promote an idea.

Magazines also have different goals. The ones that want you to subscribe have loose mail in forms throughout the magazine. Some offer exclusive reading materials for subscribing to the magazine. They show the advantages of subscribing. Other magazine attempt to be one-stop resources around a topic such as DVD burning. They don’t try to get continue readership, they try to get as many people to buy the magazine by attempting to answer all the questions people might have when it comes to burning a DVD.

Too many blogs look similar to each other even though they might have different goals. Take a little time to see if your blog’s design is matching what you want to get out of your blog.

Helpful Reading:

Make Sure Your Blog Design Communicates Your Voice

Final Thoughts

Although magazines and blogs have different mediums, much can still be learned from the long-established print industry that can be used in blogging. Take a look around your local bookstore and see if you can find any patterns that could help your blogging. I noticed that the day after I drafted this post Copyblogger posted Blogging Lessons from Newspapers.