The Art Of Blogging: What You Should Know To Get Started

Whether you're planning to start a fashion blog, a daily rant or aspiring to be a full-time candle blogger (scream queens anyone?), here are some basic tips to help you out!

So. You plan on joining the many inhabitants of the blogosphere, eh? But wait-- what is this I hear? You don't know how to start? Or maybe you're already conscious of all the technical words and web jargons thrown your way by the many Blogging 101 articles you've read.

Whatever it is that made you read this post, I am here to tell you to worry not. What I'll be having here isn't an extensive post about what you need to know about blogging. Heavens, even the best of the blogosphere did not learn all those things at once. So you should not pressure yourself to.

Here's what we are gonna do. I'm going to give you some really basic but very helpful tips to get on to blogging. As we all know, the foundation of whatever you intend on building is the most important thing to focus during the beginning. Creating a blog (and building a presence in the blogosphere) is not an exception to this.

So grab a pad and pen (or get your awesome photographic memory warmed up), here are some tips to help you into the art of blogging!

Blog Name

I know someone who started out blogging at a fairly young age and decided that her blog name would be as descriptive to her blog as the Nutrition Facts in a food package. Only when she grew up did she realize the errors in her ways.

Here's the thing. If you want people in the Internet to feel your presence, you have to be clever with naming your blog--and ultimately, your blog URL. Below are some key points to remember:

+ Pronouncability. This will help people who have randomly stumbled upon your blog to remember it when they want to visit again. Think Man Repeller and Facebook. A blog name that is easy to pronounce means it's memorizable and therefore means a higher possibility of traffic going into your blog!

+ Catchiness vs Attractiveness. The catchiness that I meant here refers to how unique the name of your blog is, usually not having to do with what your blog is all about, as opposed to attractiveness which refers to a "keyword intensive" name that will highly drive your blog to higher search engine rankings. It all really depends on how you want to run your blog.

Catchiness will offer a more authentic increase in traffic and better online presence (think Nose Graze which is mainly about book-blogging and coding but not entirely) while attractiveness can also increase traffic by being in higher SE rankings (think StyleCaster which is a fashion web site). They both have their pros and cons. But if you play your cards well, you'd be able to work through having a little of both in your blog name like "College Humor" which is a comedy site.

+ Availability. Of course, your blog name's availability in the Interwebs is also a significant factor to consider. I find that if you have a similar or nearly-similar blog name that is used by others, even if there's a dash (-) as a difference, it is better to just ditch that name and look for a different one altogether. YouTube once had to face issues with a website that uses the address "utube" and the other company had to change theirs instead. If you want to extend your presence to social networking sites, you also have to find out if the blog name is available there. You can try NameChk for that.

To Niche or Not to Niche?

That is the question. You see, there will be people out there who will tell you that to choose a specific blogging niche to involve in will make you better off than being a Jack- or Jane-of-all-Trades.

I say, piss off to those people.

Sure, niche will definitely allow you to focus on just one broad topic to talk to your blog (popular blogging niches are fashion, celebrities, books, and parenthood) but if you are the type of person who love to talk about different kinds of things, then why the heck not? It is your blog, anyway.

If you do want to try out a niche, be sure that it is something that you will be passionate to talk about all the time because that is exactly what blog niche is all about.

All Those SEO Technicalities

Let's all admit it, being at the first page of a Google search result makes you feel like your eating in the cool kids' cafeteria table at lunch. But is there even a specific way to hack into Google's search engine rankings? Five or ten years ago, yes. SEO used to be all about the technical bits and the keywords. But Google wasn't so smart before. Google is now.

So, really, what I'm trying to say here is that you don't really have to worry excessively over all those SEO technicalities. Instead, what I want you to keep in mind when writing a blog post are these:

+ Quality content. You want your blog post's content to be something of high quality rather than a whole paragraph or two filled with your chosen keywords. The post need not to answer question, although this is something that is highly recommended as people often Google answers to a question or solutions to a problem. An entertaining content will also do you good as there are also those who browse the Internet to find something entertaining. So long as you have a quality content and not flooded by, say memes, you will not only be identified as helpful to Google, more authentic traffic (not those spam bots) will enter your way.

+ Be specific. With regards to answering questions, and any blog post in general, focusing on a very specific topic could help out on being unique and a better quality. "How To Create A Book Review" is geared on a more specific traffic rather than the vague "How To Write a Review".

Your blog is your own

Overall, whatever you want to do with your blog is entirely on your own. Seeing what works for you personally also helps out in your growth in becoming a better blogger. Be mindful of what works for your blog and what doesn't and most importantly, be passionate about what you do and write about. And I guarantee you, someone out there will love your writings.

Happy blogging! :)