How to be Just Another Ordinary Blogger That No One Cares About

Wadup, folks!

Here’s a fact for you. As of today, there are over 500 million blogs in existence.

Isn’t that mind-boggling?

I personally visit around 10 new blogs every week in my free time – by googling everything from ‘Best Vegan Blogs in Texas’ to ‘Hottest New Blogs In Sri Lanka.’ Blogs of every niche inspire me – and I love looking at the layouts, style of writing, topics of choice and even reading the ‘About Me’ pages on them. More often than not, though, I find that the majority of blogs I visit are terrible.

 

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A post shared by Jade (@thatgoangirl) on Dec 3, 2018 at 5:53am PST

They ignore the needs of their readers, have ads popping up all over the place, ask for email ids in exchange of access to their content, focus too much on the blogger, and one can tell that the blog exists for nothing more than making a cheap buck. Many blogs online have tainted the art of blogging. So I took it upon myself to write this post for you – the ones about to start a blog and the struggling bloggers. Here are my tips on what bloggers should not do.

1. Having a wordpress.com or .blogpost.com blog – You can’t expect anyone to take you seriously when you can’t spare pocket change to buy a .com domain. You really can’t! It’s perfectly alright to start your blogging journey by plugging in to those domains. We’ve all been there – and I’d definitely encourage doing it for up to a year, until you find out whether you actually want to blog professionally or not. But once you make up your mind to up your blogging game, buying a domain and hosting is the absolute number 1 thing to do. When you’ve invested money in it, you’ll take it seriously. Readers and brands will, too.
2. Focusing on Instagram – Like a wordpress.com or a blogpost.com domain, Instagram isn’t in your control. Would it make sense investing energy, time and talent into a platform that may just magically vanish overnight? One that curbs your reach until you pay them and run ads? One that hides your posts from your own followers?
   Yes, everyone has jumped on the Instagram bandwagon. And blogging, for many, has unfortunately become synonymous with this social media platform – but wait till the day that the plug is pulled on Instagram, as was the case with Orkut and Hi5. Only those with a blog of their own will be left standing. Think of your blog as a bone, your content as the flesh and social media as a pretty pair of earrings – it looks nice, but you can wake up tomorrow and find that you’ve been robbed of it. If you want to make a career out of something, it would be wise to focus on what you have full power over, wouldn’t you say?
3. “Hey, wanna collab?” – As someone who manages the social media for a bunch of resorts and restaurants, it makes me cringe when I open DM’s to find badly-written one liners from “bloggers” asking for freebies in exchange of “promoting” a brand. Said person will have a handful of followers (or thousands of bot ones) and no blog to speak of. The DM will not be personalized, suggesting that the same copy-paste message has been sent to multiple brands. It will not state what the person brings to the table and why the brand should think of collaborating with him/her. Just like the “hey, wanna fraandship?” messages in the mysterious ‘others’ folder of a Facebook inbox, marketing and PR folks send it straight to the trash can where it belongs.
   Never, ever start blogging with the goal to get freebies. Everyone and their uncles can see right through it. And it mars the blogosphere for the dedicated bloggers. If you honestly feel that you’re at a point where a brand can gain as much mileage from you as the value the brand is providing you with, find the right contact person and draft a professional email. Make sure you have a self-hosted blog that’s been running for a few years with regular posts on it, plus a solid reader base, before anything else!
4. Write short posts that offer no value – Share as much first-hand knowledge as you can on a particular topic. It’s better not to post at all, than to put up a hasty 300-400-word write-up in an hour or to focus on quantity over quality. Anything between 1200-2000 words should be the goal. I know what you’re thinking – “people don’t have the time to read anymore! Their memory span is barely limited to an Instagram caption!” Listen, give your audience some credit. There’s nothing more disappointing than clicking on a really interesting blog post and finishing off with a one-line takeaway that you could get off Google. Well-written, long posts are more valuable and shareable. People are more likely to bookmark it for when they need the information later. Google loves long-form content and pushes it higher on the search engine to offer users better quality information. Lastly, you’ll stand out among a sea of lazy bloggers that no one gives a damn about.
5. Play it Safe – Don’t give in to the thoughts of “what will others say” when you blog. If you’ve got something to say and can back yourself up, go ahead and say it. Your blog is your space to spill your thoughts and share your opinions, and if you happen to step on toes, so what? Take a stand and be unapologetically you. There are enough cowards on the internet – worried about taking political stands, talking about things they care about or ideologies they don’t agree with. Let’s not add to their tribe, k?
6. Being inconsistent – How many folks do you know who can’t drink their morning cup of tea or take a train/cab ride to work without reading the morning paper? The habit has become so ingrained in them that they can’t imagine a day without it. Aim for being an integral part of your readers lives, just like this. Many bloggers first start out by publishing several times a week, then once a week, then once a month – and then they fizzle out and their readers forget they ever existed. While it’s important to be consistent, again, quality matters. One kick-ass post every Monday beats 5 average posts a week and zero posts the next week.
7. Copying “successful” bloggers – One of my favourite blogs to browse through is The Skinny Confidential. I love the bloggers’ transparency, her conversational style of writing and the blog aesthetics. And I go back because the blog is unique. If Lauren, the blogger behind the The Skinny Confidential, had to merely copy other bloggers, I’d have no reason to go back to her page. Don’t copy stuff that’s already out there! Find your voice!

 

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A post shared by Jade (@thatgoangirl) on Oct 17, 2018 at 12:17am PDT

This post may seem like a whiny rant or a tad too negative, – in which case, scroll up and read point 5 again, lol! It just makes me sad to see such a powerful tool being assaulted by amateurs and I had to do my bit. Hope it added a little value to your blogging journey – and if you have anything to say about my take on the subject, drop me a line in the comments below.

I’ll catch you guys on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Bye!