10 Helpful Tips for Beginner Bloggers

Tips I Wish I Knew When I Started Blogging

Here are 10 tips for beginner bloggers, starting their journey. These are things I wish I knew before starting both of my blogs, and things I still live by every day.

I have been blogging for over 5 years now. I started with my book blog, Bookish Coffee Blog, in February of 2016, so that I could talk about one of my favorite topics, books! For years, I treated that blog as a hobby, posting whenever I wanted and using a free WordPress account (which is valid). Only recently, in 2020, I decided I wanted more from it. That is when I changed my book blog over to self-hosting and I started my second blog, Jackie Em!

So, in retrospect, I still see myself as a beginner blogger. Before this year, I didn’t spend a lot of time on my blog. It was a way for me to express the things I love, and write. Writing feels so good for my soul, and my blog gave me an outlet for that. I am still learning and researching constantly for how I can improve, and how I can turn this into a full-time job.

So, I won’t be giving you the secret to making 10,000 dollars on your blog… mainly because that secret doesn’t exist. But I wanted to write about what I have learned from my many years of blogging, in hopes of helping new bloggers, who are just trying to find their footing.

---

1. Join the Community

No matter what you are blogging about, there is a whole community of people ready to cheer you on. I found such a lovely community of book lovers on Instagram and soon crossed over onto Twitter as well. I found the same supportive community when I began my lifestyle blog.

It is so important to connect with a community when you start your blog because those will be your very first readers. A brand new blog isn’t going to rank highly on Google or other search sites, so the majority of your interactions are going to come from others in the blogging community.

Making friends, or acquaintances, on Twitter and Instagram is vital to create a reading base, but it is also just fun. When you are all a part of the same group, you all understand the ups and downs of blogging. You get excited to read each other’s posts, and the support is unmatched. It’s a good feeling!

Plus, you can get a lot of blog post ideas from social media. Obviously don’t copy fellow creators, but I have had so many ideas spark as I am scrolling through my blog’s social media!

Please feel free to connect with me! I am on Twitter here!

2. Write, write, write!

When your blog is brand new, it is difficult to gain readers without any actual content on your blog. When someone clicks on your blog, they want to see what kind of content you create, and if you have one post up, it will be difficult for them to know if they want to come back.

There is a tip I see a lot around the blogging community, that you should not launch your blog until you have at least five quality posts ready. I see the validity of this, however, I didn’t do it that way. Nothing wrong with this, it’s just not how my brain works. I was way too excited to start connecting with other bloggers to wait until I had those posts written. Plus, my first posts were definitely not… quality content.

So, when your blog is finally up and running, what should you spend most of your time doing? Writing. The only way you are going to drive traffic to your blog is if you have content to drive the traffic to. So get to writing!

3. Quality Content

Now that I have told you to write, write, write, you also need to remember to make that content of high quality. It might be easy to push out 3-5 blog posts a day if you just spit words onto the page and click post. However, it won’t lead you to gain readers that want to come back. It’s a double-edged sword.

So, check over your writing, make sure all the links work, make sure you are explaining everything to its fullest. I personally use Grammarly on every single one of my posts. They have a free google chrome extension that is incredibly helpful, especially for someone who hates grammar like me.

I personally love reading over my blog posts out loud. It allows me to see where things don’t make sense or are just awkward to read. I am definitely not perfect, as you can read for yourself, but as long as it’s readable, and readers aren’t stumbling over every other sentence, you are good. Perfection doesn’t exist, but hard work does.

The reading experience should be easy and enjoyable for you and your site visitors.

4. Use Quality Photos

So many people are visual people, which means the majority of your readers will be visual people. For me, I am really good at taking pictures of books for Bookish Coffee Blog, but I am not so good at taking pictures for this blog. I found it was holding me back, and leading me to not post on my blog at all.

Despite wanting to have all photos on this site be completely mine, it didn’t work out that way. I would post once a year if I still followed that rule. So, that is when I started using free stock photos. There are so many quality websites that have incredible photography. You can see a lot of the work on my last couple of posts.

I currently use Unsplash, but there are many others, even some paid sites. I always try to give credit to the artists, which isn’t required but kind to the photographer. Always check the policy of each site, whether you can use it with or without credit, and whether you can alter the picture or not.

5. SEO and Keywords

You have probably seen these words everywhere as you are researching about starting a new blog. They are one of the most important aspects of blogging, and one of the most confusing. I am definitely no expert, but through a lot of research, and plug-ins like Yoast, I have learned a lot about the subject.

SEO (search engine optimization) is a method of content creating so that the website is ranked high on search sites like Google. Google has millions of pages and sites to organize every day, so it is up to bloggers to make it as easy to sort as possible, in order to get the correct readers to your site. That includes using keywords and phrases that people might search to find specific information.

I am still relatively new to SEO, so I am constantly researching, reading articles, and learning more from other bloggers. I make this a part of my daily blogging schedule.

