It’s that time of year again: the one where we look back at the trends and ideas which have developed, the good, the bad, the ugly. We analyse and reason, develop plans for the future and strategies to propel ourselves forwards in a greater manner than previously.

Blogs have grown massively in popularity and influence in the last year, and with more high quality blogs appearing, the competition for top place is stiff. Aside from content, marketing and networking, the design of a blog is key aspect to it’s success: the various sections have to be well layed out, it has to be great for search engines, it has to be easy to navigate and find things, the best content should be highlighted, there should be a wide arrange of feed/subscription offers, there needs to be a good balance of advertising to content and, of course, it needs to look nice. Most importantly however, the content needs to be great; content is king. All in all, I would say that creating a good blog is pretty damn hard.

So, let’s take a look at what works and what doesn’t, what techniques the big blogs make use of and why the little blogs aren’t getting bigger. We’ll be looking at all the above aspects, plus checking out some figures to see what’s popular in blogs.

Design, Layout & Positioning

Featured Articles. There have been many changes to design throughout 2008, the most prominent of which has been the ‘featured article’ trend. As blogs have grown increasingly popular, especially due to great content, many blogs are bringing the best of what they have to say to all frontpage viewers, while smaller, less important articles (despite being newer) often sit below. This system allows new people too view the quality of the blog immediately, while regular readers can skip right to the content below. However, only a blog with less feature updates, it can be hard to keep up the pace, as content soon becomes stagnant on the front page, and can lead to a loss of readership.

The ‘featured article’ has lead to a range of new design ideas and methods. Lets take a look at some examples:

Unique design, bold design. The age of the gradient-full, rounded-corner obsessed web2.0 design trend is over. Blogs are beginning to develop designs suited to their content and their readers, each hoping to give itself a ‘personality’. Particularly notable is the popularity of grunge and hand made elements:

Font mayhem. The use of fonts has changed drastically in the last year. They are used within all sorts of design elements now to create a range of effects. The use of sIFR has increased and as a result many blogs are using custom fonts/non-standard fonts for their titles:

Power of the List

The list has become mighty over the last year. In fact, I would say that a very large percentage of all popular posts are lists. I mean literal lists, here’s 25 awesome sites or 50 vintage themed links and designs. They’re popular because 1.they are easy to create, there’s nothing really original within them and 2.the readers like them because the blogger is basically taking any effort out of the subject they are looking for. Want to find out about blue-themed websites? Sure, just find a list of them.

We have list posts here on Resource Pile. Those ‘collection’ posts, they’re really lists of content we’ve found elsewhere. It’s fine though, because it’s good for the reader, the blog and the original author gaining popularity for their product/creation. Everybody wins. Here’s a list of what I think were the years best list-posts:

1. 15 Minimalist Designs That Inspired Me - Spyre Studios
2. 50 Beautiful Blog Designs - Smashing Magazine
3. 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes - Smashing Magazine
4. 40+ Useful Cheat Sheets for Designers - Six Revisions
5. 11 Undiscovered Website Ideas to Steal and Make You Rich - Daily Bits
6. 50 perfect headlines I want YOU to use - I am Mike Smith
7. The Ultimate Free RSS Icon List - Blogging Tips
8. 10 Amazing Computer Artists - Seaneill.com
9. Inspiration: 13 Stunning Art Design - CSS Built

New Blogs, Big Blogs, Fast Growing Blogs

There have been tonnes of new blogs this year, and I’ve noticed them growing more than ever in the past few months:

Tools of the Trade

So how are all these blogs growing in popularity so quickly?

Social Media. As ever, Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, Sphinn, Design Float and all the other news voting sites have played an important role for blogs. Stumble Upon has also played an important role (despite being a different setup to the others). Over the year, I’ve learnt that the front-pagers on Digg tend to be the already-very-popular blogs, because their readers hit the integrated digg button and the traffic keeps on flowing. But what about the smaller blogs? I’ve seen many, many tweets about getting those all important 100 diggs, but despite achieving this (Resource Pile included) I have yet to see one be front-paged. Simply because the bigger blogs are dugg more often and faster. So how do the smaller blogs break the mould? Well, that’s where Design Float & the other smaller vote sites come in. Being aimed at a much smaller niche rather than everyone, the smaller vote sites can prove extremely successful for smaller blogs, with more in-depth categories and more dedicated viewers.

Twitter. Although this is really social media, Twitter deserves its own section. The ReTweet craze is here, we’re all tweeting and re-tweeting each others articles and blog posts, asking for stumbles, diggs, floats and the like. All while updating our normal status too. The great thing is that an ‘unwritten etiquette’ has developed amongst twitterers. We limit our shouts about blog posts to about once every 24 hours, and this works. It means people aren’t spammed with our link, but also gives great potential to the blog post (because as one retweets, others retweet the retweet, and so on).

Advertising

The main change in advertising this year has been with BuySellAds. Many, many blogs have begun to use them, huge blogs like the TUTS networks right down to far, far smaller blogs. The simple grey box with dark outline and text “Advertise Here” is instantly recognizable as a BSA website. The most commonly used ad format is the trusty 125px button ad. A lot of blogs have also begun to sell tiny, cheap ‘favicon ads’ on their pages, these often fall underneath the other adverts. As usual, the big name blogs have kept advertising in-house to maximize profits, no big changes there.

Conclusion

So there it is, a year of blogging. A year of massive change and development within the blog-o-sphere, and hopefully changes will continue throughout the year 2009, as blogs grow, develop new ideas, new designs and new identities. Happy New Year!

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