THE VIRGIN BLOGGER

So you want to blog? Are you envisioning the writing and publishing that you’ll be doing with grandiose ideas of clicking away happily at your laptop with a cup of coffee and a bagel within easy reach? Well, before you take the plunge into the world of blogging, here are few pointers to make your first blogging experience a pleasant and enduring one. The most important thing about your blog will be the content. This determines what audience you’re targeting and how you intend to engage their interest so that they develop a following of your blog.

First of all, determine who you want to write for and why you want to write for them. For example, if you’re an accounting student, you might think about starting a blog about the trials and tribulations of being an accounting student, targeting the student populations of accounting schools. This is particularly important if you are not a business and out there to promote a product; a blog like this is a social commentary blog and will not necessarily meet any demand so as to automatically attract interest in its publishing. So decide what your target audience is.

Secondly, your content must be interesting and written in an engaging manner. People read because they want to get something out of reading and they want to be engaged; and they aren’t going to read a blog that’s written about an irrelevant subject that’s written like a medical prescription. Writing a blog should be like a conversation you would have with a member of your target audience and about a topic that you would discuss with a member of your target audience.

Following on from being engaging in your publishing, you must be personal as blogs are essentially a revelation of you as a person. So make sure that what you’re writing reflects who you are. You shouldn’t worry about being unique; if you allow your personality to come through your writing, this should guarantee the unique factor. So make sure you are you in your writing.

This brings us to our next point; your readers must connect with you. You not only have to engage their interest in your writing but make it relevant to them; they must be able to relate to; they must be able to relate to you through your writing. This builds trust and a following if readers can read your content and identify with you.

This also means that your writing must be honest and the truth; don’t write lies and don’t write about what you don’t know because someone out there always knows at least as much if not more than you about something you’ve written about and can put you in the spotlight for telling fibs. If you are truthful, this also builds trust by your readers of your writing.

When you’re publishing blogs that are useful and valued by your readers, you will soon find yourself with a following and then your readers will look to you as an authority; they will begin to ask for advice and opinions from you. This is the ideal situation for any blogger; for their writing and publishing to be accredited by their readers. But this is only possible if you get your blogging right from the start.