Shut Up and Blog Already
1. I’m no longer a writer.
So you’re now not an author – as a minimum, not with the aid of change. Big deal! Neither are many very successful bloggers. They’re entrepreneurs, artists, community activists, foodies, moms, or even CEOs. Instead, what they have got in commonplace is ardor.
A blogger’s purpose first and primary is to entertain and engage. If your punctuation is less than perfect or your sentence shape leaves something to be preferred, nobody goes to file you to the grammar police. But if there may be no conviction behind your words, no one is going to make investments in their time in reading your blog week after week.
Your writing fashion must be easy and informal. Don’t approach the mission of creating a publish like you are writing a research paper. Instead, believe you are sitting right down to sprint off a short email in reaction to someone who has requested you a query about your selected topic. Keep your entry brief and conversational. When you’ve got completed writing, read you publish aloud to yourself. If you trip over words or phrases because they experience unnatural or clunky, go back and simplify them.
Remember that what you have got to say is a long way more crucial than the mechanics of how you are saying it. No one is grading your weblog with the red pen in hand—authenticity and personality count number far more than perfection any day of the week. Just lighten up and let your own voice come via. Not simplest will this make your writing extra approachable; it is the very basis for constructing credibility and agree with. After reading one put up, your readers need to feel as if they’ve met you; if they maintain to observe your blog over time, they should experience as even though you’re an acquainted pal.
2. I’m now not a dressmaker or a programmer.
Stop proper there. Nope – not another phrase.
Can you use a phrase processor? Can you open a web browser window? Can you attach a record or a photograph to an email? If you answered “yes” to all 3 of these questions, then congratulations, my buddy, you have all of the technical and inventive know-how you need to be a blogger!
There’s no purpose to let technophobia keep your lower back from reaping the advantages of running a blog – no longer whilst you could take benefit of user-friendly, do-it-yourself gear like Google’s Blogger.
Blogger is designed to give all and sundry the electricity to post. The interface is so intuitive and clean to navigate that you can have your blog up and go for walks in just minutes, and pleasant of all, it may not value you a dime. Choose from a collection of templates, choose your preferred combination of colors and fonts, and away you go.
Creating posts is easy, too, and you can even enhance them with links, pics, and video. You can also assign each article to a topic class of your selection to help your readers locate related content in step with their specific interests.
Of path, you may get a fair more return to your effort and time if your weblog is hosted on your personal internet site, on account that your site visitors can study your cutting-edge entries and peruse your records without ever leaving your primary site. Still, there’s no motive for the challenge. Simply accomplice with a terrific internet improvement firm that will let you combine your blog into your current website in a manner it really is consistent together with your logo and offers a content material management gadget. It truly is just as easy to apply as any of the free do-it-yourself tools.
No, be counted which technique you pick; you’ll be surprised to find how easy it’s miles to get your blog up and to jog and the way little time it takes to post new content.
3. I wouldn’t recognize where to start.
One of the excellent matters about blogging is the fluidity and versatility of the medium. As a blogger, you are your own author, editor, and writer. That means that there aren’t any hard-and-speedy regulations to which you should adhere. Think of your blog as a clean canvas; it truly is waiting to upload color, form, and texture.
There are many distinct approaches you could approach blogging – every considered one of them just as valid as the subsequent. You would possibly pick to apply your weblog as a platform for reporting enterprise information and forecasting tendencies, impart beneficial recommendations and how-tos, or journaling your non-public experiences, which will help others who’re looking to achieve comparable desires. Some trendy blogs like Catalog Living are nothing extra than an ongoing collection of pictures with humorous captions.
One of the nice ways to get commenced isn’t with the aid of writing at all. Instead, it is by way of studying. If you’re seriously considering beginning your very own weblog, you ought to make a point of analyzing other blogs each day – blogs that talk about topics that relate to your enterprise and industry, blogs written by your competition, or even blogs that have nothing to do together with your precise area however which you find fun and unique irrespective of the challenge remember.
Subscribe to the RSS feeds for those blogs and set apart a few minutes each day to test thru the cutting-edge posts. You don’t need to read each entry, simply the ones that strike you as maximum exciting.
Look for commonalities in a number of the blogs you study each day for pride. What do you experience about them maximum? When you locate an article that you can’t prevent studying, please take a moment to research why it is so compelling. Is it the author’s voice, their unique approach to their selected topic, or how they have organized their argument? Pay attention properly to the headlines that seize your eye and think about what makes them charming. Over time, as you assimilate those observations, you may obtain clarity approximately what you want your weblog to be and a way to craft posts on the way to preserve your readers hooked.
