Hello everyone and welcome to day 24 of my 31/31! Today’s blog is a blog that I thought about doing for a little bit of time lately, and is something that I hope people can find really helpful. I started blogging on this site in December 2012, and I have enjoyed my time here so far. I’m someone who loves to help others, and I thought that a blog about various blogging tips that I have picked up during my time here might help.
-Tip #1: Don’t be afraid to experiment: The first piece of advice that I have is to not be afraid to experiment. When starting out as a blogger, you want to find out what kind of styles suit you best. You should experiment with a whole bunch of styles at least once, and allow yourself to be creative in your approach to each one. The nicest thing about blogging is that there aren’t really any set rules to it. Sure, there’s unwritten ones, or certain expectations, but in reality, this is a fairly new medium. It’s a perfect time to find something new and be a bit of a trailblazer.
-Tip #2: Know yourself: The next piece of advice that I can give is to know yourself. Knowing yourself allows you to incorporate your areas of expertise, and it allows your blogs to come across just that much stronger.
-Tip #3: Incorporate your voice: Blog with passion. That’s a piece of advice that will be passed down from many people, but for good reason since it is such a great piece of advice. When you incorporate your opinion into things, you can make a convincing argument for your point of view. Blogs are often at their best when they provide a “so what?” Argument in their writing.
-Tip #4: Read a lot: This is crucial. Reading is just a critical skill in everyday life, but its effects extend out to blogging as well. By reading blogs, you can gain helpful pieces of information just by paying attention. For example, you can not only learn a lot of cool, new things by reading blogs, but you can also look at how to format a good blog, how to present your writing tone, and many, many other things. There are many great bloggers on this site, so you can’t go wrong with reading a few different blogs every once and a while.
-Tip #5: Know your stuff: When providing a piece of information and trying to pass it off as a fact, it really helps to do some research and double check what you are saying in order to make sure it is true or not. Nothing can derail a blog more than when you notice many obvious false statements made. It can be a pain to go do research for a blog, but trust me, the 20 minutes will make your blog seem a lot more professional and well done.
-Tip #6: Practice, practice, practice: This is super important. When I first started blogging here, my blogs were not very good. I enjoyed writing classes at school, and I was good at doing poetry and short story writing, but I hadn’t written a blog before this. It showed in the quality of those blogs. Now that I have been blogging for a little while now though, it is fun to go through each blog from the beginning and see just how quickly the quality of my blogs has progressed.
-Tip #7: Don’t be afraid to ask for help: This is important if you really want to maximize the quality of your blogs. Even if you are the best blogger around, there are always things that can be improved. Asking for help on a blog can bring in a second perspective to a blog, and this allows you to notice if you are missing any grammatical or punctuation errors, or if your overall tone in the blog is off. The moderators at this site are all pretty amazing, and are very helpful people in general. If that seems a bit too daunting, I know that many people here are also very helpful, and I would love to help anyone if it’s needed too. I honestly wouldn’t be where I am as a blogger if wasn’t for the help and advice of many different people.
-Tip #8: Try to avoid 1st person as much as possible: This is something that I am still struggling with to this day. This really lines up with the advice of knowing your audience. A personal blog is great, and 1st person is good for that, but the majority of blogs involve research, and those type of blogs just benefit from a reduced usage of 1st person. You should incorporate your voice into something, just please don’t try to shove it down your readers throats. I’m someone who uses the wordage, “I think.” So it’s a bit of a struggle for me to switch over into “I know.”
-Tip #9: Keep the blog focused: Another thing that separates the good from the great blogs is a focus in a longer blog. It’s really tough to keep your focus when writing a large amount, but it is crucial to proofread your blog and check it in order to make sure that it keeps a good flow and focus throughout.
-Tip #10: Don’t get discouraged: This is the tip that I would recommend the most. When blogging on a busy site like GIO, it’s easy to get discouraged when you might not see a lot of comments or views on a blog that you write. However, keep persevering, and eventually the quality of the blogs will improve, and with that, the views and comments will arrive.
There are many, many other great blogs on how to be a great blogger scattered throughout GIO, but I thought that I would give my two cents in the case that someone might find it helpful. That’s all for today’s blog though. What do you think of the tips? Do you have any that I forgot? As always, feel free to leave a comment and I will be sure to answer as soon as possible. Thanks for reading!
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31/31 Day 24: Advice To New Bloggers
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