18 Helpful Tips For New Bloggers
Since the coming of blogging, everyone and their dog has found a voice to put online. It doesn't matter how old people are, what work they do or the gender they are, we all use blogs, be it for personal or business purposes. Blogging has made life much more convenient in many different ways. Blogging offers a lot for those in the online world.
A blog is like your own personal mini website. Large swaths of information can be held on a blog. This can be thoughts, ideas, notes, recipes or an online diary. For many people, a blog is like owning a car. You choose based on color and style and can customize it however you wish. You drive it based on the speed you like. A blog can also be thought of as an unfurnished home. You add widgets, articles and more to make it look attractive and make people to want to stay longer. In essence, a blog can become a part of your life.
When launching a new blog, you will discover it is not an easy task and it requires commitment and responsibility to enjoy doing it. You'll consistently be looking for new information about things to add to your blog. So here are a few tips on things to do and not to do for personal blogging.
1. Do not post pictures or words deemed offensive to your blog. Freedom of speech is great, but it is not absolute. You must respect others because if you don't, you are setting yourself up for failure in blogging.
2. What contents your blog contains are very important. This will determine whether your blog will continue to be visited by people after their first visit. Harsh or offensive words should not be left on your blog. There's nothing wrong with a heated debate on your blog, but challenging everybody leaves a mess that isn't good for you.
3. You have to know your target audience. Don't write off-subject content or they might be disinterested.
Having said all that, some people plan to use their blog for business, so here are some very helpful tips:
4. First of all, keep to the three points listed above.
5. Remember that customer is king, so make high-quality content your first priority. Do not have unpleasant words in your articles as it may offend customers.
6. Use easily understood words and keep your writing simple. Your blog is not the place you want to show how many big words or strange words you know. You don't want your readers looking through the dictionary just to understand what you are saying. The average American reads at an eight-grade level as statistics show. If your information is not passed in the simplest language, you stand the risk of alleniating your audience.
7. Do not assume that the customer knows everything about your business. Write detailed articles that explain all about your business.
Some tips for general blogging:
8. Keep your blog clean and simple. The blogs that are easiest on the eye are simple blogs with traditional colors. The colors you pick should be relative to your blog's subject. A good way to go about this is to take a look at other blogs and websites in your same business or niche to determine the layout of yours.
9. Use clear and visible fonts. The two most popular fonts for blogs are Arial and Times New Roman.
10. Always update your blog. You may not post every day, but you can post at least twice weekly.
11. Always try to rejig your design or it might get stale. You can change your template or color scheme every 6 months.
12. Leave an area where readers can leave feedback. You can also set up a poll to get opinions of readers on topics they would like to see.
13. Always proofread your content before posting them. When readers begin to pick out misspellings and grammatical errors, they might never visit again. Applications like Grammarly are now available to help clean grammatical errors in works of writing.
14. Be clear about your goals for the blog and why you are blogging. Are you blogging for fun or for money? You can write these goals somewhere and always evaluate them to see if what you are doing is getting you closer to them
15. Connect with other bloggers that have the same goals as you along the way. Find out what they are doing and try to replicate it in your own way. But do not clone them. Always, try to find ways to tweak and try things from a unique angle.
16. Blogging is always changing. It’s so different now to what it was in 2004. You must always look ahead to what is new to keep expanding. Find new things to offer your readers. Search actively for things your target audience might be interested in.
17. Use Google to find answers to questions you are too bummed to answer. When you continue to do this, over time you’ll become very good at it, you can then figure out almost anything.
18. Building a successful blog is a long, hard road. Results will not be found overnight. Weeks might go by and all you’ll hear is dead silence. You’ll sometimes wonder if it’s worth it. But, honestly, this is normal. Just keep going. Almost every blogger face this. The successful ones are the ones who persevered and persisted until they started turning in good results.
With these few tips, you should be able to find your way in the whirl-world of blogging. Like everything you master in life, it takes time and practice.