Now that you have a custom blog design, whether Little Blue Deer is your blog designer or not, you are going to want to publicize your blog design template, and get it out into the world!  A keyword today is time – people are busy, and their attention spans are super short.  So, some readers will want to read your blog posts in their inbox, rather than actually coming to your blog to read posts.  A really easy way to do this is to enable blog subscriptions by email, and to add the signup box to your custom blog design.

So, first of all, you will want to enable Jetpack.  I have already done a tutorial on how to activate Jetpack on your blog design template here.  So do that first.  Now, once you have activated Jetpack on your blog design, you will just want to add the signup box to your blog sidebar.  Easy!

Step 1:

In your blog dashboard, go to Appearance > Widgets.

Step 2:
Now, in your Available Widgets list, you will see a box that says Blog Subscriptions (Jetpack).  All you have to do is to drag the Blog Subscriptions widget onto your Primary Sidebar.

Step 3:
Now you have the opportunity to configure your blog subscription widget.  You can name your widget anything you want, so under Widget Title just put what you want the widget to say.  If Little Blue Deer is your blog designer, any title that you add to a sidebar widget will appear automatically styled to match your custom blog design.  There is an area to add optional text, like “Receive posts by email!” or anything else you want to add, I usually leave this blank because I like simplicity but feel free to add anything you like.  The Subscribe Placeholder box is the text that will appear in the box where the user enters their email address.  The Subscribe Button box is the text that will appear on the Subscribe button so it should be one or two simple words, like “Subscribe” or “Sign Up.”  The button will also appear styled to match your blog design template if Little Blue Deer is your blog designer.  The Success Message Text is the text that will appear after the reader has successfully completed the signup.  You can customize this as you wish.  You also have the option to show the total number of subscribers, if your blog has a lot of subscribers, great, show it off!  If not, you can leave this box unchecked.  And that’s it.  Just click on the blue button to save changes.  You’re done!  The signup box will now appear on your blog sidebar.

If you have invested in a custom blog design, you definitely want readers to come view your chic and beautiful blog design template, but blog designs aside, it’s nice to offer busy readers a way to read your blog posts in their inbox.  If you are taking the time to create attractive, interesting blog posts, it’s likely that they will continue to visit your actual blog design to see the live post!