There are millions of blogs on the internet today and new ones are started every day. People blog for a variety of reasons. Some bloggers write just to chronicle their lives or to share their thoughts about a particular subject. Others blog to make extra income or even to earn their entire living. No matter what your reasons for starting a blog, these blogging for beginners tips will help you to get your first blog off on the right foot.
Starting Your First Blog
One of the first decisions you will have to make as a new blogger is whether you will purchase a domain name and hosting services or if you’ll instead use a free blogging service like WordPress or Blogger. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Using a free service may be perfect for someone who just wants to blog about their life or personal experiences. However, if you plan to earn money from your blog, purchasing a domain name and hosting services is going to give you more flexibility and credibility in the blogging world.
Choosing a name for your blog is the next step you will need to take. Your blog name should clearly state what your blog is about so potential readers know what they will find when they reach your site. If you intend to earn money from your blog, you’ll also want to perform keyword research in order to find keywords that relate to your topic. There are a variety of tools that you can use in order to find keywords that you can optimize in order to get more visitors to your new blog.
After you have decided where you will host your blog and what you will call it, you need to design your blog. There are many free designs available that you can quickly download and use as your own, but serious bloggers will alter even a pre-designed blog to brand it and make it unique. You can do this on your own with some basic knowledge about coding or hire a professional to assist you with the design of your new blog. Some things to consider when designing a blog include:
- Ease of Use: Visitors to your blog should easily be able to navigate around your site. If a site is difficult to use, visitors will leave immediately.
- Font Type & Size: It’s tempting to use fancy fonts and colors, but some computers are unable to read fancy fonts. It’s best to stick to the standard fonts. Your visitors are used to seeing them and you will know that they are loading properly for everyone.
- Placement of Ads: If you are blogging in an attempt to make money, you’ll want to carefully place advertisements where they are most likely to be clicked. You don’t want them to interfere with your blogs content. They should integrate well with the other design elements of your site.
Writing Your Blog
After you’ve set up your blog, you can start writing blog posts to share with the world. Remember that everything you post is visible to anyone that has an internet connection and that things placed on the internet can stay available for viewing even if they are deleted. Make sure you only post things that you want the entire world to see.
Writing a blog post is really simple. Start by choosing a title. Again, if you are blogging to earn money, you will want to research keywords when choosing your title. This will help ensure that people find your blog in internet searches.
It’s time to write. Blog posts should typically be between 300 – 600 words. Make sure you write clearly, using proper grammar and spelling all the time. Break up your writing with images, videos, lists, and headings to make your blog easier for viewers to read.
A blog is the perfect way to get your feet wet online. They are easy to start and to maintain and can be started for free or for a very small investment. Start a blog today and you won’t be a beginner for very long!
How to Promote Your Blog
The first thing you want to do is ensure that your blog is not blocking search engines from crawling your posts. If you are using WordPress then check under Settings >> Reading to see if search engines are allowed to crawl your pages.
If you use an SEO plugin make sure it does not add “noindex” to any of your pages. The “noindex” tells search engines now to show that page in your search results. This is harmful, especially to new Websites.
Now check to ensure that you are only publishing “Summary” parts of your posts, not full posts, in your RSS feed. This is to ensure that other sites don’t republish all of your articles from your feed.
You want to add social media sharing buttons to the bottom parts of your posts. Make it easy for people to share your content on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. Other popular services include Reddit, Stumbleupon, Tumblr, and Pinterest.
You can set up your own accounts on these services and use the Jetpack plugin to share new posts to your social media accounts. As you gather followers they will see the new posts.
How to Find Topics for Your Blog
Before you can become a super blogger with thousands of followers you must first hone your skills. That means writing articles without having an audience to follow you. This is the time for experimentation.
Write about whatever makes you feel excited or interested. Your writing will improve gradually. You can write about your personal experiences, your hobbies, or your favorite books and movies.
You will find that it becomes easier to write about some things than other things. If you’re struggling to write about a topic then set it aside. If you cannot find the energy to express yourself then wait until you feel more interested in that topic.
Avoid the keyword research tools that marketers are constantly harping about. Maybe these tools do suggest some great ideas but what good is a great idea without great writing?
You want to choose topics about which you are knowledgeable, about which you care, and which you can easily say something meaningful.
Begin with your interests. Wait until you are comfortable with your ability to write before you start freelancing either for yourself or others.
Should You Write for Other Blogs?
This is called “guest posting”. The idea is fun: you ask your friends to let you write something for their websites. Maybe they will reciprocate.
Guest posting is a great way to spread your thoughts to other people. But there is a black side to guest posting. When it’s used for link building – which many people in the SEO industry do – it’s called spam.
The search engines hate guest posts that are only made for links.
If you write for other people’s sites, do it because you want to help them make better sites. Do it because you want to introduce yourself to new people. Don’t do it for links.
Does Social Media Help?
So many people now live on Facebook and Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, you might be tempted to only blog on those sites. That’s a fair decision. I won’t criticize anyone who uses Facebook instead of WordPress.
But you won’t own your content no matter what those companies say. They display advertising beside your content. If you are building a business they may even promote your rivals against your own articles.
Is that fair?
No, of course. But it’s business. It’s the way these big multi-billion dollar corporations work.
You can use social media to share your content. You can use social media to spread your ideas. It’s a fair way to promote yourself. But if you want to own your content, you should download it for backups as often as several times a year. That way you can publish it anywhere you wish.
Conclusion
Be sure to publish your RSS feed. These feeds are still very popular. People subscribe to them through feed readers.
We only publish excerpst because some people take the RSS feeds and use them to publish aggregator blogs. Maybe the aggregators link back to the original site, but we would rather not see our hard work fully published on other sites.
Don’t give up and don’t stop believing in your blog. It’s worth the time you put into it as long as you care about what you write.