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How to Start a Successful Blog: Top Tips for Beginners and Bloggers

Sabine Wolf · December 18, 2018 ·

Creating and maintaining a successful blog is critical for personal and business brands.

We live in a world of open digital space where every person has all the tools and opportunities to become an author. However, this is exactly what makes beginners so confused: everything is at hand, and you can start anytime, but how can you do that? What are the secrets of becoming a successful blogger with thousands of subscribers?

Well, it is worth saying that every popular blogger was a beginner at some point. There is no ultimate recipe of success. Hard work and smart approach will surely increase your chances. In this post, we are going to discuss some valuable advice on how to start a blog and which direction to take if you already have one. So read on and get some insights!

Come up With a Title

Starting a blog, you have to think up a simple name which is easy to remember. The name should be strongly related to the topic of the blog and your potential audience. Make sure that the name of your blog clearly reflects the content and captures the ideas you are going to develop. To do so, write down a couple of variants that come to your head and then choose the one that seems the most original and eye-catching to you.

Choose the Platform

The next step is a registration of your domain on a blogging platform. There is a wide range of various host-sites available online, some are free, the others require a small fee. As a rule, those platforms that require payment allow users to store more files, videos and images. So if you are about to locate a lot of visual content, you should consider a paid option.

One of the most popular hosting sites used by millions of bloggers is WordPress. A WordPress blog is simple and easy to maintain. With its help, you can create a blog or a website and manage it the way you want. It has numerous free plugins as well as paid tools. At WordPress, you will have to purchase a domain name and pay for hosting every month. The second popular platform is Bluehost, which is an official hosting provider recommended and supported by WordPress. Both resources are search-engine friendly.

If you are looking for a free option, you may try Blogger. It has significantly fewer tools and design options than the platforms described above, however; it is a perfect variant for non-tech-savvy beginners.

Make it Personalized

Most platforms have ready-made design options to choose from. Again, some themes are free, and the others are paid, still inexpensive (once you purchase a theme, you will own it forever). In most cases, choosing a default theme is not enough to make your blog personalized, so you are recommended to spend some time modifying it.

The visual part of your blog is no less important than the content you are going to publish. The best option is to create your own logotype for a blog to make it recognizable.

If you are not very good at design, try hiring a freelance artist to draw a logo for you or use free images found online (just don’t grab hold of the copyrighted content). Besides the logotype, you can locate a photo of yourself on the main page – this will make your future readers more loyal and identified with you.

Statistics and Plugins are Important

Before you start posting, make sure that you create a subscription button for your future fans. Google has a special tool for email subscriptions called FeedBurner. Also, don’t forget to get yourself a Google Analytics account to keep an eye on the statistics.

Check the chosen blog platform for some plugins and choose the coolest ones. There is a great variety of them, so you will certainly find the ones that suit you best. Installation won’t take you more than a couple of minutes.

Write Valuable Content and Do it Regularly

You have to create a blog that brings value or entertain the readers since these are two main reasons for them to subscribe. Readers are always looking for a more detailed and professionally written blogs. Also, they are looking for unique material. You can use free plagiarism checker australia to test your articles on uniqueness.

Indeed, your audience is the first thing to consider here. However, it is no less important to think about yourself. We mean that there is no way a blogger can produce valuable content if he or she doesn’t have any passion for it.

Foremost, your blog must be devoted to something that interests you. It is perfect when you have some knowledge about the theme, and it is even better when you want to learn more about it. You shouldn’t follow the trends only because they are popular in this way you will get bored easily.

Choosing Important Topics

It might be easy to say that you should produce valuable content to attract the attention of your potential audience and make it grow. But how do you know which topic is more interesting than the other ones? When choosing a theme for a post, think about the following questions:

What are the common questions people asking about? To answer this question, you can do quick research. Check some forums and blogs that are related to your main topic and read the comments and questions of the readers. If a few users ask the same question, then you can provide them with an answer in your post.
Do you mind about debating on the topic? The sphere of blogging is all about discussions. Get ready that some readers won’t agree with your thoughts, while the others will criticize your position or express their own vision of the point. Actually, having active audience ready to discuss the question from all angles is amazing. Just make sure that you are not too sensitive about the topic.
Do you have some problem solutions to share? No matter what the main idea of your blog is, chances are that it may have some challenges common for everyone. In fact, people are similar in a lot of ways. So if you can share some solutions that have helped you deal with some important issues, chances are that your readers will find them useful and interesting, too.

Do Something Most Authors Won’t Do

If you have time and inspiration to create a longer or deeper post – do it! Detailed and large texts are not only good sources for your readers. They are also more preferred by Google as the best answers to the questions people are asking. Put your best efforts to create better content than regular bloggers do. Most of them usually write a list of quick tips or basic information.

