366 Days of Writing Prompts – Day 128
Key takeaway
Give your newer sisters and brothers-in-WordPress one
piece of advice based on your experiences blogging. If you’re
a new blogger, what’s one question you’d like to ask other
bloggers?
My best piece of advice is Be Consistent, Except When You Can’t. Okay, I know that sounds a bit contradictory, but allow me to explain. Here are some ways to be consistent:
- Start with a theme for your blog and remain true to that theme (even random is a theme! just be consistently random though)
- Use popular tags that will drive people to your blog (love, hate, motivational, poetry, fiction, etc.)
- Write every day – this could just be one post, or many
- Answer comments others leave on your blog
- Visit other blogs that are similar to your own – like AND comment
So when does the except part come in? If you are sick, on vacation or life gets in the way. When these things happen, inform your readers. Give them a possible return date. And try to return when you say you will. If you do not return when expected or only post sporadically, then you will not gain or keep an audience. And ultimately, this is why we blog, right? Otherwise, we would keep our blogs private, for our eyes only.
How about you, dear readers? What piece of advice would you give to a new blogger? Or if you are new, what advice would you like to ask me? I’ve been blogging on WP for over 4 years now, maybe I can help. Share your thoughts and questions with me in comments.
Promptly Written 
In no particular order:
1. Are you writing with a view to earning money or some other form of validation from it? Research your audience and write what you believe will appeal to them. You want to raise awareness of something? You have something to say, an opinion you want to share? Within the limits of the laws on discrimination, hate speech etc., be authentic. Authenticity is a great differentiator. But choose your words so they inform or entertain, not insult, anger or disgust.
2. Language is your toolbox; use it well. You wouldn’t employ a carpenter who couldn’t use a saw, or a plumber who didn’t know how to use a wrench; don’t employ a writer, blogger, journalist etc. who can’t use language properly. And don’t be that person.
3. Extremes of language and imagery have their place – to shock. That only works if they are used sparingly. Repeated use of extreme language is like a carpenter regularly using a hammer instead of a screwdriver to drive screws into his work. It may work once or twice, but it eventually becomes tediously ineffective.
4. After writing, read aloud (to yourself or someone you trust to be honest with you), correct errors, repeat until error-count = 0.
5. Remember that the internet has a long memory. Don’t deliberately write anything that you may regret later (see point 2).
6. Not all advice is good advice.
Don’t blame me – you asked.
All of this is great advice, Keith! I especially love 6! Thank you for sharing these 🙂
It’s a bit narrowly focussed and, of course, doesn’t help people blogging about fashion, music, photography, or very much at all, really; neither does it offer any insights into community-building or any of that other fancy stuff – but, hey: that’s not my forté.
Oh I don’t mind that it was narrowly focussed.. I think advice of all flavors is good in a blogging community.
Good advice, Lori. I got to get better with tags….
Thanks, Raili. Yeah, tags confused me for a long time. I couldn’t figure out the difference between Categories and Tags and used them both inappropriately for a long time. Hope you can improve yours 🙂
Working on it – I have just signed up for self directed Blogging Fundamentals which has replaced Blogging 101
Oh cool.. I hope it really helps you hun
Writing for a small audience is perfectly OK!