I’ve been blogging regularly for about 3 months, so – I mean – what do I know right? Well, if you’re reading this post then I probably have 3 months more experience than you. But I’m not going to judge you like you judged me earlier, I’m going to share my knowledge with you now so you don’t have to wait until months down to learn this stuff yourself. Here are my tips to get into blogging:
1. Blog every day for at least a month
When I first began blogging I was very inconsistent and that didn’t go very well. I would write a new post maybe once every two months. The key to maintaining a good blog is consistency, and the best way to ensure consistency is to blog every day for at least a month. This will imbue you with magical blogging powers that will allow you to easily put out 3 posts a week in the next month. Building up this ability to write regularly is a must.
2. Write down all post ideas, whenever, wherever
Running out of blog ideas is the worst. Writing down all the post ideas I think of, whenever I think of them, has helped me out immensely when it comes to blogging consistently. I usually have a list of post ideas to choose from before I even sit down to write.
3. Step your Twitter game up
Wild pic.twitter.com/pfd0F76wO9
— Jay Carteré (@JayCartere) April 28, 2015
A lot of bloggers, or anyone trying to promote something, think it’s a good idea to constantly churn out promotional tweets and links to their website… it’s not. Nobody wants to follow someone, or a brand, they don’t already know in order to receive a bunch of advertisements – it’s annoying. Instead, make an effort to be entertaining on Twitter; post funny pictures, ask questions and generally be social on these social networks.
4. Read other blogs
I am definitely guilty of not doing this enough, but do as I say, not as I do. Reading other blogs will help you understand the way things work in this part of town. It’s always good to do your research before venturing into new territory. See what other bloggers are doing, take note of what works, what doesn’t and anything inbetween.
5. Blog about stuff that you like
This is key. Blogging about something you’re not passionate about will get annoying real quick. Make sure you can see yourself writing about this sort of stuff in the years to come. That doesn’t mean you have to be limited to one subject though. Just make sure you know what type of thing your target audience is into and write about that. Your target audience is usually a representation of yourself, so if you like it your fans will probably like it too.
6. Don’t spam your posts to anyone
Spamming takes a lot of time, it’s annoying and it will make 99% of people hate you. Do you want 99% of people to hate you? Spamming may help boost your traffic in the short run, but in the long run you’ll burn a whole load of bridges and end up making yourself look like an amateur.
7. Comment on other blogs
Posting useful and insightful comments on other peoples blog is just a nice thing to do. But you’re not here for the nice thing to do, are you? You wanna know what’s in it for you right? Well okay, if fuzzy feelings aren’t good enough for you then keep in mind that posting a good comment on other blogs will allow many people to see your name and possibly check you out. You might also form a relationship with the writer of the post you’ve commented on, which is cool if you like having friends.
8. Practice writing great headlines
The headline is one of the most important elements of your blog posts. Some would say it is the most important, but I’m not saying that. I said it’s one of them and we’ll leave it at that. Whatever the scale of importance of a great headline, there is no denying that a great headline is definitely important. Read a few articles and posts, take note of the headlines that grab your attention, pick them apart, see if you can emulate the effect and keep on practising your headline writing. Alternatively, you could just take the easy way out and download my list of headline templates below.
Did this post help you out? Are you starting a blog, or trying to improve your current one? Let me know in the comments section below.