Such blog posts rarely contain any extras, like additional research, a high level of expertise, and personal experience. Be different and provide something special to your audience and see how the number of your subscribers grow.

Remember to be able to increase your conversion rates you need better copywriting. There are several reasons why copywriting is so crucial for the success of your website. The way you write about your product or service is reflected on how consumers perceive your brand.

Stay on Track Not to Run Out of Ideas

Most bloggers, especially those that make their first steps, are worried about running out of ideas. It is quite natural to have anxiety like that. You feel some kind of responsibility about blogging and want to reassure yourself that you will keep ongoing in the long run. Here are some useful recommendations on how to stay tuned all the time:

Have a notebook or mobile phone notes at hand. Make sure that there is a minimum time gap between the moment an idea comes to you and the moment you write it down. Don’t rely on your memory because this is the best way to lose your best ideas and never find them again.

Even if you are not sure that you will use it or that it is good enough – write it down, anyway. You will decide whether it is valuable or not later. Keep a notebook in your pocket or just use the notes on your mobile phone to fix your ideas and rework them later.

Make your knowledge deeper. Even if you think of yourself as an expert of your niche, always stay to update. Most niches never stop moving and changing, so you need to be in the loop. Read new articles, books and blogs related to your sphere of interest, and you will always come up with something new to write about. You can even use these materials as a basis of your posts, sharing and analyzing what you have learned from them.
Books, movies, people. Be sure that these are three never-ending sources of inspiration. There are so many themes and streams of thought you can find in books and films, so why don’t you use them? As for the conversations of the real people, we bet that you will get surprised once you start having the ear for them.
Revisit the same topics. It’s okay to come back to the topics you have already written about. You may observe them from different angles and provide a deeper expertise. The old readers will appreciate the reminder and accuracy; the new ones will read about something they might have missed.
Discover the subtopics. A large and interesting topic is like a labyrinth: you can always follow another corridor and see it having even more corridors. Think about the smaller topics related to a central theme and develop them into full-fledged posts.

Make the Headlines Attractive

Do you remember those moments when you scroll some informational resource and suddenly click on the headline of the article because you just cannot resist it? What is more, the content of the article may be mediocre, but you find yourself reading it already. Well, this is something that really works and makes a huge difference.

People pay attention to headlines when they sound interesting. We strongly recommend you to research this topic better and find some blogging tips that reveal more information about the headlines.

Get enough information and come up with your own recipe of creating attractive titles. In general, there are some keywords and word combinations that always arrest sights.

They are:

Quick/Easy/Professional
Guide/Tips/Recommendations
How to
Expert’s/Celebrity’s Advice

These are truly magical words to get more readers, but make sure that you use them properly and thoughtfully.

If You Cannot Produce a Post Every Week, Then Don’t Push Yourself

You will find millions of experts who claim that posting at least once a week is crucial. They say that unless you write posts that often, you will not only lose the existing subscribers but won’t get any new ones. On the one hand, writing regularly is a good practice. On the other hand, the quantity of your subscribers doesn’t have direct bonds of the regularity of your posts.

It is much better to spend more time creating better and larger articles for your blog and post them only 2 or 3 times a month than producing weaker content more frequently. Actually, readers value the quality of content more than the number of posts per month, so move on your own time. Write better instead of writing faster.

Ensure Readability of Your Posts

Readers are not comfortable with massive texts. If you don’t want them to heave a groan and close your blog once and forever, make sure that you make your texts readable. Break them into small paragraphs, use titles and subtitles, include pictures, add points and lists. These are the basic formatting elements you cannot do without.

Include a FAQ Page

If you are just a beginner, you might think about a small list of questions that your readers will certainly have about your blog and its main theme. Create a FAQ page and list those questions along with the answers.

For example, you may start with some organizational ones that relate to guest posting, advertising, or link swapping. It is especially useful if you don’t plan to do anything like that. Later, you will expand the list of questions if some of them will repeat in the comments section or in the messages you receive via email.

Wrap-Up

Follow these steps and make sure that you come back to them any time you have questions about your blog. No more procrastination: start writing it today!

Share your best tip for successful blogging.

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10 Essential Apps and Tools for Writers

Sabine Wolf · October 3, 2018 ·

10 Apps and Tools for Writers

Tools for writers just helps make your content the best it can be.

Writing a blog post, a press release or website copy is a little like driving; you can study the highway code (or read articles telling you how to write) for months, but nothing can prepare you for the real thing like getting behind the wheel and hitting the open road.

In this post, I will explain 10 essential apps and tools for writers to help you get started or hone your trade.

Daily writing confronts you to stay on top of your game – to achieve success, you must write brilliantly. Writing high-quality articles can be tasking, frustrating and time-consuming especially when you do it without adequate tools.

