Monday, October 17, 2016

Blogging 101: 2016 Version

How would you advice a millennial friend who has just started blogging middle of this year?  Should I just tell him to forget about blogging and focus his energy on something else?

What is blogging 101 in 2016 when your contemporaries have either quit blogging or are now blogging gurus?  The internet world must be filled with all the recycled tips by now. And I... am back to being a blogging noob.

So here's my blogging tip to a friend who just started to feel like a blogger. 


1.  Plan your blog well
2.  Start by choosing a well-thought of domain name that will become your brand for a long time
3.  Choose your blogging platform and hosting.  One that fits the budget and that is easy to maintain and upgrade. The $4-$5 monthly fee suits well for his budget.  Majority of the bloggers uses Wordpress, so I suggest he follow suit.
4.  Develop a regular schedule for posting.  One or twice a week will do, or say, every Monday or Friday.
5.  Work on developing great content. If you hate work, what can I do? 
6.  Use pictures that are easy to load in the internet.  If it loads more than 10 seconds, visitors would likely go away and never return.
7.  Have a plan to promote your site.  There is Facebook and Twitter.  I am sure that with his almost 1k friends in Facebook, he can catch the attention of half of them.
8.  Join a community of bloggers.
9.  Monetize your site.  Apply for an adsense account. Explore other options too.
10. Love blogging.  It will keep you going, at least for the next 5 years.

There you go.  I guess these are also the advice for myself if I have to redo my blogs.