Beginner’s Guide to Blogging Basics
It’s featured on the news, you see it on social media, everywhere you turn there are people sitting at home writing to their hearts content and making a living doing so. Everyone seems to want a piece of the pie, but how do you begin blogging? What are some ways you can make a living doing so? Here we will discuss a Beginner’s Guide to Blogging Basics so that you can get started in what is my passion.
Choosing a Good Name for your Blog
Before anything else, you have to determine a good name for your blog. There are so many blogs in the World Wide Web that you have to try to be unique. A blog name must compel readers and internet surfers to want to click over to see what you have to say. This is tricky as your name should be based on something you feel fits your niche. You have to do research and make sure it’s available for use as a domain. Next is cross check on all social media channels that your name is not taken, or there is a variation you can use. The name of your blog will essentially be your brand and if you don’t match it up across the board, you will struggle to build a brand in a cohesive manner.
Beginner’s Guide to Blogging Basics
Start with Free Blogging Platform
When you first test out this blogging world, a good business decision would be to invest as little money as possible into the venture. Make sure you start blogging on a free blogging platform so that you keep cost down. There are many free blogging platforms out there, but the most basic one many start with is Blogger.com. Do your research. If you find a free blogging platform, read reviews on that platform as some free blogging platforms have strict rules. There are some that will affect your potential earnings because of their guidelines. Once you are ready to upgrade, that’s when you purchase a self-hosted blogging plan.
Create an Editorial Calendar
In the blogging world, an editorial calendar is the next best thing to a business plan for a company. This blog will be your company, also referred to as your brand, and you want to ensure you have a plan for content. The whole premise behind making money while blogging is to have compelling content that keeps readers coming back. Essentially giving you earnings from ads and by clicking through to your affiliate links. Think outside of the box, get creative and remember to maintain your own voice with whatever editorial calendar you create. This is your platform to share wisdom, passion and advice on whatever topics you plan to blog about. Using a free Google calendar platform or Google Drive document with a calendar template will assist in organizing your editorial calendar.
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Beginner’s Guide to Blogging Basics
Learn Hashtags and Use Them
For every blog post you create and publish, you will need to have high resolution photos and the highest possible quality for your photos. They will be shared all over social media, so post something that you would like to see for yourself. The biggest catch for people on social media to click through is to see a good quality photo and a catchy title. Using hashtags and learning which ones are trending daily will help boost your content on your social media channels. With the social media platform Instagram becoming wildly popular yet having no clickable links available in the description of your post, hashtags will be beneficial for use in this particular channel. Start learning hashtags, make note of up and coming trending topics then schedule your editorial calendar around the most popular trends you see online.
Learn How to Analyze Stats
Most bloggers start with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools as a means to thoroughly check on their click-thrus, visitors and keywords bringing readers to their blog. There are stand-alone analytics that can help boost that analyzation of stats as well. Analyzing stats, which are essentially how many people visit your blog and how these people find your blog, is the next most important part of beginning a blog and earning a piece of that pie. Learn to evaluate keywords and use them more often in your content to boost yourself up in page rank for search engines. The key is to start seeing your blog content on the first page in search results, analyzing stats and utilizing that evaluation to grow your content will be the key in earning money blogging.
Beginner’s Guide to Blogging Basics
Optimize all Content
If you have researched beginning blogging in any way, search engine optimization may have come up in those results of your research. Also known as SEO, this is an extremely important part of creating content for your blog. When uploading photos to your blog posts, remember to insert a keyword rich title in the Alt Text field as this will help the search robots index your content appropriately. If you are looking to gain traction on a particular keyword or key-phrase, use this in the blog post around 5-8 times with emphasis placed on that phrase or word at least 3 times. Learning proper SEO techniques will help you earn more revenue in blogging and rank among the top results in search engines.
Stay True to You
Last, but certainly not least, remember to stay true to who you are and what you want to do. If you start to see a trending topic but aren’t familiar or passionate about the subject matter, the search engines and your readers will sense that and be deterred from coming back again. The biggest tip for this Beginner’s Guide to Blogging Basics is to remain true to you. When people visit your blog they want to hear your voice, your passion and your experiences as you see them. They don’t want you following the crowd and coming to read a repetitive article that they just read elsewhere online.
For more posts to help better your blog techniques, read our post:
My Story, My Why, My Reason for Beginning my Blog.
Stay passionate. Stay dedicated and remember that making money blogging isn’t something that happens overnight. You are building a business and a brand. Keep chugging forward using the tips above in this Beginner’s Guide to Blogging Basics. I started blogging in 2007 privately and in 2009 I accidentally hit “public”. I was afraid as I never did this for any other reason than to keep a diary for myself. My Husband was deployed and I was home with 6 kids ages 10 and under, 1 of them had a heart monitor and one was on heart medication. I was literally home alone, depressed and loosing my sanity; so I started to write on a monitor as a way of coping.
The only reason I noticed that my blog had gone public was because I began to receive comments from people. I was shocked and scared. Who were these people and how were they finding me? After a bit of searching I learned that I accidentally hit publish. My blog entries had been for me only, my grammar was horrible as I short-typed everything because time was a luxury. I quickly began to research what to do, how to write and found many more blogs on the internet. I started to follow many that are now friends and I began my journey using the steps above.
Find your reason. Find your passion. Your blog will be as amazing as you want to make it. I am always here if you need help or a new blogging friend 😉
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I am starting my new blog so thank you so much for all of these tips!