How do I blog?
Tags: Life Lessons, Blogging, Success, Life, Tips And Tricks

This series of 8 common rookie mistakes will definitely help you.

Blogging is more than just a hobby. It helps to revitalize your website, enhance your professional image in your industry and increase interaction with your visitors. Are these points not enough to convince you to write a blog?

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

You’ve understood the benefits of blogging, you’ve done your research on the topic, your keyboard is ready, you have your writing ideas in mind, and you’re about to start coding. But wait just a little longer! Dash this and some other common mistakes we all make when blogging to introduce. If we don’t keep an eye out for the mistakes we walk into, we may pay the price for it. Since our predecessors have already accumulated some experiences and lessons, let’s learn from history and bypass these detours.

Don’t make up the word count.

For many magazine or newspaper columnists, pay by the word count of their articles is a standard way of calculating pay. But blogging for your own website is a different story. We write blogs because we want to provide valuable information to our readers, and just because a blog post is longer doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the best, and it’s important to keep in mind that a blog post is fine if it conveys information clearly and explains a point of knowledge. Therefore, don’t write for the sake of writing, and don’t think of what to write, don’t wait until the “emergency brake” to find out that you have gone off-topic, but should be clear thinking, understand the point you want to make, and grasp the size and fire, when to slow-cook and steam, and when to braise and stir-fry, so that the article written is to the audience’s taste. Remember: just get to the point.

High-quality blog posts are all about concise language. If you can express your thoughts clearly in 200 words, there’s no need to write quite a short story in words. In addition, most people tend to talk about themselves in everyday conversations; it’s inherent in their genes. The same is true in website blogs, where many people often write about things that relate to them. While expressing personal feelings isn’t a bad thing, there’s a problem if we’re telling our own stories all the time. Remember that a blog is for the reader and should be reader-centric. In other words, you need to love your readers as much as you love yourself, and even give them more attention and love.

Don’t settle for an “okay” headline!

The title is the face of the article, and we all want the title to be “multi-skilled”: simple, powerful, user-friendly, and immediately attention-grabbing. However, the competition for potential users’ attention is brutal and fraught with difficulty, and we may need to compete with “Cat Dancing on the Piano” or “Rainbow Cute Cat Sneezes”. Boring headlines will only remind readers of last year’s tax assessment report and will make the blog less valuable. But let’s also note that it’s best that the blog’s title isn’t too gorgeous and shiny like an elevator billboard either, and too much of a title can be counterproductive.

The title of the blog should ideally be attractive. It should be descriptive and appealing, so short that search engines like Google and Baidu can retrieve it in no time. An easy way to come up with a golden headline is to use the magic formula: Get Answers = User Desire / Cost to Pay.

Here the “user desire” is a generalization, is not the same, stimulate the user to read the motivation can use the question method, the method of suspense, such as “the website” to add images? This principle is so surprising! In the event that you’ve read so many articles, but still do not do well in operation, the query helps to stimulate curiosity.

And reduce the desire to “pay the cost” is to reduce the user’s time, energy or money, then we can use the keyword method, data method, such as “dry goods” share, five can effectively increase the user conversion rate techniques, let the customer buy! The data is obvious in the article, “These 8 Ways to Easily Eliminate Your Fear of KPIs”, and the keywords “quick improvement” and “easy elimination” are very attractive to visitors. So, a successful title is one that increases the user’s “desire” and lowers the “cost” of acquiring that desire, so think of a good title for your blog post.

Don’t neglect the abstract

Do you remember the theme song to Journey to the West? Lampden Waiting for the Light ~ Just play these four beats and everyone knows it’s a western. This is the summary of the song. The summary, from the very first word of this blog post, shows the writing style, and thus determines the tone of the entire post. It’s as if you heard “Leng Deng Waiting for the Light” and at least expected an upbeat, fast-paced song.

Today’s readers are fast readers, they won’t give you a second chance, and if the abstract is compelling and worth their time, they will read it immediately. On the other hand, if your abstract looks lacklustre and uninteresting at first glance, readers will probably toss it aside immediately.

Don’t Overestimate or Underestimate Readers

On the one hand, don’t overestimate your readers. Unless your blog is discussing academic research about quantum mechanics, you’re better off keeping your site light and easy to understand. Also, if you’ve recently learned how to take left-handed photography in Romania, don’t let your readers get annoyed by the name of the place, but if it’s not particularly important, then omit it if you can. Only the extremely targeted out-of-the-box bloggers can use crepe language or technical jargon without losing more than half of their readers yet, but that’s not easy for everyone to do.

On the other hand, don’t underestimate your readers. Readers aren’t looking for “something like a glass of warm milk” or “a Mickey Mouse that wants to be hugged”. Since they chose to read your blog, you need to know that they are smart, intelligent and educated people, so treating them as equals is the most important and easiest rule in writing, right? Go write some general human-level blog posts, consider the target readership of your blog, and imagine that you are talking to a colleague, a friend, or a family member.

Don’t forget the important links

Think of your blog post as a newly established community on top of an island. Each hyperlink set up in the text is like a bridge, a new rail line or even a cheap and reliable route off the island in case of a bad situation. In short, a hyperlink is your link to the outside world. Hyperlinks can improve your website’s SEO ranking, improve its readability, and can be used to cite other people’s material to enrich and embellish your own posts.

In addition, online readers are used to interactivity and like to jump from this page to that one, paying attention to interesting side footnotes, so if your blog can provide a similar user experience, that’s great.

Errors in spelling, semantics, etc.

Spelling mistakes may be most likely to make the reader feel that you are reckless and unprofessional. We all make mistakes, but it is important to know to correct them. Nowadays, we all use modern tools like office, WPS, and other text tools that have automatic error correction set up inside, but there are some mistakes that they can’t find. Don’t let those low-level mistakes like spelling ruin your well-constructed blog post. Oh, and by the way, illogical sentences and words that appear without a clue are equally unwelcome.

Been staring at your computer for so long coding yourself that you can’t stand to stare at the computer screen anymore? It’s okay to send the text to a family member or friend so they can help you look at it. Different people may have a different perspective when reading the text and be more sensitive when checking for spelling and other errors.

Share the blog

Sharing is a way to show that you care about your readers. Readers don’t set reminder alarms for when you update your blog, nor do they search the site in order to find your posts. Even if you already have a small “fan base” of people who like your posts, you still have to market and promote your blog. The social buttons at the bottom of your blog page are not for show; remember to use them.

Share your blog on multiple channels. It’s time to sign up for an account on LinkedIn or another social platform that will help attract new readers. In the meantime, send links to your blog posts to your friends and colleagues and share your new creations. Oh, and there’s nothing worse than asking your own parents to share your posts, which is about as difficult as changing your paintings on the fridge.

Layout of the entire article

When a visitor is interested in your headline and clicks through to start reading the blog post, whether they decide to read it or not depends on how it looks. By appearance what we are talking about here we mean the paragraph spacing, subheadings, etc. of the article. When people start reading an article, they usually start with a quick glance at the full text. If they find that it’s a 1000-word paragraph, the most obvious thing they’ll notice is: why is it so long? Probably give up on it for that reason. So, remember to segment your article sensibly, put some subheadings, provide some non-verbal information (charts, illustrations, etc.), and a proper layout will give readers a reason to believe that your article will be the perfect companion on the journey for the next 15 minutes on the train.

To summarize, make it easier for readers by:

- Dividing the article into different paragraphs

- Adding subheadings

- Adding tables, icons and graphics

- Adding additional photos and illustrations

- Bolding or slanting text to emphasize a section of the article