17 Superb Tips For New Bloggers

Blogging is just amazing. I mean, you can do a lot of things with blogging.

People will be seeing you and will finally discover how creative you are. You can be more expressive and creative yourself. What limits you then into such creative atmosphere?

If you learn the basic technical hang of blogging, starting out your own blog might not seem difficult at all. However, do you realize that not all bloggers turn out successful in the vast world of blogging?

If you’re not sure where to start with your blogging journey, take a  find yourself quiz to learn more about your interests and passions. Once you know what you’re passionate about, you can start brainstorming blog topics that you’re excited to write about.

I am not going to teach you today how to be successful; I am only going to share to you some tips which should keep you on track, and should keep you away from common misconceptions and failures.

Here are some tips I learned from my own experience and blogging experts and veterans out there. There’s no requirement for you to memorize them—just get familiarized, and if you want, keep coming back to get constantly reminded.

1. Write about what you love

Do blogging about something (niche) that you really love and are passionate about. Blogging for other niches for the sake of earning can become burdensome later on.

When you write about something you love, you won’t find yourself doing a chore; you’re simply enjoying your hobby. You would love to continue reading interesting materials, and you would love to write about them even if for a particular content you did not have visitors at all!

When you also love what you are doing, you are willing to do the extra mile because it’s more fun, even when you don’t get something in return.

If you also love what you are really blogging about, it will be manifested on the way you write your content. People will sense if the article that you have is more like a generic one, or something very trivial and interesting.

2. Be yourself

You don’t want to appear as somebody else. If blogging would come in a form of ID, then you do not want to find yourself in a different uniform with a different face, right?

Feel free to use your own way of writing, as long as you keep the grammar and spelling checked and the structure good for reading on a screen.

Don’t use too much jargons as well; if you do, then at least provide a quick definition of terms. Be yourself, because when your blog will be appreciated, it will be also you and no one else.

3. Don’t be afraid to express your views

Don’t hesitate also to express your views and opinions. Being yourself, you’re also entitled to the reality that you can also generate your own opinions.

Keep those opinions tightly written in such a way that it will not at least offend another party, and please, don’t use harsh words.

You don’t have to win every argument simply by joining or going with the side of the bigger party here. Stick to what you believe—I mean, what you really believe—and people will respect you and appreciate you for that.

4. Optimize your blog

You cannot always presume a number of visitors on a particular content. Visitors come to your blog for a lot of reasons: your site’s design, convenience, answer to their question, resource for information, your approach, a particular article, a particular product, freebies, and so on.
How good you see a content doesn’t mean others will see it the same way.

However, optimization then speaks for you when you want to maintain a number of visitors, or when you want to make your content more visible and look credible.

Optimize your content in a structure friendly to the people but also friendly to search engines.

Hitting two birds in one stone is better than simply trying to aim one.

Ask yourself these when optimizing your blog..

• Is your blog design organized? Is it easy to navigate? Test it yourself, or ask any of your relatives for feedback!
• Is your layout design mobile friendly? When you download themes, I’d recommend you to get a “Responsive” one, this means your theme will be resized automatically on mobile devices.
• Are your articles easy to scan? Remember, people are lazy readers. So to keep them interested, use white space and split a single long paragraph into shorter ones. In this way, people won’t easily get tired reading your content. Using visual aids, bullets and bolding important keywords/phrases (but don’t overdo) can also help your article a little more interesting!

Related tip: Why Should You Use Short Paragraphs For Your Blog.

To optimize your blog for search engines, you will need to learn SEO, even just the basic ones. Remember though, the rules (or techniques) of SEO are always changing, so make sure you check the article’s date first and see if it’s up-to-date.

5. Write Original Content

Stay and always work on original, unique, and plausible content. In other words, make all your content valuable to other people.

Don’t write for the sake of quantity. Don’t ONLY write for the sake of SEO purposes (so that your keywords, for example, will be denser on your whole database). The latter only works as a formatting (optimization), and should hence not be the basis for a viable content.

Effective visitors are those who are really there to visit your blog for a good reason, not simply because they clicked on a link leading to your site or content.

If your content is good in a way that which they would ask or require, then they will give your blog more significance to them.

Do not copy works of others as well. If you find something valuable and is worth posting on your own blog as well, you might want to make your own copy, and make sure it will not look like the wordings are spun or rephrased only.

You might want to give full credits also if you find a line critical or necessary to mention. The same goes when you want to use images, most of the time of which you need to ask for permissions first.

6. Be consistent

Consistency is but a vital key to maintaining the number of visitors that you currently have. If you start posting three articles each day, then you better keep it that way if not better.

People identify your blog with this factor as well, and if you’re always fresh, then they will love you more.

