Welcome to Lesson Two

It is very possible not to be a successful blogger regardless of how inspired you are. It all about understanding the basics....

What do you need to do before starting your first blog?

1. Find Your Niche.

You needn’t have a niche, but it helps. When learning how to be a blogger, it’s important to ask yourself what you’re passionate about. Running? Cooking? Being a parent? Have you found your passion? If so, whatever it is, write about that. If not, then you must first find your passion. Our niche at techlink.com.ng for example is ICT and telecommunication while at creativearena.com.ng is purely literature (like stories, poetry, fiction etc)

Don’t create a blog about something unless you have a unique perspective.

2. Define Your Ideal 

 Readers. Once you’ve found your niche, you need to know who will be reading your blog. For example, If you want to write about your newborn baby growing up, that’s wonderful: your ideal readers are probably your friends and family. If you want to write about restoring classic cars, that’s cool, too. Tailor your writing to your readers (whether it’s your family or local community or whoever else will read your blog). Blogging about sports or movies (your target is mainly the youth). At techlink, we target those that are willing to learn things like web design, telecom business etc

3. Add Value.

Your blog must add value to its readers’ lives. This is the only way you will get Great Quality Readers to your site (and keep them coming back). Adding value is the only way to get someone’s long-term buy-in. You don't just write for writing sake, you must have your audience or potential readers at heart. Write what you think they will be willing to read. It is a total waste of time to write about pregnancy to an ICT audience.

4.Be Original.

.There are other blogs out there about the same thing you want to write about. So why is your blog different? Because of you. You are what makes your blog different. It’s about your perspective, your creativity, the value that you add. 

5. Be Interesting.

Write epic, awesome content. Especially if you want people to share it with others. Not just a long boring epistle. 

6. Be Honest.

 Your blog needs to be authentic—it needs to feel real—if you want people to read it. You can be your blog, or your blog can be you. That is, do you really embody the stuff you write about? If not, people will see through you. “Be the change you want to see in the world,” is the famous Gandhi quote. Bloggers should build the blog they want to write for the world.

7.Time.

Once you’ve learned how to start a blog, you’ll learn that blogging takes a lot of time, once you have your design set up, don’t tweak it too much. Instead, spend the time on your writing.

8. Vision

It’s hard to create a beautiful blog if you don’t know what you want it to look like. Your vision of the blog gives you direction and focus amidst several confusing choices

9. Find Your Voice

 Over time, good writers discover their voice and their writing tends to develop a certain aesthetic, one that is appealing to their readers. Finding your voice makes your writing feel more alive, more real, more urgent.

10. We Instead of You

 Use the first-person plural when possible. Statements of we and our are more powerful than you and your, especially when talking about negative behaviors or tendencies. The first person comes off as far less accusatory. Think of it this way: we’re writing peer-to-peer—we are not gods.

 11. When to Post

When is the best day and time to publish a blog post?

 Some weeks in Creative Arena  (CA,)  we post one essay; sometimes we post three. Yes, it is important to write consistently, but you needn’t get too bogged down in the details. Nevertheless, if you can, post consistently at a specific time every day you can to publish a post... There is a way it helps your ranking on search engines like bing and google

12. Social Media.

I recommend using Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram (and Whatsapp) to help connect with your audience and other bloggers. Focus on the writing first and share your content consistently on these platforms to expand your user base.... Especially Facebook, you can get thousands of visitors from that platform if you know how to optimize it

13. Keep It Simple

 Irrespective of its genre, no need to place superfluous widgets all over your site. Stick to the basics and remove anything you don’t need. Remove anything that doesn’t add value.

14. Make Money

You can't start making money the first day you start your blog and if money making is the sole reason you are contemplating starting a blog, you have missed it from the very beginning.... It doesn't work that way. Even Ad sense won't pay you the day you signed up... It takes averagely six month to start earning from your blog if it's really a fast growing one.... Turn blogging to passion, then your passion into profit... That is the way it works not the other way round...