6. Link, link, link

This is something I didn’t realize the importance of until very very recently, but linking to other pages is so important for SEO and Google optimization. Something you can do immediately to help your ranking in search results is linking in your blog posts. Link to other blog posts and websites related to the niche you are writing in. It will help google by categorizing your content with these sites and getting your site to the right readers.

An even bigger help is having your blog link on other sites. It is hard for new bloggers to find opportunities for this, but connecting with other bloggers is step 1, which is why I put this on the top of my list. Connecting with other bloggers gives you the chance to look for guest post opportunities, which is the easiest way to get your content linked on another site.

Another easy way to find opportunities like this is by looking under the #bloggersrequired and #bloggerswanted tags on Twitter. There are so many posts uploaded there every day looking for guest posts.

A note on safety, be careful in vetting each company if you decide to work with someone you are unfamiliar with, and never give personal info or credit card info out. If you are looking for sponsored posts, there are websites that vet the companies before you even see them, making sure they are legit. Be careful out there!

7. Pinterest

And this is one of the most important on this list. I am sure if you are here, you have been doing a lot of research on blogging. You probably have heard everyone and their mom talking about Pinterest, and there is a good reason for that. I didn’t start using Pinterest for my blog until last year, and can I tell you how much it has improved my traffic?

I started posting on Pinterest every single day, just once, and I still get a constant stream of traffic from a pin a created almost 11 months ago. And a lot of people tell you to pin 5-10 times a day. I am working up to that, and you can too.

Start with pinning once a day, use group boards, and spend at least 15 minutes a day on the platform and you will see growth. Grow your Pinterest audience, and you will see a direct correlation in your blog views.

Connect with me on Pinterest! Click here to check out my page!

8. Read Other Blog Posts

Sometimes, it is easy to become focused on my own blog, I forget that there are millions (maybe, idk) of blogs on the internet. When I first started, it was difficult to find my voice. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to be writing, because previously all I had written was academic writing. I wrote very awkwardly, I still do, to be honest. But reading other posts has made it so much easier for me to develop my voice, and how I want to communicate.

Also, it is a great way to get ideas, just like scrolling through social media. When my idea well is drying up, I simply pop over to a couple of blogs, and all of a sudden I have a list of ideas next to me, and I am ready to write 5 or 10 more blog posts.

9. Growth Won’t Be Fast, So Don’t Get Discouraged

I know you have seen those posts claiming they can get you 1,000 monthly viewers in one month. I am here to tell you that unless you go viral for whatever reason, which is possible, this isn’t going to happen overnight. Getting a blog to have a consistent stream of viewers is hard work.

Like I said at the very beginning of this post, connecting with the blogging community is so important and a lot of fun. But another thing that comes with that is seeing everyone’s success. It is so great that bloggers can post about their achievements and get a ton of support and praise. But for new bloggers, this can be totally discouraging. Seeing others getting thousands of views on a post when you can’t get 10 is… tough. Trust me I have been there. Honestly, I still am still there. Most posts on this account get about 2 views overall.

So while you are starting this journey, just remember that it isn’t going to happen overnight. Focus on every small victory and enjoy what you are doing.

And a note, there will be a lot of people who tell you not to worry about this stuff because it’s “not about the numbers,” however, it is. Yes, I blog because I like it, not for money (although that’s the goal). I have made a total of $1.12 on both my blogs in 5 years. But writing into a void that nobody is looking at isn’t that fun either. I blog to connect with people, so having viewers is important to me, and it might be to you too. Don’t let people make you feel bad for caring about the numbers.

10. Plan Ahead

Blogging is a lot of work. It involvs making a post, adding photos, adding keywords, posting it, advertising it on social media, and so much more. There is so much that goes into one post and sometimes I just… don’t feel like it. I want to lay in bed and watch trashy TV. That has led to many quiet weeks on my blog, with no posts going up and my weekly viewer numbers going down.

That is why it is so important to plan ahead. I only have experience with WordPress, but there is the ability to write, plan, and schedule posts to go out on future days. I am sure most other blogging services have the same thing.

So, on those days when you are feeling so motivated to write everything, but you stop yourself because you don’t want to inundate your readers with 10 posts, schedule them ahead of time. That way, on those days when you would rather eat junk food in bed, you can do just that.

It’s called a work-life balance.

---

I wish I had someone tell me all of these tips for beginner bloggers when I started. I might have grown a lot quicker and had way more fun while doing it. You are free to follow or ignore any of these tips that you want. I am sure I was told every one of these things when I started, but I most likely ignored them because I figured they wouldn’t work.

But, I am here, 5 years later to tell you that a lot of this stuff does work, especially if you stick to it and don’t get discouraged by others or yourself.

Let me know in the comments below if you have any tips you have heard that I didn’t include here. As I said, I am still learning so much of this stuff, so I could always use some more tips.

Thanks for reading!