Want to blog but don’t know how? If you love writing or if you have been one of the most creative at school and would love to share your passion, stories and advice with readers around the world, then this is the right place to learn about it. Here, our team of bloggers share their favourite tips.
Develop Your Voice
Every writer has their own ‘voice’ and the more you write, the more you will develop yours.
When you start out, consider what audience you are writing for and whether you want your blog posts to be formal or informal – do you want people to feel like a friend or like a student?
If, like most bloggers, you choose to write in an informal way, make your audience feel like they have known you for many years and that they can trust you. For example, you could use phrases like believe me, trust me, I promise you, I hope you like it and comment on your experience. Expressing emotions can also help to build a connection with your audience. Are you angry about something, exhausted, excited? Just write about it!
If you want to write a formal blog, your tone of voice will be different. You will choose different vocabulary and sometimes different grammar. For instance, passive tenses are more common in formal writing.
However, there is one thing that is the same in both cases and that is being yourself, being who you really are and enjoying what you do.
Make a checklist to help ensure your post is engaging
It doesn’t matter if you want your blog writing to be a hobby or if it’s a work obligation, it needs to be engaging. So, how do you achieve that? Well, having a checklist when you’re writing is a handy tip. You could do some research and create a list of the steps you need to follow to engage your readers. Or you could just copy ours…
- Ask yourself, “Who is my ideal reader?”
- Target your audience and address the reader
- Make your post at least one of the following:
- useful
- informative
- funny
- Help readers by solving their problems
- Promise something and deliver it!
- Evoke emotions
- Move people to action
- Add images to bring your article to life
- Don’t forget to have a strong introduction and a strong ending – people love that!
- And did we mention it needs a good title? Read on!
Learn how not to suck at titling things
As a beginner blogger, if we were to make a scale of good titles, yours would probably fall on the not-so-good side. Let me set the scene: you’ve written a good article, you’ve found some great images, but when it’s all said and done, you feel like you’re missing something – something important. A captivating title, of course!
One of the best ways to engage the reader is with a question. Pop one in the title or in your introduction and you may be well on the way to hooking your reader. But not all titles should be in the form of a question. That would be silly.
Whatever style of title you go for, remember the 4 U’s. Try to make your headline:
- unique
- useful
- ultra-specific
- urgent
Use as many U’s as you can.
Find out where to get free-to-use images
Images really bring a blog post to life. Choose a large striking, eye-catching visual to go at the top of the page – this is called a hero image – and add more photos or illustrations throughout the post, especially if it’s long.
But don’t fall into the trap of just going to Google for your great graphics – you may be in breach of copyright. Don’t worry though – there are several websites that provide really high quality images for free and with no copyright issues.
On these three websites, you can find images that are not only free, but you don’t even need to credit the artist.
And here are a couple of websites where you can find freely usable images but you need to add a credit (don’t worry – when you download your desired picture, you’ll be given information about how to do this).
So, happy exploring, happy writing and happy blogging!
