Friday, August 5, 2011

Show Us Your Life-Blogging Tips

Today Kelly is hosting another Show Us Your Life Friday with a blogging tips post.

I am by no means an expert in blogging or writing. I feel as though I am a terrible writer and thoughts just seem to run through my head so fast, and maybe every other one makes it on to the screen. Sometimes I feel like it's just a jumbled mess when I'm through, but never-the-less, YOU read me!

Most of these tips come from a Bloggers Night Out some friend's and I had several months ago. We all got together with a much more experienced blogger and she shared her blogging soul. When I got home I couldn't wait try what I had learned and believe it or not I more than doubled my monthly page views.

Tip #1: Don't blog for followers or page views. Yes, it would be nice to have 10,000 followers like Kelly, or have thousands of page view each month; however, if you aren't blogging because you love it, you'll never get there anyway.

Tip #2: Find a theme or " look" for your blog and stick with it. I am all for changing the appearance of a blog because I tend to get bored easily, however it's important that people know that it's YOUR blog they're looking at when they click over. You can tweak things here and there but make sure to keep the same underlying theme each time.

Tip #3: Blogging takes time. As a stay at home or working mother time is not something always available, however don't publish a post just to do it that day if you didn't have time to spend on it. That is the glorious beauty of the "Save Now" button and "Auto save. These lovely features allow you to work on something and then put it away if you need to. The Auto save feature also makes sure to save your work if a certain two year old were to throw your laptop on the ground (Not that it's ever happened to me).

Tip #4: Don't stress because you aren't picking up followers. I have been blogging for three years and seriously blogging for about seven months. I have only picked up about 25 new followers in that seven months. I have found though that more people read my blog than follow. Facebook is a great tool for this, and I've also found that lots of people read and comment but don't necessarily follow the blog. Personally I try to follow any blogs that I happened to click upon and like. I kind of think it's just a courtesy thing, but that's just me. Obviously there's no need to follow blogs that you might be interested in, but if you're going to go through the trouble of commenting, then you might as well click that little FOLLOW button too right?

Tip #5: Spell Check! As the queen of publishing misspelled and grammatically incorrect posts, I can't stress the importance of this. It just makes you seem more professional and put together if you do this. You never know if a potential employer or opportunity might be reading your little blog.

Tip #6: Have fun. That's the whole point of doing this right? I mean hopefully no one is sticking a gun to your head and telling you that you have to blog right? So if you aren't having fun try taking a break for awhile. You could also try linking up with some other fun weekly posts like "What I'm Loving Wednesday" and " Menu Monday" These are fun little posts that don't require a ton of thought on your part, but still give people some to read about you.

As I said before I am in no way an expert, but I have found a few things that have helped me to navigate the blogging world.

Thanks for reading!!!

6 comments:

  1. As a new blogger, I enjoyed reading your tips! Thanks :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Also a new blogger and love this post! Thanks for posting. Love your style!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Amanda,
    I can't recall exactly where u are...near me, I believe? Message me and we can chat. I'd love to go yo a Bloggers Night Out! Sounds so fun.
    Amanda

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ps...when I click google in ur right sidebar, it s not allowing me to add ur feed to my Reader...hmmm. Wonder if it's Google or what? Will try again n am.

    ReplyDelete
  5. thanks for the nice comment...i love your blog! :)

    i'm your newest follower, can't wait to read more.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am extremely new to blogging and thought it might be a good idea to come back to this link-up. You have GREAT tips! Thanks so much for your guidance =) I'm definitely going to follow you!!

    ReplyDelete

 
Blogging tips