Top Five Tips for Grooming Your Blog

Are you a church leader who has just started a blog to further your ministry? While content is the most important thing, there are some little favors you’ll need to do for your blog–think of them as ways to “groom” your blog–so that it has a professional air (not to mention a shiny coat and healthy teeth and gums).

Here are the Clearly TTUMC top five “grooming” tips for blogs. (I’ll focus on how to do things in WordPress, since most TTUMC leaders at this time have WordPress blogs.)

1. Groom your title.
First, make sure your blog has the title you want: your title doesn’t have to adhere precisely to your blog’s address. For example, if your blog’s address is “trusteematters.wordpress.com,” your blog’s title could be “Trustee Matters at TTUMC” or “Sons of Hammering Thunder” or anything else that makes sense to you.

Also, make sure the title of your blog is capitalized, punctuated and spelled the way you want. If you want spaces between the words in your title, make sure you insert them.

To change your blog’s title in your WordPress dashboard, click the top-level “Options” link, then the second-level “General” link. You’ll find an input box for “Weblog title” there.

2. Groom your “tagline.”
The tagline of your blog is the phrase that appears just below the title (most of the time) at the top of your blog. If you don’t set your tagline, WordPress will assign your bog the tagline “Just another WordPress blog.” Naturally, that’s not what you want.

To change your blog’s tagline in your WordPress dashboard, click the top-level “Options” link, then the second-level “General” link. You’ll find an input box for “Tagline” there.

3. Groom your “blogroll.”
What’s a “blogroll”? Hint: it has nothing to do with Chinese food or lumberjacks. Your blogroll is the list of other blogs and web sites that you recommend to your readers. The blogroll usually appears in a column to the left or the right of your blog’s posts. If you’re a TTUMC ministry leader, you’ll probably want to make sure that this contains links to Pastor Jerry’s blogs, as well as the blogs of all the other TTUMC ministries that might be relevant to your readers. You can use the blogroll on Clearly TTUMC as a starting point, since I list all the other TTUMC ministry blogs I know about.

To add a blog to your blogroll in your WordPress dashboard, click the top-level “Blogroll” link, then the second-level “Add Link” link. On the Add Link page, supply the name and address of the blog you want to add to your blogroll, then click the Add Link button.

4. Groom your “About” page.
Your readers want to know who you are. At a minimum this means your name. Aim for at least one telling detail from your biography. (For example, my About page conveys the unadorned fact that I live with two cats who are evil.)

Your About page should also give a sense of your blog’s purpose.

To edit your About page in your WordPress dashboard, click the top-level “Manage” link, then click the second-level “Pages” link. On the Page Management page, you’ll find an entry titled “About.” Click the “Edit” action to change what appears on this page.

5. Groom your theme.
Your blog’s “theme” is the template that determines its appearance, including its layout, fonts, colors, and artwork.

Changing your blog’s theme is easy. In your WordPress dashboard, click the top-level “Presentation” link. On the “Themes” page, simply click the picture that shows the theme you want to use.

You can optionally upload your own image for your banner and make other changes to your blog’s presentation–but that’s advanced grooming. We’ll save that for another day. Thinking about blogrolls has made me hungry. Now where did my evil cats hide the Chinese takeout menu?