What is a blog or blogging?
A blog is like your online personal diary which has the ability to be available privately for you or publicly for everybody. It is also widely useful nowadays because of its features to post and add comments. Every blog may vary in different topic discussions to express the idea of the author.If you are a college student, you probably want to know how to create a blog even though you don’t have experience in writing (just like I am now). Having a hard time writing your first personal blog, you don’t have to worry. Every newbie experiences that too and according to my friend, every writer has also felt that way. Do you believe that constant practice makes perfect? Same as in writing, the more you challenge yourself to it, the more you become professional and adapt different styles, techniques, tips and master the grammar usage in the long run.
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Here are 10 Tips or Guidelines on Starting a Blog of Your Own:
- Be original Avoid copy and paste the ideas or work from other authors. This act is called plagiarism. You may have issues with DMCA or (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) on your blog. The worst thing to happen is that your blog or website might be penalized or banned later on.
- Be sharable Let’s say that you are the reader, why would you read this blog? What is the difference between your blog from other blogs? In business terms, this is called a value proposition. Are you giving something for free? This is to make sure that your content will be loved and enjoyed by your readers.
- Must be at least 400-600 words or more The blog should be ranging more than 400 and must be relevant to the topic.
- Define your target keyword A keyword or a query is used when searching on the web using a search engine like Google. So before writing your blog you should first do basic keyword research using these three search engines; Google, Bing, and Yahoo. For example, if you search for a term, you have to make sure that it has enough results or a minimum of 500k.
- First is the exact match, try to search this keyword: “college blog” with the double quote and compare it with no double quote. There is a huge difference in the result.
- The second is the negative match, using (~) tilde before a keyword. This technique excludes a term. For example, try to search in Google; college project ~college. This will search the term college project without a term college on the search result.
- The third is the add match, using (+) plus sign before the term. For example, try to search; college tips +news. This will search result pages including news articles or news websites.
- Take time to research your topic The more time you spend on your research, the higher the quality of your content and this is good for the readers. Every newbie writer should spend time to provide more quality not just good content. If you are in doubt of what certain topic to write, you just have to start with what you are good at because once you are done with your first article and keep posting quality and relevant articles for your blog, then you are good to go.
- Start writing your first draft When writing your first draft, as much as possible don’t hit backspace just continue writing and don’t mind with the grammar. You just have to focus on what is your idea. Anyway, you can have much more time to check your grammar than to organize your idea. You can ask somebody from your family or from your friends to proofread or to review your work if it’s readable or easy to understand. Applies some formatting to emphasize words and always make sure to use contrasting font color and Verdana as font type for your paragraph.
- Make use of Images, videos or other type of content Did you know that Facebook users tend to like more content posts in images than in text? People spend more time reading blogs with images than those articles that don’t have. You have to support your content using good quality images to attract readers. But, limit the file size as it will affect your website performance. File size more than 100Mb is definitely a no-no. Users get frustrated or hate a website that loads very slowly so limit your file size not just on images but to another type of content to be uploaded.
- Be sociable After posting your content, it is now time to share it using your social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and many more. You can reach friends who have a passion for writing and start following them. You might add your childhood friends and you may also ask them anything about writing using their expertise on it.
- Never stop learning If you really want to be a good writer, you should also be a reader. Read more books about blogging tips to becoming a better writer. You may follow those expert writers by subscribing to their website to keep you updated on their latest posts.
- Eat and get a good sleep Have enough good sleep it will help your brain to function well than having a few hours of sleep. Think of it as a battery, the lesser you charge the quicker to discharge. Also, study shows people who refrain from food and sleep shorten their life twice as those people who get enough good sleep and eat healthy food.