Starting a new blog can be a daunting experience, especially if you’ve never done it before. However, there are some essential blogging tips to help you stay motivated.
When you start a blog, it is easy to get discouraged.
There is so much information available. You have many decisions to make about your new blog.
There are so many things to do.
You need to decide on a web hosting service, a niche, a name, a website theme, the design, colors, layout, etc.
And then you write and write, and you check Google Analytics.
You have a few visitors! Awesome!
But then you realize you didn’t set Google Analytics up to exclude visits from yourself.
Another thing that you need to remember.
So, in reality, you still don’t have any visitors.
And this drags on for months and months until you give up.
Unfortunately, this is a prevalent outcome for new bloggers.
Here are some blogger tips to hopefully make the early period of blogging a little more bearable.
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New Blogger Tips to Keep You Motivated
1. Stop Reading, Start Doing
Everywhere you look online you’ll find information on:
- How to start a blog
- How to make money blogging
- Ways to increase blog traffic
- How to improve your SEO
- How to get email subscribers
- Essential blogging tips
- How to do everything else you can imagine related to blogging
You’ll likely find yourself in a neverending spiral of reading blog post after blog post.
Yes, you need to learn about blogging. But at some point, you need to stop reading and start doing.
I recommend you find a good blogging course. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars, but having an excellent framework to follow is helpful.
There is no single correct way to start blogging and make money blogging.
However, changing your process every few days because of some new article you read isn’t going to get you far.
Additionally, if you keep going from blog post to blog post, you are going to get confused and discouraged.
There is a lot of conflicting information out there. Different things work for different people.
After spending a limited amount of time researching blogging and finding the right course, create a plan based on what you learn, and stick to it.
Yes, you’ll have random questions along the way that you’ll need to find an answer before you can move forward. But, find your answer and get back to it.
I hate when I think about the countless hours I’ve spent reading other articles for hours when I went looking for a simple answer.
Sometimes what I read would make me question how I was going about blogging. But, what I found when reading those other articles didn’t help improve my blogging process.
It distracted me from it.
So, do yourself a favor, close all of those other browser tabs, and focus on your blog.
2. Focus on the Basics
When you get past everything above and concentrate on your blog instead of other blogs, focus on the essential things you need to do to move your blog forward.
Don’t worry too much about your theme or design. Pick one and move on.
Spend your time creating quality content and promoting it.
Most of those other things aren’t going to help to get traffic to your site.
But if you have great content, your readers aren’t going to care much about how your site looks.
Would you rather click on a link that brings you to awesome content on a not so great looking site? Or click on a link that takes you to the most beautiful website ever, but the content is useless?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t care how it looks. However, you can build an excellent looking site with a simple theme and not much else.
Once you have an established site, steady traffic, and steady income from it, you can focus more on your website design if you need to.
Or better yet, you’ll have money to pay someone who knows what they are doing to improve other aspects of your site while you focus on the content.
You can find help for just about everything related to your website on Fiverr. These freelancers can help take care of the things you don’t know much about or just don’t have the time to deal with.
You want to focus on what will give you the most return on investment, or ROI. And, the most significant investment in your blog is your time.
Don’t waste it!
Bonus Blogger Tip: Grow Your Email List
I recommend working to build an email list from the start.
You can set up an opt-in form pretty quickly using a service like MailChimp or CovertKit.
A freebie to give away helps get people to subscribe as well.
While your website is yours, traffic to it is highly dependent on Google and any social media you use.
When their algorithms change, it can have hurt traffic to your site.
However, your email list is yours. No matter what happens to your site traffic, your list is still a captive audience for promoting your blog and products.
3. Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin
Along that same train of thought, if you try and tackle too much early on, you are going to burn yourself out.
Plan ahead.
Create a realistic publishing schedule.
Do your keyword research (don’t forget to use this tool).
Focus on one social media platform.
By focusing on what is essential and planning ahead, you can avoid being overwhelmed by blogging.
If you start falling behind and getting discouraged, you need to take a step back and reevaluate your plan.
Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.
If it takes you longer to create quality content, account for that in your schedule.
Publishing Schedule
As a new blogger, you probably don’t have much content.
For this reason, I recommend trying to post 2-3 times a week.
However, this is dependent on your situation, as well.
If you have a full-time job and a family, you might only be able to publish once or twice a week.
If you are a full-time blogger, you may be able to publish every day.
Either way, I recommend at least publishing something every week. But also don’t post just for the sake of it.
Create a publishing schedule that fits your lifestyle.
And don’t worry too much about blog post length. I know others may disagree with this. And for certain niches/topics, they may be correct. But for most bloggers, I wouldn’t be too concerned with it.
Social Media
Social media can be a great way to promote your blog articles.
When you start, it is going to be very difficult to rank organically on Google. Social media can help drive traffic early on.
