Blogging Do’s for Every Blogger. ~Part 1~

Hey, readers!

Having been blogging for about 5 months, I’ve made it a personal point of duty to pen down observations I make about blogging as I go. And today, I wish to share with you:

blogging do’s for every blogger. 💙

They’re quite a lot, so I’ve broken them up into two parts. The Part 2’s coming soon. 😉

And so, I begin…

1.Make your homepage appealing.

When a blogger links to your blog, it’s often going to be your blog’s homepage. So, it’s important for you to have a beautiful homepage. Not a nice homepage, not a good homepage, but a beautiful homepage. This is must-have number one.

Make sure you use colours that complement each other, and colours that are not too sharp in the eyes; otherwise you’ll scare your potential follower away.

To augment your aesthetics, I recommend that you include the ‘Latest Posts’ block in your homepage, so as to give readers a sample of your posts and (hopefully) get them to read.

Lastly, it’s best to write a little intro about your blog and link to your ‘About’ or ‘Posts’ page.

But in case you simply just want your homepage to display your latest posts, that’s fine too. 😚

A blogger I know with breathtaking homepages is: Suhani. And another blogger I know with with a beautiful website is Evin.

2.Give your posts feeling with EM.O.JIS 😜

I’ve come across some blogs whose posts are bereft of emojis, and I’m like:

oh no, no, no 😩

Even though when I began blogging, I only knew the

🙂          😦          ❤        ^-^

emoji symbols(the first three would turn to actual emojis in WordPress, FYI), as I began finding more blogs, I kept wondering how they inputted emojis in their posts. At first I thought it because they wrote posts with their mobile devices, but then I realised that that wasn’t the case. So I browsed out how to input emojis into text on a PC, and I found that on Windows 8 versions, this can be done by holding the Windows key + the full stop/ period key at the same time.

Blog posts should really be coloured up with emojis. They give posts feeling and make them more readable and interesting.👌🏿

So, if you aren’t dolling up your post with emojis, try it out – but don’t overdo it, it’ll just get annoying. 🙄

3. Let your blog design complement your content.

I don’t know about you, but for me, a blog will never be perfect. From time to time, we will always feel the need to add some new designs to our blogs – and that’s okay. But remember to style your blog in line with what it’s all about – let the design, colours and fonts complement the content.

4. Eye candy is very important.

In a time when quality, high definition images are 99% of what people look out for in almost any content, quality images in your blog post will make all the difference. I know why I stress ‘quality’:

99.9% of viewers DO NOT want to see blurred, disproportionate images.

For me, if I go to a site and see such and images, I’ll look for another site if I’m not in much of a rush, or if I don’t know any other site where I can get better written content.

Images attract readers, and putting images here and there throughout you blog post keep them interested. But DO NOT use irrelevant images. Make sure the images you use communicate idea and feeling of your article.

Lastly, don’t place images after every paragraph. Even though images are necessary, putting in too much of them will just get annoying, draw attention away from the actual article, and look amateurish.

5. Try to make your blog post link descriptive.

I mean, tell a little about the blog post in the link. If the tittle does that already, use the tittle.

E.g.:

BLOG POST TITTLE: 6 Things to Keep in Mind Before Choosing a Career.

BLOG POST LINK: https://essasnotes.wordpress.com/2022/04/25/6-things-to-keep-in-mind-before-choosing-a-career-path/

So, you see that from the link alone, the viewer knows that in the blog post, they will find out six things he/she should keep in mind before choosing a career.

And using descriptive links can also be helpful when your post’s tittle is too long. Instead of having the whole string of words as your link, shorten it into something readable.

Having descriptive links is also good for SEO. Though I’m far from being an SEO guru, I know enough to know that short links that tell something about a post get higher rankings in Search Engine results than long, confusing ones.

6. Keep your blog post tittle short and catchy.

Let it capture all that the blog post is about. I once was making a little research on organizations that advance girls in tech. I wouldn’t have clicked on this link to an article on SheKnows if its tittle didn’t read:

9 organizations committed to helping girls kick butt in tech fields.

Honestly ‘kick butt in tech fields’ is what got my attention and click; even though its link was less attractive:

9 organizations committed to helping girls kick butt in tech fields

So you see that a blog post’s title can be that important in determining whether or not it’s link will get clicked on.

7. Try out linking.

As a blogger, you can either link to your own content, or the content of other bloggers/content creators.

Linking to content on other websites boosts their traffic, so be sure to notify them of this (through email, perhaps) so they might just return the favour.

And linking to other posts of your own keeps readers moving around your site. I was elated when, some time ago, I got a like on one of my very old posts. That was made possible because of linking to other articles on your blog.

But please remember to link relevantly. Don’t just stuff links all over the place; it scares readers away.

TIP:The linking technique I believe is best is the one I call the linking-sentences technique. Here are examples:

• “Starting up as a new blogger can be hard, what with all the hard choices you’ll have to make. But other than making choices of niches, social media advert techniques and all others, the area where most beginner bloggers fail is in the choice of a blogging platform. Here’s a post of mine that wisely points you to the best blogging platform,when compared to all others. “

• “Yeah, yeah. You’re probably at that point in your life where you need to make a choice of career. I’ve been there, too. So to help you out, I recommend you first know the 6 Things to Keep in Mind Before Choosing a Career.”

The linking techniques you should not be trying are these:

TECHNQ 1: “… I wrote an entire post about it. You can read it here.”

This technique does work, but the linking-sentences technique works better and is more interesting.

TECHNQ 2: I don’t know if this is from the way the site is structured, but I’ve come across many articles where after a few paragraphs, a link to other posts is placed thus:

“Read also: Nine Ways to Stay in Shape this Month.”

This might get readers to click, but some readers might also find it annoying.

So use the most acclaimed linking technique: the linking-sentences technique.

8. Don’t try to sound too important and knowledgeable

Don’t try to sound important and smart by using long sentences and big grammar (you’ll bore a lot of readers away). I relate better with articles that are written in every day conversational language, than with those written like they were picked out of a textbook for professors.

And because of this, even though you can write your articles any way you want, I advise you write in everyday language, because it will engage your readers more.

9. Write about topics that interest you.

If you’re writing about something you aren’t interested in, your readers won’t like it, too. Don’t force yourself to write about things you aren’t interested in just because you think your readers will like it. Write what you like, and those who like it too will read.

10. Look back at your posts.

As we advance as bloggers, it’s normal to forget about old posts. But I advise that once in a while, you should visit your site and read through old posts. You might be surprised to find out errors, broken links, images that don’t show up, or might even get new ideas we can add to the post.

Revisiting old posts is important because that one old post full of errors might just be the one that a new viewer of your site might upon. And if the post is terrible, he/she will vamoose from your site.

And still on looking at posts, whenever you make a post, immediately check how it looks on your site and in the WordPress Reader, so you can check if all your aesthetics and formatting appeared the way you wanted them to.

And these are my blogging do’s for every blogger. Even though you might be an old blogger, I hope there were some points here that got you thinking.

Thanks for reading, and look out for the ~part 2~!

Dishing out blogging advice, 🥧

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