How To Become a Blogging Human

I feel like it's very very early days for me to include the word 'successful' in the title, but one of the most common emails I get sent is asking for advice to set up a blog, and whilst I love conversing with all of you, sometimes repeating myself over and over gets a little tiresome. And since in the last few months about 15 people have set up blogs after reading mine (hooray!) I feel like I'm in a fairly good position to offer up some life advice on how to get started. 

Decide Your Blog Style
In the blogging world, blogs are separated into 4 main categories, Lifestyle, Fashion, Beauty and Travel (fitness and health come under lifestyle). When you first decide to start blogging it's important to have a clear readership in mind. Some people, like myself, have a little bit of everything, but at the end of the day I know I'm a Lifestyle blogger because my content is primarily my yapping on about my life. If you're not sure, do some research, have a look at beauty or fashion blogs, compare them to the lifestyle ones. Generally travelling is an easy one to rule out, unless you're going somewhere exotic for a stretch of time, chances are you won't be a travel blogger!

URL's
 Choosing your URL is not to be underestimated, sure you can change it later, but it's far easier to just choose a name you like to begin with. Try to avoid lots of numbers and try to keep it short so people will find it easy to remember. Anything from alliteration to just using your name, it doesn't have to be completely creative!

 Designing Your Blog
Blog design is a tricky thing, especially if you have no idea where to start. First off you need to decide if you are happy having one of the blogger or wordpress templates. A lot can be changed and added to and most blogging humans just have a very edited template. If you want to customize it yourself, most boggers recommend using a programme like Photoshop or Gimp, but whilst internett-ing is a forte of mine, photoshop is not. In fact, I design everything using good old Paint. The most advice I can give is google, google, google. If there's something you want to learn how to do, just search it and for the most part, you will find it. If you're not tech-savvy or an html bird, then there's also the possibility of paying somebody to design your blog. Make sure they're a legit designer, most have their own websites, or you can simply buy a design from online, either way, these can be really expensive, so I'd definitely recommend having a go yourself first.


The First Post
Once you've established what 'style' of blog you want to be, it's time to write your first post! Most people, including me, write their first post as a bit of an introduction. Most of us when writing this first post, are literally writing to nobody, but try not to let that bother you. Your first post doesn't even have to be an introduction post, it can be whatever you want, but crack it out and make sure you proof read it before setting it free onto the world!

Get Connected
I can't stress this enough, if you want to be part of the blogging community, you need to put yourself out there through all means of social networking. Share it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, search for other blogs and write comments (don't hound blogs or write anything impersonal though, make sure you actually like the other persons blog and think they'll be interested in yours), also set up a 'bloglovin' account, which allows more people to view your blog and is a really popular networking site for bloggers. 


Meet Fellow Bloggers
Not only is it important to use social media for your own sharing, it's also a good idea if you want to meet other bloggers. A lot of blogging guys and gals use hashtags to promote their blog, #lbloggers (lifestyle bloggers) #bbloggers (beauty bloggers) #fbloggers (fashion bloggers) and #tbloggers (travel bloggers) are the most commonly used and searched for to find new blogs. If you find someone who's blog you love, tell them! There's nothing bloggers love more than to hear their content is making someone happy. Blogging is a great way to meet new friends as you all have it on common, there are often meetups or coffee mornings going on all around the world, especially if you live near a big city, so have a look around! Talking to other bloggers also keeps you inspired.

Stay Committed
You may think the hard part is done, but keeping up with blogging is harder than you think, especially at the start when there's not very many people following you. I was blogging to less than 10 followers for about 3 months before little Alice's Antics kingdom started to build, so don't give up. Some people lose interest and some just decide it's not for them, but if you give up because of your follower count, it says a lot about your motives for being a blogger. Everyone gets writers block, but don't let that get you down, just take the time and space you need and continue later on, you're not a failure for having a blank mind, it happens to all of us!

I really hope this clears up any grey areas for aspiring bloggers out there! 

Ciao for Now!
X

11 comments

  1. I've finally set up my own blog and this has given me lots of ideas! Thanks x

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  2. The hashtags have changed my life! I've always found it hard to find bloggers that I really enjoy and this has made it so much quicker, thank you!

    gilly15.blogspot.co.uk

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  3. Really useful post, thanks Alice xx

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  4. absolutely great post.
    www.justalittlebitoftwaddle.blogspot.co.uk

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  5. Thank you so much Alice! I love blogging and I hope that I can use more of the hashtags when I tweet out my posts so they're easier to find on social media :D

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  6. Thanks for this Alice! I'm in the keeping committed phase as I've only been blogging for just over a month now, and it's encouraging to hear that it can take a long time to grow!

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  7. I'm one of those people who struggle with blog names a lot! And I'm almost always getting tired of my blog designs and switch them constantly. I'm trying to avoid that. Reading people's thoughts about this has really made me care less about the design/name and focus on what I want to write. I think I'm a lifestyle blogger, because I do intend to make my blog my little space where I just share my everyday-ness C:

    blog | the pastel daisy

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    1. I change my design ALL the time, don't worry about it! Right now I'm the happiest I've ever been with my blog though, so hoping to stick to it! Definitely focus on your content, good luck with it all :-)

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  8. I love your blog alice! I'm a reader from Singapore! <3

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  9. Thanks! This helped me out a bit :)! I've been blogging off and on I tend to lose track. You sure are right about staying committed .. it's a lot harder than you think. haha, one of my things on my summer bucket list it to blog more about adventures!

    - http://nessabogs.blogspot.com

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  10. Thanks Alice, I've been looking around for inspiration and tips as i've been trying to start writing a blog for a while now. So when I scrolled down your blog page and found this post it was perfect! Deciding on a topic and writing the first post is pretty difficult but hopefully it will get easier with practice.

    Thanks for this great post, it's been really helpful! :)

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