Community Advice for New Bloggers

Nick Leffler
6 comments

When you’re first starting blogging there’s a lot of things to think about. It’s a bit overwhelming.

I asked for people’s advice on what they wish they’d known when they started blogging. I thought it would be helpful to put some of these pieces of advice together for community-sourced advice for new bloggers.

None of this advice is from me but I will provide a bit of a commentary.

Brent

First up is Brent Schlenker who provided this bit of sage advice:

The sooner you start the more you can reflect on what you’re doing, then you can refer to it later down the road. I had to think about the turn off comments a bit as that’s one of my favorite parts of my blog, but for a new blogger, I can see how this is wonderful advice. When you’re just starting, it’s nice to just worry about what you’re writing for you and not for trying to spark a discussion. Turning off comments is the perfect way to do this and just concentrate on the content for you. You can find Brent blogging over at Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development.

Melissa

Melissa Milloway had quite a few great suggestions for new bloggers. Here are her three pieces of advice for new bloggers:

 

Multimedia is a great way to explain something that lends itself to that sort of delivery. I love that suggestion because it’s always a challenge to spend the time to think about the best way to deliver a piece of content. Clear images are definitely important, I’d recommend taking a few minutes and reading this article about working with bitmap and vector images. It has been proven again and again that people love lists so no doubt this is great advice. I might add that lists are great but don’t overuse them, meaning maybe don’t make every blog post a list 🙂

Taruna

Taruna Goel has suggested one of the pieces that I think makes the most successful blogger. Whether or not you do it using draft posts or not is up to you, but the moral is to always write your ideas down and keep working on them.

 

Bruno

Wise advice from Bruno Winck:

Start writing and don’t stop until you’re satisfied, you’ll find that you get into a flow that is hard to stop once you get going.

JD

JD Dillon has some great advice for working together with others, sometimes this can create your best work.

 

Cendrine

As Cendrine Marrouat points out, a plan is important to have because without it then you don’t know what your purpose is or who your audience is:

 

Help Someone Blog

It’s always nice to give advice to new bloggers because if you can remember starting out, it can be tough at times.

If you have additional advice I’d love to hear it, leave your comments below and help a new blogger make their way in the confusing world of blogging.

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    6 comments

    • Craig Hadden
      10 years ago Reply

      Thanks Nick – it’s a helpful topic to discuss, and there’s certainly good advice here.

      My main tip would be to work at a level you can sustain. As I wrote here, I know of 10 good-quality blogs in my niche that’ve died out since I started blogging just a few years ago. (I was surprised how quickly my blog got a small following, but it takes years for it to grow much past that – so take it easy! I started posting about once a week on average, but’ve now settled down to once per month.)

      Secondly, getting comments can be a huge motivator. Since much of the struggle with blogging is about motivation to find the time and to keep going, I’d strongly advise keeping comments switched ON. Just be sure to have anti-spam measures in place (which I believe is the default with wordpress.com for example).

      Lastly, on major sites in your niche, add good-quality comments and include a link to a post you’ve written on the same topic. For instance, I find business magazines give quite good traffic, and there are a few major bloggers in my field who welcome links. (You might quickly find who accepts links and who doesn’t, so you can then skip the latter!)

      I hope you and readers here find those points helpful.

      • Nick Leffler
        10 years ago Reply

        You make some great points Craig! I appreciate you helping others along with their blogging. It’s definitely a hard thing to get started and pacing yourself is a great point. Another thing I’d add along that same topic is to keep your barriers to writing low, don’t create arbitrary barriers to your writing (I wrote about it on my other blog: http://www.technkl.com/a-self-imposed-barrier/)

        Comments, oh yes, a topic close to my heart (and also one I wrote about on my other blog lol). It’s definitely a nice thing to do and I leave comments more often than not. It’s not only a good motivator for the blogger but a great way to write and reflect for the reader! You should comment more (http://www.technkl.com/you-should-comment-more/)

        Your last point is also an excellent one! If you find the content you read on another blog even remotely helpful or interesting, leave a comment! Even if you don’t have a related article, most blogs ask for your website which then links back to your website, never a bad thing.

        I think my readers will definitely find your comment helpful, myself included 🙂 Thank you for leaving it.

    • Shannon Tipton
      10 years ago Reply

      Nick – Thanks for writing about this! As Turana above, and Rachel below mentioned, start an idea document. I use Evernote for this. I have a “notebook” dedicated to blogs and blog ideas. Because Evernote works across devices when the idea hits I can log it. Admittedly, the list is long with well intentioned items, but when my inspiration runs low I have a jumping off point.

      I say this because I believe there are two big reasons that hold people back. First is the impostor syndrome. Am I good enough? Who wants to hear what I have to say? To this I say, first write for yourself. Pay no attention to screaming SEO “gurus” or self-proclaimed blogging experts. Write for your enjoyment and for your passion. People are tired of the SEO, click bait. If you write for passion the people who find you will appreciate it.

      Secondly, not knowing how. If you want to get your feet wet, start with a LinkedIn post. Everyone has the ability now to write a post there. No need to get fancy. Starting a writing space is so easy now, it’s not an excuse anymore.

      Therefore – (Long comment short ;)) I would say jump in, the water’s warm! Just do it. Find your voice, a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) and hop on over to LinkedIn and start putting pen to paper! Thanks again Nick – I wish I had your kind of support when I was first starting out.

      • Nick Leffler
        10 years ago Reply

        Thanks Shannon! I love Evernote for everything, but for ideas I do keep my ideas in the iOS Reminders app (odd huh? Whatever works I guess lol) but the idea I know you’re trying to express is to write ideas down, make a list. One of the biggest barriers is easily that you think you’ll run out of things to say, but it NEVER happens.

        SEO, you brought up a good subject. SEO = writing good content for you and lots of it (or whatever fits your needs and time). Other than that SEO doesn’t really mean a whole lot for bloggers when you first start unless you’re turning it into a career.

        It’s always nice to have that little nudge to get started 🙂 Thank you for the comment too.

    • Rachel Barnum
      10 years ago Reply

      More advice: If you’re not sure what to write about, take an hour and just start writing out ideas. Write down EVERYTHING you think of. Even if one idea isn’t good, it will possibly lead to an idea that is good.

      Use Evernote/OneNote to capture blog articles and other ideas that inspire you throughout the day as well 🙂

      • Nick Leffler
        10 years ago Reply

        Great advice Rachel! It’s sort of daunting from the beginning figuring out what you’re going to write about. Of course once you start going and getting ideas down they come fast and you’ll have more to write about than you had planned 🙂

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