Top Blogging Tips For Beginners

An author blog can be a great asset to a writer. It can be a platform from which to promote one's work, to connect with new readers, to test new material and to gain a loyal fanbase.

Or it can be a massive waste of time.

Getting your author blog right is so important. It takes time and effort to create a good one, and if you are putting your energy into it, you might as well try to make it as effective as possible, and have fun with it too!

So what are some good blogging tips to get you started?

Understand your audience

Don’t start your blog without doing some research. Think about the kind of people you want to connect with and then learn all about them. Shape your blog around the sort of things they might want to read that might interest them and then let them know the content is there.

Write what you enjoy.

At the same time, it’s no good trying to write solely for others. Your blog will be so much more natural, easy to write and enjoyable if you are writing content that you are genuinely interested in yourself. Make sure your passion and personality shine through.

Build an email list.

Remember to capture emails when you can and build an email list - this can be invaluable later when you want to promote something, i.e. your new book!

Have a purpose in mind.

Think about what you are hoping to gain by starting your blog. Give yourself goals and deadlines and work out what you need to do to achieve them. Without a clear purpose and sense of what you hope to achieve you might find you are becoming demotivated and directionless.

Connect with your readers.

Don’t ignore your readers - give them opportunities to interact with you, to contact you, to leave comments and so on. The more you connect with your readers, the more they’ll feel valued, and therefore will remain loyal to you.

Give away freebies

Freebies don’t have to be physical things, content is valuable and can be given away for free too. If you can write something that’s of value (and value can mean being informative, helpful, entertaining and so on), then your readers will appreciate that and keep coming back for more.

Write eye-catching headlines and keep them short and sweet.

When you write a blog, think about its structure. The first thing a potential reader will see is your headline so make it catchy - but also relevant to the content. Keep sentences short, break up paragraphs, use simple, smart language and don’t ramble on for pages and pages!

Don’t get impatient.

Creating a successful blog with a loyal fan base of readers takes time, and you’ll need to deliver great content if you hope to achieve that consistently. Be willing to put the effort in, don’t get impatient and keep persevering, and you’ll soon start to see results.

These straightforward blogging tips for beginners are easy to follow and will help any author new to blogging get started. Remember, blogging should be enjoyable and purposeful so try to remember that, keep working and have fun with it too!

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

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