Today's tip is a really small thing (sixteen by sixteen pixels, to be precise), but I think it makes a huge difference on blogs.
Favicons.
If you look up on your toolbar, each website has a favicon, which is the tiny picture that shows up on the tab. Here are some popular ones:
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On blogger, the default favicon is the orange square with the white "B" inside of it. In my opinion, adding a custom favicon makes a blog look much more streamlined and professional. Plus it's easy to do. Why not?
The first thing you need to do is create an image that is 16 by 16 pixels. For mine I used PicMonkey, and uploaded a free background I found by searching google.
I first cropped the image to 16 by 16, then added an "S" that filled up almost the whole image.
It looks incredibly grainy and pixelated when it is zoomed in, but remember how small it's going to be on a computer. It will be fine. One v. important thing to remember is to keep it simple. I made one favicon that had a giraffe print background with a pink S on it, and it looked muddy and busy.
Save the photo to your computer, and then go into blogger and upload it. You will click on "Design", then go to your "Layout" tab. Click the edit button by your favicon, and upload the photo you made. After you upload your favicon it will take a few days to show up. I kept thinking something was wrong with mine, because it wouldn't change, but it just takes time. It's something about the computer having to empty the cache or whatever. I'm not nerdy enough to understand what that means yet, but I'm sure I'll get there.
Okay, now everybody go make a custom favicon.
** Update **
I made a new favicon for my blog, and rather than cropping it to 16 x 16 pixels, I cropped it to 50 x 50 pixels. It looks a lot clearer to me, and any square image will work properly so it doesn't make a difference when you upload it.