Several people have asked me how I started the Charlotte Mom Favorites blog, what’s worked and what hasn’t. I actually stole the blogging concept from my husband, our household’s pioneer blogger. In 2010, he set off on a course to blog about riding a bike in lieu of driving for a year. The bicycling stuck, the blogging didn’t.
However, he did have early success with his blog and seeing this I thought, “Hey, why not?” I’ve got something to say and someone to say it to. So I signed up on blogger.com, registered my domain name with godaddy.com, and found a design template from a free sample site thlogging, Charlotte, mom stuff, websites, words of wisdomat I liked. One year later, I’m still here, and now you are too. Isn’t that something? Here are a few tips on how to get your blog up and running, based on what I’ve learned along the way.
Find your view point: Is it something that others are interested in? For my husband, it was telling the tale of shunning his car for a bike for a year. My concept was to write about lessons I’ve learned in my own journey of parenthood and to share resources and tips learned from my interactions with my mom-friends. If you like to write and want to start a blog, think about your hobbies and passions. You don’t have to be an expert at anything, but you do have to want to share your experiences, so others can learn and laugh with you along the way!
Find an audience: Once you have a concept and have written a few blogs, you’ll need to find an audience. Sure, you can write just for yourself, and it’s quite rewarding. But, it’s always exciting for others to read your blogs, comment on them and share them with others. This is where networking and blog directories come in to play. If your hobby is gardening and your blog is about your urban organic garden, join a local gardening club and send out your blog URL to the mailing list. Look up various blogging directories that feature gardening and apply for your blog to be listed. The combination of personal connections and utilizing the online community is what I’ve found has really grown my own blogging audience.
Write consistently: Hopefully, you’ve found a topic that is super-interesting to you, and you’ve found others that enjoy the same thing. Now, you’ve got to keep them tuned in, which means you’ve got some work to do. This is often the hardest part for me. It can be tough to come up with daily topics to write about. As a rule of thumb (especially when starting a blog), it’s good to write at least three times a week or more. You want your audience to check back in with you, and when they do, they will want to find something new. I always keep a running list of ideas in a notebook and often just write a few sentences about something random, just to have a platform to start from if (and when) I really get stuck.
Stay on topic, but don’t stay too long: We have a saying in my family, which not everyone appreciates – “Be brief, be bright and be gone.” Although one should never say this to your husband (lesson learned), I think this definitely holds true to blogging. I’ve found that blogs that have been posted on my site of the short to medium length are more popular and more widely read than the longer ones. If people want to read a novel, they’ll pick up a book. Or a Kindle.
While we are on the short-to-medium length topic, I’ll stop for now. But, I’ll be posting a few more tips in the next few days! Thanks for reading the blog! Seeing the readership grow over the past year has really meant the world to me!
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