That is an old adage that you have probably heard at least once in your lifetime. I am borrowing it here to make a point about blogging. Do you know what it means?
Photo Credit: Photo Gent
If you stood within the deep forest you might miss the other views that make a forest so enchanting. The same principle applies to blogging. Trees being in the forest are fine. But if there are too many, you will miss the waterfall, the colorful rocks, the wild flowers because the trees will cover the view.
In a blog, the principle of seeing too many trees to really see the forest applies whenever a good blog is lost in its own clutter. My motto will save your blog. Keep it Simple.
Again, let’s use the photo above. I wanted to show a forest and what the typical landscape might look like. I could have chosen a photo of dense trees where even the sky is obscured. That would have been easy since this photo was taken in the Redwoods. Finding a scene like this in the Redwoods on the west coast, is not a simple task because this area is a lush rainforest with foliage that grows in two or three canopies. This scene of the red earth, the wild flowers and the waterfall is a rare scene that requires having your eyes open in order to see it.
Keep your blog clutter free as possible. I have to remind myself of this important precept from time to time. I get excited like you probably do when all those neat little gadgets and nifty widgets and cool blog awards come out so I paste them into the sidebars of my blogs. I mean, who can resist?
Then there are all the fancy widgets and gadgets to promote your social sites. You know which ones I’m talking about, don’t you? And of course, how could you resist the bookmarking buttons and site meters and gizmos that tell you who visited your site last and where they came from ? Not me, that’s for sure. I am guilty of using them all!
Bloggers are gadget lovers because they fit so neatly into your sidebars and add appeal to your site. Where a site is lacking in layout or photography, it can make up for lack of appeal by adding neat gizmos and gadgets.
One of my favorites is the Twitter bird.
But I’ll give you my version of the “simple bird”.
What are some of your favorite widgets and buttons?
Stay tuned for part two of this series “Don’t Lose Sight of the Forest for the Trees.” We have a lot to discuss about how to optimize your blog without clutter and how to maximize your blog space. This series could be done in ten parts or in twenty. Who knows? We’ll see where it leads. Besides, we have lots of great forest photos to share with you!
The Midnight Writer and Photo Gent
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