Consistency also mean that your blog must behave in the way of integrity. This means that no matter what happens, you still behave as you always do. You don’t change your niche simply because something else is more popular.

You don’t always keep redesigning your layout. You don’t always change point of views. And of course, people would love to see you put so much effort in making your blog as solid as it could be.

7. Set a goal

Set your base goal to and from which all your blog activities must end. If your blog’s goal is to sell a particular product, then all your content must at least indirectly attract users into making a purchase.

If it’s membership, then all your posts must entice them into joining your group. Each post of yours can have its own unique goal, but don’t at least deviate from what you really have at the back of your blog’s plan.

8. Use Images

Use images as much as possible, like at least once on every content that you have. Images don’t have to be your own shots; in fact, there are a lot of royalty-free images that you can use for your content.

Images don’t have to be exactly referring to the content that you have. An eye-catching, well-optimized image that is relevant to your content is usually enough.

Unlike reading printed materials, people read content on the web 1/3 the speed and time , and this means they can get tired easily and would be tempted to switch on another page or section.

If you put images on your posts, your content will be more interesting, and these images can even break the ice of boredom or strain if you also insert some of them in the middle of your story.

9. Never Stop Learning

Always have the eye to learn new techniques that you might not know will rather ease your usual hiccups in blogging.

For example, if you always find it hard to find time reposting your posts, then some cool plugins can really help you.

Google for some best plugins that you might not still discover yet, and they may really help your blog reach more people that you do on your own.

10. Be friendly!

Be friendly and learn to reach out to people rather than wait for them to google your blog for something.

Reaching out means that at first you must learn to share your content to other people, even to those blogs you consider as your competitors.

Being friendly also means that you show willingness to listen to what your readers has to say or to ask. Is your comments section clear and friendly enough? Is it easy to use? Do you respond almost immediately? Do you ask for your visitors’ opinions as well?

Lastly, don’t hesitate to join or even create your own groups or communities. Having one is a very strong resource for new information, and this will really help if you’re running out of topics to write about.

Having a community will also let you know of the latest trends and queries, and you can always be on top if you provided answers on time.

11. Show what you’ve got!

If you’d ask me, I would tell you that a big factor to fostering credibility is to show that you’re at least knowledgeable and well-informed with what you offer. You don’t always have to be an expert, but at least, you must learn what you are about to talk about.

Your blog will look like a small office full of lions if you don’t know how to exactly deal with your own niche.

Aside from blogging about what you really love, you must always pave your schedule to learning new and even old things about your stuff. You don’t have to be knowledgeable at once before you start, but the important thing is that, you learn.

12. Have a reward system

People would be more than interested on your blog if you have your own reward system. If you sell products, you might want to provide some trials, and even money-back guarantees which can be easy if you yourself are confident with that product.

If you can offer ‘free for the first five’ kind of promos, you will gain love from your visitors.

People always love free, and if you give a little but not too much emphasis on this area, you can make sure that traffic will better stream to your blog.

Other rewards come in a form of basic appreciations such as ‘liking’ their comments and even mentioning them and their respective thoughts on your posts.

13. Don’t be afraid

Being starters, people will perfectly understand if you start with something small. You don’t have to give a full-blast grand opening on your blog with a lot of giveaways and freebies.

You may be knowledgeable with a lot of things about blogging, but starting with and establishing the basics will make sure that your blog is properly rooted and will not be blown away easily because of a slight mistake or failure.

14. Track your performance

Your metrics are important in letting you know what you’re already good at and what are the things that need repairs.

However, don’t get caught with these analytics, and to make this more emphasized, don’t get hooked up with these stats by spending too much time on them.

Tip I’d recommend Google Analytics to track your visitors and their behaviours.

15. Always give room for expansions

If your product sells well or if you’re planning to cover more topics on the same niche, then at least your design and even your blog name should be ready for it. The same also counts with your domain name which you must really think about.

Don’t be afraid of unique designs and titles. As your goal is to provide exceptional experience, at least you make your blog easy and unique enough to be remembered and referred.

16. Collaborate

Planning to make deals with other brands and competitors? Be sure that you have something to offer as a barter.

Every exchange these days demands a relative price, and you must at least offer something without expecting that the returns will be massive and free.

If you want a blog to quote your site, then why won’t you quote theirs as well in return? Let them know, and they’ll realize that it’s more fun to deal with you.

17. Lastly..

Just in case failures and unwanted circumstances would happen, don’t lament at once.

Failures are all part of the bigger process here, and the best thing you should do is to ask the experts or veterans as to how you or that particular aspect can be saved.

If your site crashed, for example, there’s always a turnaround to that.

Blogging is fun, and it should be. These tips are not necessarily rules because you can always create your own rule; it’s your blog, anyway. But if you want to take these tips as best practices, then we would be happy to see you one day with your blog at its peak.