In our previous post, we wrote about how to choose the best WordPress theme for Adsense websites. We also selected some of our best themes that fit into this purpose.
In this post, we want to continue to break down the essential elements of a WordPress theme for building a personal blog.
But why you need to build a personal blog in the first place? You already have Facebook profile and page, isn’t it enough?
The answer is NO. I will tell you why.
The reason is that you don’t have full control on your Facebook profile or page. One day, Facebook can decide to shut down your account for whatever the reason. As consequence, you will lose everything.
You need to have your own place where you can have full control. That’s why you need a personal blog.
A personal blog is a place where people can find you 24/7. It doesn’t matter if you’re a writer, a web designer, a real-estate agent, a consultant, a doctor or an entrepreneur.
If you want people to get to know you, you need to have a personal blog.
Maybe we should use “Personal branding” instead of “Personal blog”. It will state clearly what it stands for.
Here are the example of “Personal Branding” blogs:
url: chrisducker.com – Serial Entrepreneur
url: michaelhyatt.com – Author
url: carriedils.com – WordPress Developer
So, what are the elements we should look at when we want to choose a best WordPress theme for your personal branding?
1. Simplicity
Simplicity still applies here because if you put too many things on your personal blog, people will not pay attention to anything, including important message you want to tell them.
Look for the WordPress theme that has white space and leave room to the text.
2. Readability
Your personal blog is a place where you show what you are good at. To prove it, you need to write a lot. For your audiences, to get to know you, they need to read a lot too.
So, the best theme that has high readability will help to get your message across. Make sure you remove all the distractions from the content pages. The template with a single column is more and more popular.
3. Responsive
Stop using any WordPress theme that doesn’t provide the responsive feature. It’s not an option anymore. More and more people will access to your website from their mobiles. If the page doesn’t fit to their screen, they will move away.
4. Provide Opt-in feature
I would say it’s the first element you should look at. If the demo of the theme doesn’t have any opt-in form, the theme is not made for you.
The main purpose of creating a personal blog is to get fans. A fan is someone who likes you and who will do anything you ask. They will read your blog. They will buy if you ask them to buy. That’s the fans.
The efficient way to communicate with your fans is email. People visit your blog, a few minutes later, they’re gone. The only way to keep in touch with them is to ask them to subscribe to your newsletter or join your email list.
And you can do it with what we call “Opt-in” form. Here is the example of what I am saying.
So, if you are going to build a personal blog, you need to have an opt-in form somewhere. It’s quite technical to set it up. If the theme can help you to do that without any coding, it’s perfect.
5. Provide Portfolio feature
Portfolios are the works that you achieved or the best articles you have written so far. It’s necessary to show them on your personal blog. It will assure to people about you and your services. If you’re a writer, portfolio session or page is a place where you list down the best of your book that you wrote. If you’re a designer, portfolio session is a place where you list down the best of your previous website design projects etc.
So, it’s important to have this element included in your personal blog. Here is an example of the portfolio for an author:
6. Provide Testimonial feature
To build trust, people need to know what other people said about you. They need to know if your existing customers are happy with your services. You need to find your ways to get feedback from your customers.
Do whatever you can to get at least a few testimonials.
7. Provide contact page feature
You build your personal blog because you want to get more clients. And the way to get more clients is to make it easy for them to contact you.
You need to have a contact page where people can write to you. You can put your phone number but I don’t think it’s more efficient than email. You don’t have to pick up your phone every time. You can set a time to read the email from your contact page.
The contact page is an element you can’t miss on your personal blog.
8. Easy to customize
When it comes to building a brand, you want it to be unique. I would say the best WordPress theme for personal branding is to get it customized. But it will cost you a lot of money to hire a web developer. If you have the budget, I would recommend you to do so. But I know most of the people when they start promoting online, they have very limited budget.
The good personal WordPress theme would at least make it easy for you to change the logo, main color, and fonts by yourself.
Otherwise, if you keep everything the same as default, another person can have the exact same theme and everything as yours.
It’s not a unique look and feels anymore.
Recommended Personal WordPress Themes
BizCorp is made for freelancers and entrepreneurs who what to showcase their business and portfolios. it will work well if you want to build a website for your brand. It is optimized for speed and SEO.
Prosonal is simple and clean. You can use the feature box on the homepage to let people know who you are and ask them to follow you on the social media.
If you have any good personal WordPress thems you want to include in this list, feel free to mention it in the comment section.
If you have any question related to building your personal blog, let us know at the comment session too!
We will get back to you!