{top five friday} - tips for newbie bloggers

{top five friday} - tips for newbie bloggers

hallelujah - it is friday!

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this has been a long week. what with recovering from the jet lag, a completely boring, slow week at work and getting all the housework caught up on after being gone for a few days, i am more than ready for the weekend!

i am really liking the top five friday idea from katie. soo... i am shamelessly copying continuing to draw inspiration from that idea, for a few reasons.

1. they are interesting

2. they give me something to blog about when i can't think of anything else

3. you learn a little something new

4. i can pretend i'm an expert at something

5. i like making lists (evident, no?)

surprisingly that is not the top five for this week

;)

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today i want to talk about some simple tips for newbie bloggers. some of them i have learned along the way and some of them i have drawn from my journalism background. i am by no means an expert in this field! but i have learned a few valuable lessons and want to pass them along!

1. blog about what you love.

i have been desperately trying to make this a home decor/crafting blog. but i have recently come to figure out that is not what i love to blog about all the time. so i am changing directions and blogging about what i love, which happens to be a mixture of home decor, crafting, family, pets, fun things to do, top five lists, everyday mundane life, daisies and burn barrels. but these are things i love and that bring me joy.

if you blog about things you love your passion will shine through! people will want to read what you write because you obviously enjoy writing about it! so whether it is how to wash a car properly, what happened to you in the vegetable aisle in the grocery store yesterday, or how much weight you have left to lose that fuels your passion - blog about it!

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2. comment, comment, comment!

the easiest way to make connections with other people in blog land is to comment. bloggers loooooooove comments. they really do make everyone's day a little brighter (except of course for those passive, aggressive negative comments which are certainly going to happen). you want comments on your blog right? then be sure to leave comments on others blogs as well!

for a long time i couldn't figure out what to say. i mean, what can i say to this person about this blog that will be dynamic and relative? so i didn't leave a comment. but then i read this post from serenity now and a light bulb went off! even a few heartfelt words are encouraging to everyone. so just do it! leave a comment! :)

another tip to help you get comments is to ask a question at the end that will hopefully inspire a response from your reader!

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3. take off the word verifications!

to begin with it is kind of annoying. and it is an extra step that will keep people from leaving a comment. and don't we all want comments? {see above} secondly, if you use blogger, it has an excellent spam catcher so the word verification is kind of unnecessary anyways. i have my settings to where i get an email immediately after you comment so if there is something inappropriate there i can delete it quickly but i have yet to have that problem so far!

4. add your email to your blogger profile

we want to chat with people who take the time to comment on our posts. we want to make connections and get to know people. it is almost impossible to do that unless your email shows up when you comment! so go. do it right now. i'll wait.

oh, you don't know how? that is no excuse.

here is an excellent tutorial on how to do it. go ahead, click here, i'll wait.

see? that wasn't so painful was it? now i can email you back when you comment on my post below! :)

5. pictures, pictures, pictures & give credit where it is due

it is true that blogging was created to be about your writing and what you had to say. it is evolving, however, into how well you take pictures and whether or not you know how to video-log (vlog). so, more often than not, if a post is allll words and no pictures i am probably not going to get every idea you try to relay to me. {sorry but its the truth}. i can't help if i have the attention span of a goldfish. i need visual stimulation to keep me interested. so give me pictures!  make them big enough to see! put a caption on them or describe them in the blog.

if you have to borrow pictures, make sure you have permission to do so and give them a link back to where you got it from. (several examples of this available in this post)

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so there you go! a few tips for newbies out there who want to meet & connect with people and grow their blog! you definitely don't have to abide by these as they are not laws - more like unwritten rules. they will help you become successful!

got any more you would like to share? how about leaving a comment and tellling us!

linking up!