The most important part of your blog when people first land on it is? Everything they see “above the fold”. And is why I changed the header image of my blog today.

Above the fold is a term that came from offline direct marketing.

Have you ever received a piece of direct mail? You know the “Dear friend” type of letter?

Everything you read before the letter folds is called above the fold and it’s real important. Important because what happens there determines if the reader continues or not.

On the web, above the fold means everything you see before you need to scroll with your mouse to get to more content.

Do you have a blog with a very large (in height) header image?

Is the first thing your visitors see what you want them to see?

Does what they see sum up what your blog is about and what’s in it for them?

With this blog, the first thing I want people to see is the title of the first post which is always stuck at the top of all other posts. What they see sums up what this blog is about and what’s in it for them.

Now I am not suggesting you copy me because there are so many blogging models and I have no idea what it is you’re trying to achieve. What I am suggesting is for you to get real clear on what you are trying to achieve and set your blog up the best you can based on that.

A few generic tips:
1. Give your visitors too many choices and they choose none.

2. Give value and let them discover you in the process of consuming that value.

3. If your header image’s height is not serving your outcome, reduce it.

4. Before posting content, ask yourself “How may I serve?”. This helps get you into a good state of mind for creating content that is subscriber centered which will always get you more points then “you” centered driven content.

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Tags: blogs, marketing