5 Pieces of Advice for New Bloggers

Ciao lovelies! I remember when I was first starting out in blogging. I had a lot of my own ideas about blogging, and I also had some mistaken opinions too. I also had some things I wish someone would’ve told me when I first started! So today I’m sharing 5 pieces of advice for newbies to the blogging world!

These pieces of advice are just from my own personal experiences, and I’m not claiming to be a blogging expert. These are just things I wish someone would’ve told me when I first started.

Tip #1: Find Your “Why”

When I first started blogging, I didn’t have a clear direction or “why” I wanted to blog. As the years went on, I struggled with a sense of direction for a while. I even had a struggle where I wanted to be a “Famous” blogger, before I realized that wasn’t really something that would be a good path for me.

Eventually, I sat myself down and made a list of reasons why I blog. I found that I mainly blogged for myself, because I enjoyed writing, I enjoyed the confidence boost, I enjoyed expressing myself, and I enjoyed being creative.

 I also realized I blogged because I wanted to provide content for a niche that I felt did not get enough content made exclusively for them. I wanted to provide safe content for that niche.

Finding your  “Why” is not always easy, but once you know why you want to blog, you can begin to formulate other things, like your writing style, niche, etc.

Tip #2: Don’t look at others as Competition. Your only Competition is your past self.

One of the most TOXIC and HARMFUL things you can do to hinder your progress as a blogger is to compare yourself to others! It may be tempting to go and look at other’s blogs and say “well my blog doesn’t have that feature..” or compare writing styles, graphic design skills, etc.

But at the end of the day, a blog should be like a fingerprint, 100% unique to you. Trying to copy or replicate another blog is not only plagiarism/copyright infringement, but it’s also not going to get you anywhere.

Realistically, your only “competition” in terms of comparing yourself to some benchmark of progress, should be comparing your current work to your past self. As long as you continue to improve, you can take things at your own pace, and progress in a way that fits you and your mission.

Too often, new bloggers seek to be “just like” another blogger so they can replicate their successes. But your successes will often be different from the kinds of success that others achieve. Just like in other parts of life, you should never aim to be a carbon-copy of someone else!

Tip #3: Niches (kind of) matter.

When I first started, I thought that having a niche was totally crap. I really thought that it was just something that everyone thought was necessary but really, I thought it didn’t matter….I was so wrong!

You don’t have to have a super intensely specific niche, and you certainly don’t have to stick to the basic “lifestyle,” “makeup,” “fashion,” “travel,” “cooking,” (etc…) blog niches that you see everywhere either. Finding a niche THAT WORKS FOR YOU is key.

Meaning, just because you might read that Tech blogs gain lots of followers, doesn’t mean you should start a Tech blog if you have no interest in writing about tech! Readers can most certainly tell when you’re not passionate about what you’re writing about.

When I say niches matter, what I mean is that it matters for you to find a niche that you will enjoy writing about for a long time! Of course, you can have a multi-niche blog, or occasionally write a post that doesn’t adhere fully to your niche. But at the end of the day, if you’re promising readers that your blog is perfect for finding, let’s say, recipes, and all you write about is car-troubles, that doesn’t really come off well.

OFT is an example of a blog where I utilize a multi-niche strategy. But my secret is that I used two niches that kind of work together, Agere and Kawaii. These can be utilized together. But they can also be utilized separately. What I mean by this is, I can write a post about, let’s just make up an example.. “5 Kawaii Gifts for Age Regressors.” But I could also write a post that is a Kawaii DIY not specifically for Agere. And I could also write a post about “What is Agere?” that has no connection to Kawaii culture at all. And of course, I can even go off-niche for a post or two- like I am with this post!

At the end of the day, what I view a niche as, is a way to keep your blog organized, and on track. As long as you stick to your Niche(s) most of the time, you should easily stay focused and organized.

Tip #4: Research, research, research.

I’ll admit this right now, I’m totally a sucker for reading articles about my hobbies and interests. I LOVE learning new information about what I do, so I can stay relevant and on the cutting edge of my favorite things. But I am aware that, even though I love it, not everyone enjoys this kind of thing.

Even if you don’t enjoy research/learning, I implore you to try to learn as much as you can about your niche, as well as other facets of blogging! There’s a lot to learn about, and (speaking from experience) you’ll probably never stop learning new things about blogging! Things change all the time, things get updated, new platforms pop up, and new strategies get shared daily.

Topics I recommend for anyone to research if you want to start or enhance a blog: Social Media Strategies/Marketing Tips, Writing Tips, Graphic Design Tips, and even look into which platform has the best features for what you aim to do with your blog. (By platform I’m talking about things like Wordpress vs Blogger, etc.)

Tip #5: Don’t forget to enjoy yourself, too.

Oh my goodness, this is so important. So many people start out blogging with this idea that it’s ONLY a job, or it’s a chore, or it’s something they’re just doing because they need to earn money from it. But with that attitude, you’ll get burned out faster than you realize!

Blogging can be really fun, but you have to let yourself have fun with it in order to enjoy it. If you’re super tense about it all the time, it won’t be enjoyable and burn-out will occur, and you might give up on it entirely.

I’ve produced so much better posts when I’m writing simply for fun, rather than when I write to try to attract views! As I said before, readers can tell if you’re not enjoying yourself when you write a post.

So don’t forget to let yourself enjoy blogging!

Thank you for reading. I’d really love to hear your thoughts in the comments! If you’re a blogger, what advice would you give to a new blogger, or even your past self, about blogging? What have you learned that you didn’t know starting out?

If you’re not a blogger, are you considering starting a blog? Why or why not? What do you think influences your choice?

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Thanks again for reading, remember to stay awesome, love yourself, and I'll see you in our next post!