One Year Blog-iversary: Tips for new bloggers

Today is my one year blog-iversary (blog anniversary), so happy 1st birthday to Sparkly Blues and Rainbow Shoes! All of that means that I have been blogging since the 8th November 2012 and I just thought I would share the things that I have learnt with you, so if you are new to blogging or just thinking of starting a blog, hopefully these things will help ya out!

My experience:

I had been thinking about creating a blog for a long time, mostly to put my OOTDs on, but I was unsure of how to start. In the end, it was my friend who encouraged me and so we started Sparkly Blues and Rainbow Shoes! Originally it began on Wordpress (under the same name and it still exists) but we decided to switch to Blogger as it was a better tool to write blogs with and seemed to have the largest blogging community. Right now, this blog has almost 12000 views; around 1000 views a month, and my most popular post right now is my DIY Ombre Dip Dye review.

My Tips:

~ Although stats (numbers of views) aren't everything it is nice to know that people are reading (possibly even liking...) the posts that you've spent time writing. But don't get too hung up on it!

~ Before you upload photos, name them on your computer. Where your photos are saved, choose to rename them to something relating to your post. This means that when people look something up, your photo can appear on search engines which could lead viewers to your blog.

~ Write about things that interest you as this is the only way you'll get a decent post. Also, blogging is all fun anyway so don't write about something that is boring for you.

~ Use relevant labels and interesting titles. You can add labels to your post and this is how people can search a topic and find your blog (like hashtags on twitter) so write a few labels which are things people might search. Make sure your titles are intriguing but not mis-leading. 

~ Interact with other bloggers, leave comments on other bloggers' posts and reply to your comments!

~ Post regularly; this is something which I can be bad at as I tend to blog everyday for a period of time and then not post for a few weeks. If you can post regularly then do but is that's difficult then there is the option to schedule a post's publishing on the right hand side (on blogger) when you are writing a blog and you can choose a date and time so blogger will automatically post it for you then! This can be really useful as sometimes I write three or four posts in one day and schedule them to be posted on consecutive days to spread them out.
~ Think about your audience: this is something which I should work on. Sometimes I write too much as if I am speaking and it's hard to develop it into a well written blog post. It's usually good not to be too formal.
~ Check your spelling and punctuation! It's really difficult to read a whole blog post if the spelling and grammar is really bad! And you get boring people like me with no lives who actually get irritated by the wrong use of "your" and "you're". I'm sure I have quite a few mistakes in my posts as I'm typing them but just try to keep your blogs fairly well written so they're readable! (not even sure if "readable" is a word...?)

Remember to show your personality in your writing as it's so much more interesting to read when everyone doesn't sound the same!

If you haven't started your blog yet - JUST GO FOR IT! I thought about starting for soooo long before I did! But to be honest, you learn most of what you need to know as you go and get a feel for blogging and you realise what you, personally need to do. Just think of a good name for your blog, decorate it to your taste, put lots of photos on it and create posts on whatever topic has interested you enough to write about!

GO FORTH AND BLOG

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