You want to start a blog but don’t know how to begin? Don’t worry. Running every business is confusing at start point. Blog is like any other business: you need a good plan for it. Here are some tips for bloggers – the new ones but also the ones that are running a blog for some time, but haven’t get a lot of readers yet.
1. Make a draft
Start with a general draft, the way you would when starting a business. You need to know a few basic things, before moving on. The first of this things is the main topic of your blog. It’s always better to focus on one specific field, than writing about everything what’s coming to your mind. If you write about everything, there’s no reason to visit your blog, because readers don’t know what is this about and what to expect.
2. Know your readers
When you know what to write about, you need to get as many informations about your target group as possible. What age are they? Where they work? What are they looking for? There are many questions, that will help you to optimize the content of your blog. If your typical reader is in his mid thirties, you shouldn’t use phrases typical for high school students. The most importat of all tips for a successful blog is to gain the trust of your readers. Let them know, that you are writing just for them, and that the content is reliable.
3. Visually appealing
When you’re done with draft and have got all needed informations, you can start a process of running your blog. Of course, the most important thing should be your content, but you need to know, that even if you write like the best writer in the world, it’s hard to gain trust with poor visual appearance of your blog. You don’t need a site designed especially for you. There are many free layouts that you can use. The best option is to pick something simple, because, like you probably know, less is more. You can add later some details, that will make your blog more attractive.
4. Don’t rely only on writing
Unfortunately, words are valuable especially in the presence of visual materials, like photos, memes or videos. Don’t waste a good piece of text, get attention to it by adding something more. But beware: using images or videos from the Internet can effect in violation of copyright. To avoid this, always make a good research, ask copyrights owners about permission to use something on your blog and never cut the signatures off! If you are not sure if you can use something, just don’t.
5. Make a funpage
No funpage, no readers. Even after reading all blogging tips for newbies from the whole Internet, without funpage your blog will stay out of reach of your potential visitors. Today it’s a standard to use social media as a booster to your blog popularity. The faster you do that, the better. You can start with your friends on Facebook or Instagram. Invite them to watch your site. Soon or later, some of them will share some of your content to others and your tree will grow new branches.
6. Update the content of your blog regularly
And regularly doesn’t mean spam. Your readers need to know, that you’re still alive and new visitors need to know, that it’s worth to have you among observed stuff. But there must be a balance between posting too less and too much. Nobody likes a garbage on his wall or in his bookmarks. When you will update your blog few times a day, you can expect, that some subscribers get rid of you.
7. Be aware of statistics
There are a lot of tools to observe how your readers behave. You can see what time they are mostly visit your blog, when you got the most attention etc. You should always remember about proper keywords. With this knowledge, you can make a lot of improvements. It’s not easy, though you can find a lot informations about content optimazing in the Internet.
8. Learn about copywriting
You can write about one thing in many ways. You can give to your blog many different titles. All the small details, that seem to be not important, can have really strong effects. You can write about interesting things, but it’s not only about a topic, but especially about the way you write. Take a look at widely read blogs or articles and think why they are so easy to read. Take a look at the titles and play with it. How could the title of your last article sound in other ways?
9. Remember: blog readers are impatient creatures!
Writing about something with too many words would kill your blog. Internet culture made readers impatient. They want to know everything just now, so don’t let them wait, unless you can’t maintain their attention through next few paragraphs. Again, less is more. Use simple words and get to the point as soon as you can.
10. Keep in touch with your readers
When creative impotence gets to you – don’t waste time and ask your readers what they want to read about! They are the best source of topics for you, at last they know better than anybody what they want to read.
These few things are a good start point, but remember to enrich your knowledge and skills all the time. There are a lot of tips for bloggers out there. Write, study and get your readers!