Mistakes occur as you write; therefore you need decent tools to correct the errors and make your article top-notch. While writing remains one part of creating content, editing happens to be the other (a big part). Learn about how to successfully blog here.

A poorly edited post equals lousy content regardless of how informative or interesting the post is. There are numerous editing and writing tools online that authors can use to improve their pieces. No matter if you are a beginner or a professional, these tools will go a long way to assist you.

The tools and apps for writers we shall be considered in this article do not just help produce great works alone; they also help you manage your time, content and whatnot!

Writing tools can help a lot by making spelling and grammar check easy and quick. They also come with great suggestions, tips, and remarks that will go a long way in improving your writing.

We have so many apps and tools all over the internet and can be confusing to decide which one to use. However, this post was written to introduce you to ten of them which can be useful to you while you execute your writing assignment.

Before we consider the various apps and tools, let’s take a quick look at their benefits:

They enhance the clarity and meaning of words.
They ensure you use the right words always to make your writing compelling.
They help analyze your article to boost SEO ranking.
They help eliminate different errors.
They help remove clichés from posts giving such post the needed professional touch.
They help suggest synonyms that help optimize your content.
They keep articles high-quality by eliminating redundant and repetitive words.
They make writing fun and easy to read.
They on the long run make you a great writer.

1. ProWriting Aid:

ProWritingAid refers to an online tool used for editing, writing, learning, and perfecting of writing style.

It has so many checks and reports that make it an ideal writing aid for authors, writers and others who write long articles. ProWritingAid, comes handy for professionals because it digs deep and offers a vast range of suggestions to improve writing.

It helps with some grammar issues that other grammar checking tools might have missed, e.g., transitions, abstract words, clichés (overused words), and so on.

With ProWritingAid, you can upload your documents and access above 20 in-depth writing reports that will assist in improving the quality and lucidity of your text quickly and with ease.

Frankly speaking, this tool has more software integrations (extensions) than any other editing app. Since you can integrate it with any of MS Word, Open Office, GoogleDocs, Chrome or Scrivener, then you can edit wherever you write.

The free version of ProWritingAid works surprisingly well offering a lot of functionality, but the priced premium version makes for working on extremely long documents, e.g., manuscripts.

2. Grammarly:

Grammarly has been called the ‘king of grammar checkers’ because of its usefulness. Having used a few of the grammar checkers, I couldn’t agree more.

This one of our fav tools for writers.

If you use the free version, some punctuations and grammar structures can be left out because it does not handle advanced grammar. The plagiarism checker does not come with the free version. So, if you want one, you will have to invest some dollars.

Grammarly, if well harnessed can be used every day since it works with a series of platforms, software, and applications. It has its own desktop app and works with MS Office and lots of browsers, WordPress and social media sites. There is also a mobile app that you can use on your mobile device.

Due to the wide range of apps and tools extension, Grammarly will work no matter what, when or where you are writing. It helps you write better and accurately. Another way you can put Grammarly to work is when you do not want to write yourself.

For instance, you can pay someone to write my paper, and after the paper has been submitted, you can then use Grammarly to check the article for plagiarism and other issues. With the app, you can make minor adjustments and make it your own.

3. Copyscape:

When writing, if your writing becomes similar to others online, you are very likely to be accused of plagiarism. Also, a plagiarised article will have a lousy SEO ranking, therefore keep the plagiarism level to as close to 100% as possible.

This one of our fav tools for writers that protect your content.

For this problem, Copyscape stands in as a convenient solution. It helps to make sure of the uniqueness of your article for it to have a high SEO ranking.

Copyscape was designed originally to catch instances of outright plagiarism. Besides, it prevents you from writing the same phrase repeatedly thereby helping ensure that your article has maximum SEO potential. However, the Copyscape can be slightly confusing when setting all the initial parameters.

4. Readable:

When your writing focuses on a specific audience, Readable will come in handy. For example, when writing children’s articles, it must be easy to understand so scoring using readable will do the magic. Readable utilizes the Flesch-Kincaid algorithm for determining the grade level of your text.

Most site contents require easy grade scores for better understanding. A perfect example is when writing ad copy or articles for a general American audience; the required grade level remains an F-K score to an 8th-grade level or lower.

It works perfectly for overly complex or lengthy words giving you an instant assessment of your text grading.

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5. Hemingway App:

The app allows writers to write simply without fluffs and fillers – just like the famous Hemingway himself. The tool remains popular among writers and bloggers due to its convenient text editing system.

This one of our fav tools for writers, especially for titles.

It ensures you to write simply by highlighting complex sentences and phrases then offers suggestions to eliminate excessive adverbs. It also helps convert passive voice constructions into active voice.

The tool comes with document style settings and even shows a text’s readability score. It also comes with a counter which indicates the number of words, characters, paragraphs, and sentences making it easy for you to alter the structure of texts for better readability. You can also get the Mac and PC editor’s standalone version, meaning you can use it on any device.

