Last Updated on January 17, 2018 by Carissa
Although I am no expert at blogging, I can share some tips for those of you that want to start your own blog, coming from my own experience. I have been blogging for a few years now using Blogger, and it came quite naturally to me as I’ve always wanted to use an online platform as a way to express myself and to have a creative outlet. I first started blogging about my daily life but recently I decided to start this blog to get closer to my followers and be more specific to what I blog about – mainly food and lifestyle as a Londoner.
So here are some beginner tips for blogging:
What is the main topic/theme?
Firstly, you have to identify what it is you want to blog about mainly, whether it is about fashion, food, travel and holidays, lifestyle or health and fitness, you need to find out what your passion is and stick to it. Nobody wants to read a blog that changes their theme all the time as it gets confusing and is not consistent, so stick to your theme as this will attract the right people to read your blog and help to keep those followers! Remember to be yourself and be unique, you don’t need to copy other people’s blogs to get followers. Find your niche!
Choose a good looking theme that represents you
Take your time to choose a theme for your blog, as this will be the first impression that people will get when they see your site. Think about the main colours that you want, the font you like, where you want your pictures to be, are the links in the right places, etc. There are loads of websites that offer free themes for bloggers, and some are not too expensive. If you want to be more unique or are thinking of starting a business using your blog, then designing your own theme is also an option (if you are good at using html) or getting a professional to help you design and create your theme is also possible. Costs can vary depending on your purpose and how much help you need with setting up.
Be selective about your images
As well as making your post look much more interesting and catchy, pictures can also break up a long block of text to make it easier to read. Be selective about what pictures you choose as it should relate to your topic, and try to pick good quality, high resolution images rather than images that are not sharp, blurry or are difficult to make out due to poor lighting. Your pictures will make a huge impact on whether people will read or even follow your blog, so make sure they look good! If you have a proper camera, this is always better than opting for a phone camera as it will give higher resolution photos, although many phones these days have very good cameras, so it is not always bad. Another tip to get more readers – try to name all your pictures using specific key words relating to your topic, as this will make it more likely to pop up on search engines like Google when people search for those key words! (SEO).
Blog regularly
By regularly, I mean 2 or 3 times a week, which can be challenging even for me (I usually post a few times a month, but I am trying to post more often, so bare with me! XD), but this will help to keep your readers or followers interested, and will give the impression that you are an active blogger. This will show in your blog archive, which can tell people how often you blog.
Use social media
To get your blog out there and gain more readers/followers, you can use social media as a way to advertise your blog and what you are about, for instance posting an image from your blog onto Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or Pinterest and writing a caption that gives a little bit of info about what the post is about. Social media tools are a really good way of gaining more exposure, and if it’s used in the right way, it can attract loads of potential followers by engaging with them. But don’t go crazy with posting on social media – nobody likes to get spammed! Use it in moderation, but the key is to post at the right time (usually around lunch time is best as most people are free) and use the right hashtags (research which hashtags people are most likely to search for that would be related to your image or blog). You can use filters to make your image look more professional too, for instance VscoCam, which is a very good editing app that I use on a daily basis!
Create categories
You can categorize your posts to make it easier for readers to find specific posts related to that topic. It will help with user engagement and also help you to stay focused on your niche. For example, you might have categories for food, lifestyle or travel.
So those are a few basic tips for starting your own blog, whether it’s for your own business or just as a hobby. I hope it has been useful for you guys! I think it is always easier to start out by using Blogger or WordPress as these have tools and pre-made themes at the ready for you and are really simple to use, so it’s a great way to get a feel for blogging, and they are free! (not WordPress.org). When you get the hang of it or just really want your own domain, then you can buy your own domain on websites like BlueHost – some are not too expensive, and it does make you look more professional.
If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment below and let me know what you think, or if you have any questions feel free to ask! Happy blogging! 🙂
