Absolute Basics of Blogging

When we reached 2000 followers I thought I would do a post sharing whatever I learned over my one and half year journey in blogging.

I hadn’t even read a blog before I came up with one so everything I know I learned here only.

Without further ado let’s dive right in.

First step
First of all. Make a separate e-mail address for your blog only. You want to keep it anonymous or not you don’t want notifications to flood your personal or work email address. And your email address is pretty visible to everyone so keep that in mind too.

Purpose of your blog
You should know the purpose of your blog. Blogging works differently if it’s a business blog or personal blog. You write and maintain it differently and it get easier to reach target audience. For example if it’s a photography blog your energies with concentrate in posting pictures and engaging with fellow bloggers who are photographers.

Be yourself!
As much as possible. I might be repeating this point but it’s important. If you try to be something else you will mislead yourself. You will attract crowd you can’t relate to. Use your own writing style. Own opinions.

Imagine how boring I would get if my blog name was angelinclouds rather than stoneronarollercoaster.

The trial phase.
Give it some time before diving into the blogosphere. Especially if it’s your first blog. Get a friend involved who are unbiased and are willing to critically assess your whole blog. Try a few themes and and explore all the settings thoroughly. Especially privacy, site address, menu categories. Update your contact form and about page.

Copyright notice & Disclaimer
Write a copy write notice and a disclaimer if you want. But copywriter notice is must! I just add “Copyright © 2018 stoneronarollercoaster – All rights reserved” in the end of my every post and I have added disclaimer in pages. You can do it your way but make sure they both are there somewhere visible.

Don’t lose an idea.
Keep record of everything. You have a blog. You already are writing and publishing content. Do not waste single idea. I have small blank notes, sticky notes pen, pencils in my go to bag. And we all have mobile phones save it in memos. Every thought is precious. You can save in drafts on your blog too.

WordPress app
Without a thought download WordPress app the moment you start blogging. You will be glad you did.

Images
Now I don’t add a lot of images in my posts because I want reading to to paint a picture they want but it’s a personal choice. But if you want to add images why not post your own photos or art. It will show your versatility as well. Do add watermark or signature to your images.

Writing
Just write. Unleash the raw emotion. If you are mad, stab the keys. If you are crying, cry while writing. Let it bleed from words. If you are happy doesn’t matter if you are looking like an idiot writing something between a crazy fit of laughter. Or smiling like a fool. Believe me the readers can see you smiling or crying. The point is don’t thin it out.

Editing
Proofread. I feel horrible even writing this one as I mostly tend to skip it in hurry. Well you can too. But just preview it at least once before posting. But don’t go crazy and waste like 10 minutes editing something you took 2 minutes to write. It’s a blog not an exam. Don’t stress yourself people are forgiving here (or I would be sitting here with an empty blog).

Revisit menu
Check your contact form, about page and categories and update them regularly. Mine vanished for months and it keep doing that. Revisit them once a month in menu.

Tags
This is crucial if you want to be part of blogging community. Add related tags to you post. Let people get to your content easily. Question yourself what will I look for if I want to read this post. On the other hand look for popular tags for current year e.g “popular wordpress tags for poetery 2018” for help.

Separate folder for your blog
This leads to a separate folder of your blog material in your computer. I have one where I save everything related to my blog. It gets overwhelming later.

Prompts and Challenges.
Depending on the time you have. If you want to be a participative member for wordpress community challenges are very helpful. But given most of us have a life outside blog don’t overwhelm yourself with every challenge.

Choose the ones you are comfortable with. And add hashtag of that challenge in title of the post and add the tags too. Because that’s how people are going to find you. And don’t forget to ping back to post.

Cee has an entire category dedicated to challenges and prompts available, here.

Don’t be a trend follower
You don’t have to jump on every bandwagon. Or write about every current situation unless you working for a newspaper. Which you are not. Give your brain cells some rest. Write what you can truly relate too. Especially social subjects.

Reach out
Don’t wait for people to hunt you down. I learned this from my experience with mental illness awareness drive. When you are writing about a subject go to the reader and look for people who are writing about the same. That’s what tags are for. You can like, comment, follow whatever you want from there. But you have to go to people at times I am not a rare endangered monkey they wouldn’t know about me I am just an ordinary monkey.

Ignore!
Yes. If you don’t like a post you don’t have to say anything. Ignore it. And if someone tried to be mean to you in any way ignore that too. There’s nothing more lethal than that. You are here to be happy not to waste time and sanity.

Don’t ignore!
Don’t ignore people who spend their precious time to be there for you.This is the best part of this community. People are extremely kind and supportive. Treasure them. Reciprocate their kindness.

Privacy & password
Keep an eye on it. There is option in your setting. Set privacy how you want it. You can add password to your individual posts too and share it when you wan’t with people you want.

Schedule and plan
You could write and schedule posts beforehand if you know you will be away for a while and don’t want to vanish. This helps a lot when you are participating in challenges.

Breaks are okay
We come here to breath not to stress ourselves. So it’s always okay to take a break. Your regular readers won’t go anywhere. Some may be concerned about you and drop you a message and you can drop a post informing them if you want.

Connect. Connect. Connect!
Link all the references. If you are talking about a fellow blogger link their blog/post. Then if your peeps are aware of your blog you can always share your post on social media.

Guests posts
Some blogger offer fellow bloggers to be a guest author on their blog. It’s like hosting someone else’s party and prove how great of a host you are. Provides an opportunity to serve greater audience. Just respect rules and formal of original host.

Reposting
Since we all belong to different time zones. If you have posted something in the morning by afternoon it gets swarmed by 100s of posts. To stay visible in reader reschedule your post. But not all the time. Twice a day is acceptable I guess.

Just make sure the date stays the same or if you have shared the link somewhere it becomes invalid.

Refrain from likes explosion
Do not!! I repeat do not like 20 posts in 2 seconds on the same blog. It’s as weird and annoying as it sounds.

Change is healthy
For most of us this place is our happy place. if it’s getting boring or tiring after some time, change. experiment. it might take trial and error but it’s worth it.

That’s all for now. If you want to ask about something don’t hasitate for a moment.

Thanks for reading

Happy blogging guys! 🙂

Kindly visit my post Warriors Invited To Raise Mental Health Awareness where I am inviting Mental Health Warriors to submit their blog’s address so that we can join hands to control this wildfire.