Does your theme matter that much? Would bloggers like Copyblogger, John Chow or Chris Brogan be as successful if they didn’t have a professional blog theme? I would argue that they would not, not if they started from scratch today. Mind you that I believe that they would still blog very well and have fantastic content. However, the landscape of blogging has become so sophisticated that unless they had a professional looking theme then they would not be looked at twice.
Having a professional looking theme branded with your own personal touches makes a big impact. The biggest rookie blogger mistake that pops out at me immediately is the use of a default generic theme. Blogging Tips offers a few themes. Some can be purchased and some can be downloaded for free. Also on the Blogging Tips Themes page there are links to other themes that you can purchase. Links out to Thesis, Woo Themes and a few others.
All of those themes are great but if you install any one of those and do nothing to brand that theme as your own to differentiate it from everyone else then it will end up just slightly better than using a generic theme and doing nothing to it. If you are a designer then that is fantastic but if you are not (but think you are) things could end up far worse for you. Consider the image below.
For years that was my blog theme on BenSpark.com. I made some very simple edits to an existing theme like change the header and colors. That was it. It wasn’t terrible but it really didn’t stand out.
Zac suggested to me early on when I started writing here to write on this topic. He asked me this because in 2009 I was given a huge gift by Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA. Ted redesigned my blog branding and Matthew Schultz of IZEA coded me a professional, custom theme.
Here is one of the most important things about the theme, it is unique. No one else has this theme, no one. This theme is branded from the logo and the logo mascot down to a ghosted logo mascot that appears only on my photo-a-day posts showing the # of that photo in the sequence. It is little touches like that make my blog theme stand out to be remembered.
Now, I am not Chris Brogan, John Chow or Copyblogger but having that new theme has made a huge difference. My traffic has certainly increased and I still write the same way, I still take my photos. The major difference is this new theme. So, are professional themes worth it, in my opinion they are. Had I understood the importance of a custom theme earlier I would have certainly invested the time, money and resources into going that route.
What about you, are you using a professional theme? Is it custom or customized? Did you build it yourself?
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