The #SummerBlogSocial is here! I’m excited about this (hence the double post today – lucky you!) because there are lots of great people participating and I know I’ll learn some stuff that will help me with my next steps.
In the meantime, I’m going to share some of the bits and pieces I know now and hopefully connect with others for feedback.
If a real life friend approached you and said, “I want to start a blog. Can you give me a list of helpful tips?“, what 10 (or more) things would you tell your friend?
This is timely because a real-life friend did ask me for some tips. Based on what I’ve learned, here’s what I’d suggest. (T – I’ll still go for coffee with you!)
- Have an idea of what you want your blog to be about. You don’t have to have a niche or squish yourself into a category, but it helps to know what your general focus might be. Who do you picture your readers being?
- Go into it knowing that the so-called blogosphere is huge. HUGE. There are a kajillion people who have blogs and yours (probably) isn’t going to revolutionize the world.
- Taking those two things into account, what are your goals for your blog? Are you just writing for yourself or your family? Are you doing it to connect with others? Do you want to use it to promote your business? Do you want it to BE your business? Your goals will probably change over time. Mine certainly have, and you may not know where you want it to go until you start doing it. But at least have a sense of what you’re trying to do.
- Once you know what you’re trying to do, connect with other people. Even if you just want your parents to get updates about your kids, you may have to remind them to read your blog. If you want to have a bigger reach, you have to get out there. You just have to. “Build it and they will come” does not apply to blogging.
- Join Twitter. No, scratch that. Get active on Twitter. Seriously. Ask any blogger – this one is like passing go in Monopoly. If you don’t use Twitter, you’ll be stuck on the blogosphere’s version of Baltic Avenue.
- Be genuine. You don’t have to spill all your personal stuff (ahem) but you should be yourself.
- That said, don’t let who you are, i.e. all your insecurities, hold you back. We all have them. We all think, at some point, that we’re not good enough writers or photographers or whatever. That we’re not interesting enough. That our topic is too narrow. (Or is that just me?)
- Use WordPress. I did because I just liked it better, but it seems to be the platform of choice for a lot of people. It’s easy to use, even if you’re not tech savvy, but if you want to get more complicated it offers a lot of options. Plus, for some reason, I think it just looks better than Blogger.
- If you think you’re the sort of person who’s really going to dive into blogging, consider setting yours up on your own domain to start with (as opposed to yourblog.wordpress.com for example). I didn’t do that, and it’s kind of a pain to transfer everything over a few weeks (or months) later.
- Have fun! And warn your family – blogging is addictive and they may not see you for a while.*
Confession: I knew none of this when I started, but it didn’t actually matter. If you don’t know the answers to some of these it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still start.
*P.S. Dear Husband, I still love you more than I love my blog.
