Extra Items to Add to Your Business Blog

I have been posting a series of blog posts that are focused around using a blog as your business website.

Gadgets to add to your business blogger blog.

Your Business Blog- Header Image

Customizing your business blog

Starting a Blog "Website" for your business

Use a Blog for Your Business Site

In this post, I will give you five extra touches that you can add to your blog to make it look like a website for your business.

1. Remove the Nav bar. The nav bar ins the bar at the top of your blog page. It is intended to be a navigation tool between Blogger blogs. Keeping it will make your blog look like a blog. Removing it will make your blog appear more like a website.
In order to remove it you need to go to the html link on your layout tab. Do a search (control +F most browsers) for </b:skin>

Paste the following code right before the </b:skin>.
</b:skin>.#navbar-iframe {  height:0px;   visibility:hidden;   display:none}


2. Make a Newsletter.
There are sites that can help you. Feedblitz.
and Feedburner are two popular services to check out. Once you sign up, they do all the work. All you need to do is add their widget to your site. You can set your preferences for the newsletter to go out daily, weekly etc. And, it can be done for free. When visitors sign up via your site, they will receive your newsletters which contain your posts.

3. Add a text or html with links Gadget to the bottom of your page that has essential links. You can easily model this after any professional website. Visit a few and see what they have at the bottom of their pages to get ideas

4. Visit a map service such as Mapquest and get the code to add directions to your physical business.

5. Add something local, such as a weather gadget. You can get this by using Blogger in Draft , go to your layouts tab, and add a gadget. Do a search for weather. There are currently 118 gadgets for weather so you may want to specify your location. Other sources for weather gadgets may be from your local TV station or Weather.com< There are many more items that you can add to your blog to make it look like a website. The key is to not add too many as they may take away from your message or slow your load time down.