Blogging Tips and Tricks #1
Blogging has been a part of my life since I published my first post 8 years ago. Along the way, I have come across thousands upon thousands of blogs and in those time, I accumulated quite a lot tips and tricks that I applied on my blog.
I was also guilty of doing the don’ts but blogging is a journey and a learning process that never ends. You can’t expect to create a blog today and master the whole art of blogging by tomorrow afternoon. It doesn’t work that way, my friend.
Blogging needs a lot of patience and very time-consuming, at least for me because sometimes I sleep at 4 in the morning finishing up a post or touching up my blog design here and there.
After all, it all comes down to what blogging is to you and if you are willing to spend so much time on it. Like I always said in my previous posts, you do you.
Template — clean and neat
No matter what template you use, let it be as clean and neat as possible. It’s okay if you have a lot of design going on but don’t let it interfere with the readers’ experience in a sense that they don’t want to come back to your blog because the design is too overwhelming for their eyes. Your blog design is supposed to ‘frame’ your contents, not to get in the way of them.
What I mean by a clean design is everything on your blog is serving a purpose. For example; gadgets. Do you really need all the gadgets on your blog? Is that clock widget needed by your readers? That bagi ikan makan widget? Do they really need it? I don’t think so. Get rid of any widgets that will only slow down your blog load.
A neat design is when everything is aligned. The photos are within the same width, what needs to be centered is centered, to be justified is justified. I am very fussy about these little things, it’s a bad habit of mine to always have everything to be perfectly aligned on my blog.
Some of my previous posts’ photos are not full width after I changed to this not-so-new design so I will have to edit all of the photos to have them the same width as my post content.
If you’re using responsive templates, please disable mobile template on Setting > Template or else the responsive design can’t be seen on mobile. I see some of the bloggers forgot to do this when I opened their blog using my phone.
If you’re using responsive templates from Sora Templates, Themexpose, Gooyabi Templates, or any other free templates that have a free and also the paid version, you need to remember that it will be very hard to edit the code because the developers did something to the codes/script that made it hard for you to edit freely unless you buy their paid version. This is the reason why I paid for my template. I want a responsive template and I want to be able to edit everything, as well.
Posting schedule and contents
I suggest you to get a notebook for your blog and write down blog ideas and their contents. For example; this post. I actually have a list of tips and tricks that I wrote in my bullet journal so when I’m typing it out, I already have a list of content that I want to put in the post, you get what I’m saying?
I also made a schedule of what I want to post every week. When I already made a schedule, then on the weekend I can take out my camera and take photos for the posts. I also printed out the 50 blogging ideas and pasted it on my bullet journal.
Every time I’m done writing contents for each idea, I would cross off or highlight the idea on the list meaning that I already brainstormed the contents. It looks like a lot of work but it’s just my blogging system.
Photos — clear and eye-catching
Honestly, a post without photos are boring. Nobody wants to read a block of text without any images to catch their eyes. You can take your own photos or use stock photos like I do. I provided a few stock photos websites that you can use their photos for your posts in my Resources page.
If you take your own pictures, it doesn’t matter what type of camera you use or if you’re only using your camera phone as long as the pictures are clear and crisp and bright and eye-catching, we, readers will totally read your posts.
I am also still learning how to take better pictures, too. But let me remind you that you can’t take other people’s pictures without permission and claim them as your own. You can be sued for copyright infringement.
Post font — same size and dark font
I think we all grew out of besar kecik besar kecik font with biru merah hijau kuning warna pelangi coloured font with unnecessary bold, underline, and strikethrough style for content. Nothing irks me more than having all of these in a post! I still remember when blogging was new and everyone was doing this. It was cool 5 years ago but not now.
Font 14-16px is nice on the eye. Don’t have them too small or I will immediately click X on your tab. I wear eyeglasses and nothing hurts my eyes more than small and light coloured font. How do you expect me to read comfortably like that? T.T
Phew this post is long! Initially I wanted to make this only one part post but I have typed too much already and I will be doing a part 2 later. Thank you for reading!
