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10 More Tips to a Better Blog

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1. Join a blogging community. If you’re interested in becoming a better blogger, this is the place to be. A blogging community will have articles on topics like promoting your blog, handling writer’s block and writing up killer articles. You can also chat with lots of other bloggers and see what they do differently than you! My favorite blogging community right now is just for fashion blogs – IFB, or Independent Fashion Bloggers.

2. Leave comments on other blogs. As a blogger, I’m sure you love receiving comments on your work – feedback on your writing or topic choice is really helpful! So commenting on other blog posts that interests you is obvious. Not only that, your comment may attract other readers to check out your blog! You most likely do not need to link to it in the comments, which may actually cause your comment to run through a spam filter. Instead, adding it to the comment’s ‘website’ info will usually make your name a clickable link back to your own blog. But don’t just comment without anything to say – really thinking and adding to a blog’s conversation will help in the exchange of ideas online, for your blog and others’.

3. Get a blog reader! Following and reading lots of other blogs is one of the best ways to improve your own blogging. But how to handle all those blogs? If you don’t have one, start using a blog reader! A blog reader collects all of your subscriptions in one place, so that you can read all of your blog in one easy feed. I use Google Reader, but Bloglovin will actually email you a ‘this week on Bloglovin’ with entries posted by your favorite blogs this week. This makes all those blogs easier to skim for ideas, trends, and networking opportunities.

4. Be aesthetically pleasing. When designing your blog or working on your webpage’s layout, try to shoot for two goals: 1) easy to read and navigate; 2) a style that expresses your blog’s content and tastes. An easy-to-read blog has legible, large-enough fonts, a clean look, and links handy to navigate the site. The usual sins are easy to spot, as we’ve all see them – swirly text you can’t read, busy backgrounds, etc. If I can’t read a site, I’m not going to hang around!  Also try to choose a look that expresses your blog’s content and theme. My theme is a clean, pinky-princess feel, which is why I chose the understated pink-and-white vertical stripes. Your blog might be more at home with lots of white space, or with black and pink accents. Choose something that easily communicates your blog’s style, and people will feel right at home, and glad to come back.

6. Stop putting music on webpages. This gets its own bullet for good reason. While cute music players you can embed in your website are popular these days, I find them more annoying than ambiance-setting. I might be listening to my own music, watching TV, or just having a quiet night when jpop suddenly screeches through my speakers, and I scramble to find the pause button on the website. Even worse is when it’s tucked away. If you MUST have music on your site, include it in a prominent spot where the reader can turn it off, or have it on ‘pause’ until the reader wants to hear it, not on autoplay.

7. Flesh out your topics. Part One of writing a blog post is research (finding a good topic to jump off of) or simple inspiration (thinking up a good topic to jump off of). The second part is about taking that idea and drawing your own conclusions and opinions about it, or teaching something about it based on your conclusions. The problem is that lots of great blogging ideas stop at part one – being great ideas – and never get any further. Posting a link, photo or video is a great start, but ending there won’t cut it. Even offering your own views or interpretations can beef up a thin post. If you’re of two minds or can’t pick a side, say so – and then invite your readers to express their opinions after you’ve weighed pros and cons.

8. Set quantitative goals. Setting quantitative goals just means goals you can count, measure, and tick off when completed. They could be anything from commenting on a number of blogs, reading a number of blogs, or how many posts you want to finish for that month. My new monthly blog posting goal is 15 articles, or roughly an ‘every other day’ schedule. This month I am also aiming to post 5 outfit shots! Having a goal to meet makes it more likely that you’ll expand in the areas you want, instead of having the vague goal to ‘post more’.

9. Play ‘dress up’. This is specifically a fashion blogger’s tip! Fashion blogs thrive off of the daily outfit shot. The only problem with this kind of content is that it requires a lot of time – not to get dressed up, but to shoot the right photos and lighting. I often get dressed and run out the door, instead of fiddling with my self-timer and tripod. Solution: when you have a lazy day, re-create some of your favorite outfits you’ve worn and wished you had photographed. Then you can spend as much time as you need posing, getting the right lighting, or fixing your botched eyeliner job. This way you can share your fashion examples without being late to class or work.

10. Learn at least a little about typography. Whether you design your own blog images and graphics or just want to make sure your site is legible, it doesn’t hurt to do a little study of typography. Typography is essentially the study of fonts – originally letter faces for the printing press, now the fonts we use on our computers and websites. This can be good to know if you want your site to be as easy-on-the-eyes as possible, or best viewed on the screen rather than on a printed sheet. You can also use fonts creatively (such as part of the image I composed above, by adding my own text, font choice, and layer styles) to create interesting styles and motifs for your site. Many people get really into it and even consider it to be an art form.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading 10 MORE Tips to a Better Blog! Naturally as I rounded off number 10 I found myself thinking of number 11… so don’t be surprised if you end up seeing 10 (Even) More Tips To Better Blogging in the future! If you haven’t, you can read the first article (tips 1 – 10) here.


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