However, while you are trying to keep up with your blog at this point, adding social media can be just another distraction.
So, focus on just one platform. And use it for promoting your blog. Don’t spend much time as a consumer.
As a tip for new bloggers using social media, I highly recommend starting with Pinterest. It is more like a search engine than social media. And people use it to find things rather than to connect with others.
Additionally, using a tool like Tailwind allows you to schedule your pins to Pinterest well into the future. This allows you to be “active” on the platform without having to be on it all the time.
4. Perfectionism is Your Enemy
I am a bit of a perfectionist. But over the years, I have learned that no one is perfect, especially myself.
No matter how hard one may try, they are going to make mistakes and have spelling/grammatical errors.
Don’t get me wrong; you need to proofread your work. I also highly recommend a tool like Grammarly. My blog would be a mess without it.
And it is great if you have someone else that can read your work before you hit “Publish…” as well.
But don’t try and get it perfect.
You’ll never finish a blog post that way. And it will severely impact your schedule.
Your blog writing will improve over time as you find what works and what doesn’t.
If you make misstatements, your readers will comment to correct you. Thank them and fix the issue.
One of the great things about your blog is that it is yours. It is a living thing, and you can always go back and fix and improve old posts.
5. Track Your Progress Cautiously
If you are looking to monetize your blog or are looking for a lot of traffic, you need to track your progress.
Early on, you should make sure you set up a Google Analytics account.
And, as I alluded to in the introduction, make sure you set it up correctly. You need to exclude your IP address, as well as exclude hits from known bots and spiders. If you don’t exclude these, your numbers will be skewed, and you’ll be seeing more than your visitors.
Here is how to set up and use Google Analytics.
While I recommend setting up Google Analytics early, other than getting familiar with it, don’t spend too much time dwelling on the numbers early on.
It can’t track your site data from the past, so you need to set it up early to track your progress.
It is going to take time to get traffic, especially organic traffic.
You’ll likely see zero to minimal traffic early on. Then you’ll get occasional spikes in traffic that fall as fast as they went up.
But don’t get discouraged. Every new blogger goes through this period.
6. Make Friends with your Competition
Don’t think of others in your niche as competition. Most bloggers are more than willing to help other bloggers out.
A great example of this is on Pinterest.
Bloggers routinely pin other blogger’s content. It is an excellent way to help each other grow.
Having a network of blogger friends is also an excellent resource when you run into issues or have questions about something. Other bloggers have several tips and tricks to help you out.
While other bloggers may appear to be your competition, don’t worry.
There is plenty of room for everyone on the internet.
And there is always room for a different perspective.
Another excellent blogger outreach tip is to comment on other blogs in your niche. This can help grow your exposure within your niche. Just be sure to leave insightful comments.
7. Don’t Compare Your Blog to Others
It is hard not to, but I encourage you to refrain from making comparisons to other’s blogs and their success.
As huge as another blogger may be, always remember that they were once exactly where you are now.
Everyone started with zero visitors, zero presence on Google, and zero email subscribers.
But they were the ones who stuck to it.
While it is nice to see what others have accomplished, just be happy for them.
Yes, you can set goals of being in their status one day. But don’t start with those huge goals.
Start with smaller, more achievable goals and work your way up to the larger ones.
8. Be Yourself
Kind of in line with the previous two blogging tips, don’t try and be someone you are not.
Be yourself. Your audience will grow to know you for who you are. Not who you want to be.
There are several bloggers that I follow regularly. While some of them talk about the same topics, they cover it from a different angle.
And they have their own personalities and viewpoints that provide me different perspectives on the topic.
If a couple of them sounded the same, I’d more than likely stop listening to one of them, if not both.
9. The Most Important New Blogger Tip: Be Patient and Persistent
Starting a new blog is difficult and discouraging.
That is why so many new bloggers fail.
However, for a lot of them, they just gave up too soon.
It can be depressing to go months with little to no traffic and zero income.
But keep producing content and keep promoting it.
Be patient, and be persistent.
And when I say be patient, I don’t mean you sit around and wait for people to find you magically. You do need to do a lot to promote your blog as well.
But be patient as you continue to work hard on building your blog. The internet can be slow to react to a new blogger.
Related:
Productivity Hacks for Bloggers
New Blog Post? What to Do Before and After Hitting Publish
Starting a Blog in Difficult Times
Moving Forward with These Blogging Tips
While I wrote this post aimed at providing tips to new bloggers, I think most of these tips apply to seasoned bloggers as well.
Often, when you find yourself struggling as a blogger, it helps to take a step back and evaluate your situation. Hopefully, these blogging tips will help you get through the rough times.
Have you tried any of these tips? What was your experience? Do you have other blogging tips that you’ve found useful? Please share in the comments below.