If you worry about writing simply without any heavy constructions in the passive voice, embrace Hemingway. It will improve your readability score/grade and eliminate passive voice in your writing.

6. Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator:

When looking for that perfect blog idea, consult Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator. This app will generate ideas for your blog in a matter of seconds. Just fill the form with the terms or few nouns you have on your mind and wait till the blog post titles come up. When you ran out of ideas, use this tool!

It merely requires adding the three keywords for the app to give you suggestive ideas that you can write immediately or get you pointed in the right direction. So, if coming up with fresh or new ideas for your dear blog on a regular basis is a struggle, this app is exactly what you need.

7. Cliché Finder:

Clichés make articles look unprofessional and watery. For the record, clichés are an overused expression that has lost its original effectiveness or power from too many uses. The app uses an algorithm and a dictionary to find clichés. Simply paste the text into the website and find out the results.

Clichés can be irritating, annoying and discouraging. They do their best to repel readers, so avoid them. If you cut off overused phrases, your content will be stronger and more memorable.

8. Evernote:

Evernote is such an amazing app that affords you the flexibility of taking notes and capturing ideas in different areas that some people call it a ‘second brain.’ Importantly you can do so many things with Evernote.

You can create to-do lists and checklists to drawing out specific notes to capturing receipts for tracking business expenses.

On the free plan, you can get up to 60MB of space – which should serve you quite well for just plain text notes.

However, if you want to include more graphics or larger files, then you should upgrade to larger storage for a couple of dollars. Evernote helps you to stay organized as a writer.

9. Copywritely:

Formerly called Contentyoda, Copywritely happens to be a content analysis tool that assists both robots and people to create great content.

It helps you to find major errors in content and edit your text at once using the online editor. Count on Copywritely to check your article for uniqueness, redundant phrases, and keyword stuffing.

Copywritely comes handy for digital marketers, SEO specialists, project managers and so on. It helps prevent overuse of the word in your writings, eliminate stop words and avoidance of redundant phrases.

In addition to that, it helps you to avoid plagiarism and makes your posts awesome. Copywritely can be a challenge and not easy to make changes in your post when it reports plagiarism. Since it highlights the plagiarized phrases word by word, it can be confusing when you try to re-direct the text.

10. Microsoft Word:

It would be injustice after listing all these apps and tools but refused to add Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word popularly referred to as MS Word happens to be a well-known word processor and default writing tool for many writers, bloggers, and authors. MS Word remains the first name that writers tend to associate with writing software.

It has a large usage mostly because it comes with many PCs. Besides typing, MS Word has so many other features that make it a versatile writing and editing tool.

It comes with a grammar checker that allows you to edit your articles. With the grammar checker, you can eliminate passive words, punctuation errors, spelling, and other writing issues.

It has an Office dictation feature that allows you to convert speech to text. On your down days when typing seems like a heavy task, dictate to your app, and it would do justice to it.

It works like magic, however, accent matter when using this feature, so, speak in the accent MS Word can understand. MS Word has a word counter that helps count the number of words, characters, lines and so on.

Also, it has a Thesaurus feature which allows you to use alternate words to avoid overuse of certain words or to get the perfect expression in your writing.

You can also check Readability score grading and so much more with MS Word. Furthermore, when you are tired of reading or skimming through long text what do you do?

Simple, engage the ‘Read Aloud’ feature to read the article back to you. It makes listening to your writing easy, and you can stop to make corrections as you go along.

The authentic version of Word doesn’t come cheap, but it’s worth every dime spent. Since by default it comes with your PC, you can make do with it. However, when it comes to the latest features, you can buy the newest version that comes with Office 365.

Wrapping up on tools for writers

Now there you have them, ten essential writer tools and apps for your use. Do you know that you can use a combination of apps and tools above to create awesome posts? Do not get stuck with only one tool or app; for best result use a combination of many of them.

For instance, I use MS Word in typing then run it through the editing features to eliminate passive words, spelling corrections, punctuation, and readability scoring.

After that, I run the post through the premium version of Grammarly to do advanced corrections on it especially correcting the ones missed by MS Word.

After that, I engage the Plagiarism feature in checking the article. Finally, I pass the post through Copywritely to help confirm the plagiarism percentage, check redundancy, keyword stuffing, etc. After putting the article through all those editing tools, it will come out awesome!

It does not matter if you have a major in English or not, allow the tools to help you with your posts, then you worry about creativity.

Have an app or tool to share, please share it here: @mmgtweets. And don’t forget to share this with a writer.

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Alyssa Johnson has been working as a writer and blogger for five years. She is an astute writer with a wealth of experience. She has received several awards of excellence for her writing from different organizations and groups. She loves creating original articles and has proved to be very good at it.