In a world full of bloggers and wannabe bloggers, it can be hard to stand out.
That’s why we’ve put together our top tips for beginning a blog with absolutely no experience.
It’s not as difficult as you may think, so long as you have a niche and a passion for whatever you’re writing about, it should come naturally to you.
Which brings us on to our first top tip…
1. Nail your niche
Whether you already run a business and want to add a blog section to your website, or you’re going to be creating a blog from scratch, nailing your niche is a vital first step.
Hopefully whatever you choose is something you feel strongly about and have lots of knowledge on or, if not, you’re at least prepared to research it until the cows come home.
Your reader will immediately spot if you’re waffling and not being specific with the information in your blog, so make sure you really understand what you’re writing about.
2. Know your audience
Every niche has a very specific audience, and you need to get your tone of voice spot on in order to appeal to them.
For example, it’s not enough to say that you sell clothing and your audience is women.
What kind of clothing are you selling? And are they for a specific age group? Perhaps you specialise in plus-sized clothing or maternity wear?
Each of those groups has individual needs which should be catered for in your blog.
3. Pick a topic
Sadly it’s not enough to sit down and start writing about whatever comes into your head.
If you really want your blog to have a purpose and do well, then you need to pick your topic carefully.
We recommend doing some keyword research to establish what your customers/target audience are searching for.
Then it’s a case of weighing up search volume against keyword difficulty.
For example, you may look at a keyword and think it’s a strong contender because it has 75,000 searches per month – but what are your chances of ranking highly against all those search results?
Similarly, it is worth considering difficulty index – a keyword may have relatively low search volume but the top results could be pages with excellent backlinks and strong authority, making it hard to compete against.
What you’re really looking for is a keyword with a good search volume and a difficulty index which isn’t sky-high.
4. Readability
One of the best tips when it comes to actually writing your blog is to set out your headers.
Not only does this help you break the content down into easy-to-write sections, but it also hugely helps the readability of your blog (which in turn improves your ranking).
Think of each header as a chapter within a book, letting the reader consume your blog in chunks, or allowing them to skip to relevant sections.
Capture your reader immediately
People are hungry for information but time-poor.
If you want them to read your blog you need to capture them in the first few sentences, or they’ll be leaving pretty quickly.
Think of something short and snappy (no more than 25 words) and maybe even use statistics to capture attention.
A top tip is to read other blogs and see how they do it – then emulate their style in your blog.
4. Pick great images
Words aren’t enough for a blog these days – they have to look beautiful too.
Think of how you want your blog feed to look as well as read.
Pick a colour scheme and the way you want your images to look – check out Brit + Co’s stunning blog for some inspiration.
5. Finally, check it!
Once you’ve got your blog written and laid out as you wish, make sure you proofread it.
It’s no good spending ages writing a well-researched blog only for it to be littered with spelling and grammar errors.
Take 10-15 minutes to thoroughly read through your blog and polish it off before hitting the publish button.
PS As an extra tip, we thoroughly recommend measuring the performance of your blog via Google Analytics or a similar measuring tool.
After all, if no-one’s reading it, why waste your time on it?
We hope you’ve enjoyed our top tips for beginner bloggers.
For any other help with your website please get in touch, and keep an eye on our blog for more tips and tricks.
