Day 12
of my A to Z Challenge. L is for Lessons Blogging Has Taught Me.
If you
don't know how this works, I've posted the link back to the rules of the
challenge at the end of this, along with a link to yesterday's post. If
you want to read my full alphabet, just keep following the links. Each day has
a link back to yesterday's post.
Since
starting my blog back in February I feel like I have learned so much. When I
first started my blog, I didn’t plan on it being a long term thing (read more
about that here: http://myrandommusings.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/why-i-started-blogging.html) Once I
fell in love with blogging, and wanted to keep doing it I knew I had a lot to
learn, and fast! What I’m about to share
with you is a list of 10 things I’ve learned since that time (and wish I'd known when I first started out).
1.That Twitter is your new best friend.
Previous
to blogging, I’d never really bothered with Twitter (I prefer Facebook to keep
in touch with friends). Twitter is brilliant for promoting your blog, because
it’s so easy to find like minded people. Where on Facebook, you can’t go around
adding random strangers just because they blog (unless you want your account
suspending of course), that’s exactly how Twitter works (I will be going into
this in a lot more detail on “T” day of the challenge so stay tuned!).
2.That blogging is a social thing.
I always
imagined blogging to be sitting alone at your computer writing posts for your
blog. I mean it is that, but it’s so much more. At the very least you interact
with your readers, replying to comments etc. I have met loads of great new people now that I blog.
3.There is a real community feel to
blogging.
Carrying on from the above points, bloggers have their own community on
Twitter. I always imagined that bloggers are in competition with each other, so
there would be a lot of back biting and bitchiness (I mean you wouldn’t see
Asda saying how great Tesco’s latest offer is right?) This so isn’t true. I
can’t stress enough how wrong I was on this point. From what I’ve seen so far,
bloggers support each other and cross promote each other. They retweet links to
each other’s blogs, they comment on each other’s blogs and they interact with
each other. I’ve also seen a lot of blog posts from established bloggers giving
advice on everything from improving the look of your blog, through to getting
more traffic.
4.You have to put yourself out there.
In the
first few weeks of blogging seriously, I naively thought that I would write
posts, post them and people would read them. In theory, that’s how it works,
but there’s a little more to it. Unless you want your blog to only be read by
your own friends and family, you have to promote your blog through social
media. Take a deep breath and just do it. What’s the worst thing that can
happen?
5.That bloggers like interacting with
readers and other bloggers.
Before I started my blog, I
did occasionally read other people’s blogs. So many times, I wanted to comment on what
I had read and always thought along the lines of “No, it’s cheeky” or “Why
would they care about my opinion?” It’s not cheeky, and bloggers do want your
opinion. I love getting comments on my blog. The writer/reader relationship is
definitely a two way street and its great hearing your reader’s thoughts and
opinions on topics you care about.
6.That being a blogger is about more
than writing your own blog.
If you write a blog, chances are you
want people to read it. So do other bloggers. You can’t expect people to come
and read your blog if you aren’t willing to do the same for others. I don’t
mean you have to read every blog post you come across, but find some blogs that
interest you (see here for some great blogs if you need inspiration on where to
look http://myrandommusings.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/k-is-for-killer-blogs.html),
read them regularly, and leave comments. Follow the bloggers that interest you
on social media.
7.That blogging is time consuming.
If you immerse yourself in the blogging world, it is time consuming. I post at
least once a day, but everyone is different, and there are no hard and fast
rules on how regular to post. Work with the time you have. Remember though, it’s
not just about the time it takes to write a post. There’s also scheduling
tweets, answering tweets, replying to comments on your blog, replying to emails,
and reading and commenting on other people’s blogs. I feel like I now have a
second (unpaid) full time job. But I love blogging, so it doesn’t feel like
work, and I wouldn't change it at all!
8.To be confident in my writing.
I’ve
also learned a lot about myself through blogging. I think it’s made me more
confident as a writer. I used to write something, re-read it and then the
doubts crept in, and I would edit it to the point that it was totally ruined. I
now write, re-read and only edit typos, or parts that don’t make any sense. I
am confident enough to publish posts written in my voice without removing the
passion from them by over editing, until they sound like form writing. I know there will still be people out there who don't like my choice of topic, or the way I write, but that's ok. I've made my peace with it.
9.That SEO is important.
Obviously,
nothing beats good content. But good content is only half the battle – it’s
kind of pointless writing brilliant posts, if no one can find them. Aside from
promoting posts on social media, SEO (search engine optimisation) is another
brilliant way to direct traffic to your blog posts. I’m no expert on this, but
what I have learned is this; you need key words in your title. If someone
Googles a topic you are writing about, you want to be found! So for example, if
you wrote a post about how cute the new royal baby is, you wouldn’t call it
“How Cute Is That Baby?” because it’s unlikely anyone would be searching for
that. Call it something along the lines of “The Royal Baby: Britain’s Cutest
New Princess”, because reader’s are much more likely to be using Royal Baby or
New Princess as their search terms. Also, if you are using images, make sure
the alt tag is a real representation of the image. For example, if you use an
image of a rose, don’t label it as just a rose, try something like “Valentine’s
Day Red Rose” to allow your image to be more searchable.
10.You will never please everyone - and that's ok.
Like real life, you will never please everyone with your blog. People all have
different tastes in what they would like to read about and the style it is
written in (wouldn’t life be boring if this wasn’t the case). Find your voice
and use it. Primarily, you must write for you. Posts about things you are
passionate about sound so much more real than if you are writing about things
you don’t care about just to generate traffic, and in my opinion, this is more
likely to lose you readers than gain them.
What
would you add to this list?
Follow
me on Twitter @randommusings29 and feel free to comment :)
