Your blog content is the star of the
show, right? Those beautiful photos, helpful tips, quick tutorials… They are
the things you want to draw readers in to and hook them on. So why are you
overshadowing your content with a messy sidebar?
Your sidebar should align with your
blogs goals and priorities. It should look simple and clean instead of
cluttered and confusing!
10 things you don’t need in that
sidebar of yours:
1. A list of blogs you love. It’s nice to support bloggers you love by linking to them,
but the hard truth is that readers will click those links, leave your site, and
most likely forget to return because they’re totally transfixed by the blog
you’ve pointed them to.
2. A section on ‘things you love’, like t-shirts from Target and sunnies from Modcloth.
Unless you’re a fashion blogger who is being paid to promote these items in
your sidebar, you have to ask yourself if it’s really necessary.
3. A mini slideshow of your
Instagram feed. I totally get why people add this
and it does add personality and realness to your blog, to some degree.
But if you don’t use Instagram much, then please remove it from your sidebar.
It distracts readers from more important things, like signing up for your
newsletter or following you in a reader!
4. A never-ending list of
categories. Keep it simple and stick to 5 or 6.
5. A never-ending list of archive
links. If you’ve been blogging for a long
time, then have a drop down archive option to keep your sidebar looking simpler
(and a lot shorter!)
6. Counters. How many people visit your site is of no concern to your
readers, so think about removing counters from your sidebar and keeping up with
stats through Google Analytic instead.
7. A disclaimer. I personally prefer to put disclaimers in the blog footer
and keep the extra sidebar space for more useful things, like follow buttons or
social media buttons!
8. A social media plugin to a social
media site you barely ever use.
If you don’t use Twitter but you have a Twitter feed in your sidebar, remove it
to avoid wasting your reader’s time. Find a social media site that you use
regularly and steer your readers in that direction. It’ll benefit them a ton
more!
9. Embedded media. Embedding too many things (like YouTube videos) in your
sidebar can really slow down your blog. And what do people do when you site
takes longer than 10 seconds to load? They leave, sadly enough.
10. Blog awards that no one has
heard of. Remove anything like this from your
blog because it gives a ‘naive and amateur’ impression. It’s nice to have and
give blog awards, but most people will sadly not pay any attention to them.
Unless you were awarded by Teen Vogue or ProBlogger or something. Then maybe
you can keep those up there. ;)
