5 Essential Tips For Blogging
Written by Caleb Gleit. Social Media Intern at MSM DesignZ.
Blogging is a daunting process, but over time – and the more you write – it becomes easier to do. You have to be confident in your writing, know who your audience is, and be able to show that audience that you are knowledgeable about your topic – but how can you make your blog stand out? We’ve written out 5 tips for you that will help you learn and grow on the way to becoming a blogging master.
How To Sell Your TopicBefore we get into the more specified tips, we should know how to sell our topic outright. After all, it’s the most important part of your blog – the meat! In your blog, a couple of things should be necessary: having a focused topic, a focused audience, and goals.
A focused topic should be something that’s general enough to rope in a wider audience but specific enough to interest that audience; they should be learning something new about a topic they know something about, or something new about a topic that they want to learn about. This topic and audience should be related – like social media and marketers, for instance, or blogging and bloggers. If you can get age, location, and gender demographics as a part of your audience, you’ll be able to specify your topic even more, making it attractive to that audience – but be careful, as being too specific can alienate your audience entirely. The last step is to have a goal – what is the reader there to do? Are they there to read news, or be taught something? If you have a goal in mind, you’ll be able to write towards that goal much more efficiently. Use The Right PlatformThe platform that you blog on is very important. Each blogging website has its own “atmosphere,” and with that an assortment of positives and negatives. For instance, if you were to blog on Medium, then I would assume that your blog is more news-based, with a story-driven aspect (on Medium, you’ll find lots of heart-to-heart content alongside tech updates, and this is mostly story-driven content). Compare that to Tumblr, which is basically a free-for-all more marketed to a younger audience, and you have two very different ways in which your story could be perceived.
The other option, besides having a blogging source that is tailored to a specific need, is to create your own – making your own website through Squarespace, Wix or (by far the largest) WordPress takes time, but creating your own niche is much better than attaching your blogs to a preexisting resource. Taking the time to create your own “look” can be beneficial in the long run – and if a website stands out, both in design and in writing, then readers will want to come back.
Write Like A Professional – But Remember, Not Everyone Is A Professional
There is a fine line between writing smartly and writing professionally. Your blog is here to teach about something, not to read off industry specific terms and provide the reader with a confusing experience. Try writing out your notes for the blog by keyword – for instance, SEO, AdWords, and AdSense – and try to define those terms for an audience that wants to know, but doesn’t know, what you’re really talking about.
The entire blog is a teachable moment – so don’t make it something that a teacher wouldn’t write. You could even think of the blog as a written out lecture, but you have to assume that there are students that are always asking questions. In this way, a blog is like a teacher’s dream because they get to write their lesson out without interruptions – so make the blog like a lesson plan, write it out, assume questions are being asked and then answer everything yourself, like you’re teaching to a classroom. You’re a professional – but not everyone is a professional, and writing with those thoughts in mind will make your blog accessible and attractive to readers who are unsure of their topic. via GIPHY Teach, Don’t CriticizeIt’s important to not insert personal views into your blogging – unless if your blog is about your personal views on something – because the more you disrupt your topic, the less legitimacy the blog will hold in the eyes of the reader.
Teach, don’t criticize, because the reader, ultimately, isn’t there to be unwary about the topic they’re approaching – they’re there to learn about the topic, complemented with your professional touch.Don’t Be Afraid To Be Inspired
Chris Hardwick is a comedian, late-night host, and actor – but one thing that struck me as interesting is his late-night hosting style. Occasionally, he’ll reference other comedians in his own jokes – and they’re usually funny jokes – and he’ll directly credit those comedians with those jokes. Personally, I think this is great – comedians love to listen to other comedians, and just retelling a joke with your own focus seems not as good as directly crediting who you’ve listened to.
So if you’re writing a blog, and you want to find other ideas to contribute to your writing – go do it! The internet and your peers have their own great ideas to contribute, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with implementing an idea into your writing – with credit, of course. The world is full of amazing, fascinating ideas and, as much as you’d like to have every idea in the world, you simply can’t. Looking to other blogs, vlogs, or friends and family for ideas can sometimes be absolute gold if utilized correctly. Being inspired is part of the creative process – so go out and be inspired, and you’ll come back better learned and ready to create even more.
Blogging is one of the cornerstones of the internet. It’s the most recent form of writing in a long history of putting words to paper, and it’s taken the world by storm. Millions of people a day read, digest, and learn from blogs, and if you make your blog stand out, you can capture their imaginations.
Hopefully, these tips will help you continue on your path to being a successful blogger, and maybe, in the long run, a better writer overall.