Bloggin’ ain’t easy.
And Rome wasn’t built in a day. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Back when I was in college and did this as a hobby, I was consolidating information and acting as a liaison for different organizations, allowing everyone to gather their information in one location. I also had a lot more free time as a college student. Now, I’m generating original content, or trying to create original content and I gotta say, this isn’t easy.
When you read blogs about how to be a blogger, they always say the same thing, “just write”. Write about what tickles your whistle that day, form your theme over time and when you’ve reached a common topic, nail it down and master it. When you learn something new, talk about it. To that point I would like to say that teaching someone something you just learned is the best way to retain the information, it’s why when I’m learning a new board game, I play myself a few times, then play one other person, then expand to the full monty. Usually, the other person is someone who is also skillful in learning new board games, really. Learning how to learn to play board games is a real thing, it’s why I was able to and still am able to pick up magic the gathering tricks so quickly, memorizing draft strategies (I sucked last night because I wasn’t expecting dragon’s maze), and learning to poker face.
Contests are a great way to build a userbase. Moreso, these days people offer up rewards for “stretch goals”, a concept that ran rampant on kickstarter.com. Recently, one group that I follow on twitter and facebook said they were close to 10,000 Likes and everyone was up in arms when they weren’t giving out a prize, people need to calm down. I hate to use the word entitlements, but cool your jets, just because you ‘liked’ something on facebook doesn’t mean you get a prize.
So to all these points I’ll give you what you came for, an itemized list of successful tips from someone else:
- Be consistent, don’t be afraid to write about “nothing” because writing on a normal schedule is the first step of blogging. You won’t be able to get better if you have nothing to compare against.
- Offer your readers something, it doesn’t have to be physical, but sharing your expertise or even going so far as to become an expert so that you can share your experience is massive.
- Don’t forget your readers, if they comment on your blogs, answer their questions, even if it’s only for the first hour or day. Being involved is a huge step towards building a community.
- Look good, which is a lot easier said than done. If you were to go to Martha Stewart’s website, then go to reddit, you’re going to see a huge difference in design. Take chance, but still remember that disabled people use the web and keep them in mind: http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility.
- Reach out, do an interview with someone related to your blog, someone your readers and you care about. Do you have a favorite Indie artist and always wondered how they got their start? Shoot them an email, the worst that could happen is that the email gets deleted.
- Don’t stop, challenge yourself, #BlogEveryDay if you have to.
