Blog Freely And Passionately! For you to start blogging, you need to consider crucial things so you can be free and be passionate about it, and be consistent with doing it. But before you decide to start your own blog, you need first to know what will be your purpose why you need or want to blog.
In my case, I started blogging because I wanted to continue my love of writing and my desire to utilize what I have learned when the time I engaged myself to campus journalism for almost 10 years.
I also wanted to find a place where I can escape the stressful corporate life. I’ve been working for almost 10 years now, and before having that life, I already started blogging. So, I don’t want to give up the things I love (because other people tend to let go of things they love doing because they’ve got themselves “the job”).
The Learning Process To Blog
Some friends asked me questions about how I am able to manage my time from working and blogging. Well, it is not easy to do, but what I usually tell is to manage their tasks and time. You have 24 hours in a day: you prepare for work for an hour (eat, shower, dress up, etc.), you travel to work for an hour, you work for eight hours, you hang with office mates for two hours, your travel back home for an hour, you watch your favorite show on TV or play with kids (if you have any) for an hour, sleep for six hours.
If you sum up everything, it’s (calculator please)… 20 hours! Again, we have 24 hours in a day. You still have four hours remaining, and you can devote yourself on what’s left for the things you want to do. Mine is blogging. Now, if this question comes in:
But, how can I come up with what to write for my blog?
That is easy (well, probably not for some). You need to plan ahead on what you like to write. I have discussed that on my previous blogging tip post, “A Basic Technique On How To Write And Always Update A Blog“.
If you can bring with you a blogging notebook, or I am guessing you have the notes app on your smartphone, you can jot down your ideas while you were traveling or working or eating. If you can see things along the way, you can think of many things to write about for your blog.
Do I Need To Be Really That Good?
If writing is not your thing, you can blog about the photos you took with your portable camera or smartphone on that day and share them on your blog through a post. You can even publish a blog with a photo and a short description of your day as the caption.
Like Twitter, you can limit your description to 140 characters, and that’s already a good start for your blog.
ALSO READ: 3 Easy Tips To Achieve The Ultimate Blogging Goals
Things You Need To Consider When Blogging
Like any other things you wanted to start doing, blogging also requires preparation and a little sit down for planning. Here are some things you need to consider if you want to start one. If you are now very eager to start a blog, I will advise you to prepare these things:
Niche
It is a special area of concentration for your content. It’s the main topic you want to talk about on your blog. There are a lot of niches you can consider:
| Travel | Health & Fitness | Movies |
| Photography | Technology | Personal |
| Automobile | Food | News & Events |
| Fashion | Business | Arts & Entertainment |
And a lot more! But what to choose?
Make sure that you like the niche you are considering when blogging. If you’re the type of person who loves to watch movies and criticize them, the Movie niche is for you. If you love to eat a lot in a restaurant, there you go! There’s the Food niche.
Blogging Platform
An application that is used to publish, edit, modify online content, a blogging platform is the tool you are going to use to post your blog. Currently, there are three common content management system (CMS) that I know and tried using:
– WordPress
– Blogspot
– Tumblr
All you need to have is an active email address and sign up. They are free, so you can have a go with one of those blogging tools without worrying about monthly payments. All you need to spend: time and ideas.
Social Media Sharing
Once you are done publishing your post online, you need to share it on social media so others can have the opportunity to read your blog. Social media are websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
Examples are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (for photos), and YouTube (for videos).
Post Scheduling
Unless you’re already a full-time blogger, blogging as a pastime does not really mean you need to blog every hour of every day. It does not even mean you need to blog every day (if you want to, it’s fine). You also need to schedule the frequency of your blog posting.
You need to set a specific time, day, or week when to publish and share your new blog post. There are advanced tools available that you can use to do that, but I will not be discussing the topic yet since it is not relevant to what is our goal at this moment: to learn with starting to blog. Maybe I can talk about it on our next episode of Blogging 101.
It will also give excitement to your readers with their anticipation to wait for your new blog post. That can be exciting.
Knowing The Audience
Even though it is not yet the main thing that you need to consider, however, identifying the demographics of your prospect audience for your blog post will be soon important.
What do I mean?
Are you targeting working moms, food enthusiasts, travel geeks, students, or just simply anyone ranging from ages 18-35 years old?
You need to consider them because your writing style (and the photos you include in your post) must be within those types of followers. You wouldn’t be posting serious-looking images on your blog if you want to consider kids as your readers, would you?
That is so atrocious. Wait, what? Yes! So… horribly poignant.
That’s it for now. If you want to review the Episode 1 of the Blogging 101 series, read the introductory post, “Why Blogging?”
Watch out for Episode 3, The Social Media Etiquette, the to do’s and what not to do’s on the blogosphere. That is next, very soon.
Do it freely and passionately. Happy Blogging!
Please let me know what you think. Did you learn something from this post? Do you have something in mind that you believe can help you decide to start blogging? Leave your ideas in the comment section below.
If you fancy this kind of post, join me on Facebook, or follow and mention me on Twitter. If you have Instagram, I won’t mind you stalking me and my random photos, and probably I can follow you back.