Hacks for Blogging
Having continuous access to more digital content, using tools such as WordPress and Google blogs, making it easier to embark on a journey of blog writing. These tools eliminated the limitations of traditional reading materials by providing a simpler and uncomplicated process of transmitting our personal ideas and thoughts. What reveals the importance of these digital tools is the tremendous popularity and use of blogs worldwide, in both providing objective and subjective based information to the readers. According to the latest research (2020), “there are more than 500 million blogs out of 1.7 billion websites in the world. Their authors account for over 2 million blog posts daily”. On the other hand, blog writing paves the way to monetize digital content, and developing your blog creation/management skills can realize financial rewards.
So instead of just watching your blank screen with your fingers hovered over the keyboard not knowing from where to start, follow this blogging guide and learn;
How to get started?
How to choose your niche?
How to lay down content structure?
How can the reader get the best out of your content?
How to not put all your eggs in one basket?
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How to get started?
Coming up with new ideas is often the key part of blog writing, therefore it’s crucial to carve out time for original and creative thinking. So, to get started, consider finding your perfect space within the right mindset. This can be done through brainstorming with your mates, friends, teachers. Equally, writing in your field of expertise can help you in shaping your content and making it successful. Then, write about something you are passionate about because when you care about a certain topic, you will deliberate ideas in a more coherent, expressive, and emotional way. Thus, you can establish an impactful connection with your audience that leads to a profitable demand for your blog content.
Next, it is important to discover your readers’ preferences to increase their engagement with your topic. You can look for inspiration by researching other successful writers and researchers but avoid copying from them. Instead, be creative and put your own spin. Besides, you need to get a clear angle from which you are going to write, in other words, you need to narrow down your ideas and avoid broad approaches. But how to do that?
Identifying and then choosing a niche you care about is the best solution.
How to choose your niche?
Experienced-based writing is always the best approach. Writing a blog doesn’t require a scientist, rather it is about being passionate about a certain niche that will lay down the cornerstone of your work. You may wonder what a niche is. The latter is a specialized and targeted area where you can focus in a smart, specific, and knowledgeable way, utilizing a research-based methodology. To accomplish it correctly you need to conduct a skills and passions evaluation; It is never about being an expert in every field but rather, being passionate about your niche. The main point here is to ask yourself: am enthusiastic enough about it to do it even if I am not getting paid for it? What do people frequently tell me I’m good at? What special knowledge have I developed through my work or education? For example, digital marketing is a wild field, if you are good at it or an expert in social media, start and keep writing about it. Then, you need to figure out if there is a market for your niche, through typing basic keyword research related to your place then figuring out which expressions are proposed. At this level, you may think of narrowing down your niche. Even further, you can use a tool like Redditlist, http://redditlist.com/ , to learn about other possible sub-topics or sub-niches. It is never wrong to discover what is already there (people tackling the same field as yours), what matters the most is your readers’ needs and what can you provide vis a vis competitors. Your final point is to test your niche and see how many are interested in your content in terms of traffic and downloads.
How to lay down content structure?
Without a well-organized structure, your blog will remain a haphazard and random collection of pages. Hence, you need to plan for your structure; based on your niche or goals. Before jogging down all of your ideas, take a pencil and a piece of paper (we know, old school) and start outlining and sketching the layout. Start with an introduction, just a couple of sentences, and don’t make it too long. Most importantly think about what further explanations that you need to give your audience before you dive into the meaning of the blog post. In your first steps, you can refer to a straight-up essay to maintain a coherent set of ideas thus, attending to a reader’s logic. So, an introduction to situate the reader and provide context, then, explaining your outline in the main body through coherent paragraphs. When drafting, consider shifting from the general to the specific, start with an introductory sentence, raise your idea, support it with accurate examples to make it more genuine to the reader, and finally concluding with the key points from the body of the previous text. Along these lines, writing is providing accurate answers and solutions to the reader. But wait, you should never forget the logistical side of your blog article, you need to add pictures, graphs, ads… that help to break up the blog post. It is extremely important to help your audience with the format of your content, since it makes it more visually appealing, especially if they want to skim it. As the last step here, don’t hesitate to ask your reader to comment and suggest the next topics they may want to know about. That is to say, make it a reader-friendly ending, open to follow-on engagement.
How can the reader get the best out of your content?
Giving the increasing number of blogs, shared content is getting more familiar and repetitive which makes creating work that is unique more challenging. Thus, always remember that your content is your privilege. Write as though you’re telling a friend about a new lesson you have learned, use your own writing tone, and use anecdotes and other real-life examples to make it real and personable. In other words, be yourself, and write from your own perspective.
Also remember to pay attention to the title, as a poor or weak title can ruin amazing content and shove it to the darkest corners of the internet. Then, draft your subheadings in a cleverly concise way, making them suspenseful but informative. Additionally, consider that some people scan web pages rather than reading them, so try to work on that detail rather than fighting it. Next, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the reader, who is uninformed of the technical jargon of your profession, and consider “If you’re writing your content to be distributed to a wide audience, keep all reading levels in mind”. Accordingly, forget what you have learned in school and write as if you are speaking to a 4th grader. In other words, get rid of the English composition you learned in class and accept the fact that an easy and simple vocabulary can do the job. Moreover, make your content informative and unique since blog writing is essentially soul reflecting that manifests in how potential readers perceive your content. Finally, to make the reader get the best out of your content, write passionately, knowledgeably, smartly, and concisely.
https://blog.issuu.com/make-content-more-readable/
How to not put all your eggs in one basket?
A person should never depend on one single plan to succeed. Eventually, you need to search for several options to maintain continuous productivity. Concentrating all efforts and time investment into one area would lead to a dead end. You may ask how? putting all your ideas, imagination, and key terms in one single article might ruin your writing career. If we take the example of a talented writer who has spent his life writing a marvelous book, devoting all his efforts, money, and time into that masterpiece, we could simply notice how he disappeared after sparkling once in a lifetime. Hence, just because he put all his eggs in one basket, people will forget about his name since one single work is never enough to survive in the writing field. Therefore, try to avoid this type of distracting behavior to prevent the reading momentum break. Most importantly, in order to maintain developing innovative topics and inspirational thinking, spread them across your work and try not to expose them all at once. Doing so would make the segments of your work varied and balanced. Consequently, your blog article will have further horizons to thrive and grow in a continuous manner. It doesn’t require you to stick to one choice because you risk failure and losing all your assets. Still, it’s always great to keep people coming back for more.
Comment below if you have any additional ideas or roll in and start your blog !
