Tips & Tricks For Brand New Bloggers | Platforms and Content

Becoming a blogger can be a very daunting task to begin. Maybe you've decided you have a lot to say on a particular subject, but you have no idea how to present your thoughts to the big scary audience that is the Internet. So let's start at the very bottom and work our way up. 

Platform

Most people know of the general blogging format, the one that I'm currently using, post, sidebar, header and footer format. If this is what you're aiming for than you want to be looking at either Blogger or Wordpress. I've had more experience with Blogger but I have also dabbled with Wordpress in the past and there is a pretty big difference. If you are blogging for a hobby and want an interface that is very customizable and easy to use then Blogger is your man. Blogger is very user friendly, free and allows you to edit the HTML and CSS of your theme to create a unique and personal blog style. Wordpress is more for a professional blogger who is looking at making it a career or who is using a blog in conjunction with their business. There is a free option, but to be able to really customize your blog to how you want it to look you have to pay for premium.

But there are other forms of blogging. For photographers who want to showcase their work Flickr and Tumblr are excellent blogging tools. Some people use Instagram to blog, granted their accounts usually link to bigger more classic style blogs but you could use it if you wanted a mini blog. 

Content

The most important thing is to have a clear idea of what you want your blog to be about. Do you love reading and want somewhere to post all the book reviews that are floating around in your head. Maybe you have draws full of beauty products that you want to recommend or not recommend. Or maybe you just want to keep a diary of your life and think other people would be interested to see your daily activities. It's always good to start off with a main focus to get everything up and running. After a while you will feel more comfortable with the idea of sharing your thoughts and feelings with the world and you may want to branch out to other things.

Yes it is important to write about what you want to write about, but at the same time you have to think about audience. The reason the majority of us start blogging is because we think our advice or opinions would be interesting to others. It's fine if you are a beauty blogger but occasionally want to write about what is happening in your life, just make sure that you keep regularly posting beauty posts so that your readers who follow your blog for beauty don't lose interest. 

The final bit of advice about content is writing style. It can take a while and a fair few posts to really develop a writing style, especially if you're not a writer. The key things to remember are: 

1) Get to the point. Don't ramble on giving a giant introduction, people will get bored and miss what your post is actually about.

2) Check spelling and grammar. I like to read through all my posts once or twice to check that everything makes sense and then I check the spelling and grammar in Microsoft Word. I find spelling and grammar extremely difficult so it's essential that I check my posts before I post (even though a couple of grammatical errors always sneak through). 

3) Keep it clean. Nothing makes me cringe more than reading curse words in blog posts, don't get me wrong I'm no angel in reality, in fact my language is pretty bad the majority of time (I'm working on it). You don't know who is going to be reading your blog; it could be children, young teens, the elderly or even potential employers. The last thing they want to read is f*** this and f*** that. 

Blogging doesn't have to be a big scary thing that you feel like you have to hide from friends and family (we all do it at first) If you are passionate about what you are writing about, people will want to read it. The blogging community is huge and there are always people on hand to give out tips and tricks to help newbies along on their merry blogging way.

Have you already started a blog? Are you looking to start a blog but think people wont want to read what you write? Or are you looking for specific advice that has not yet been answered?