The 10 Commandments of Blogging

You must not under any circumstances give up on blogging. You will hit times of complete blankness, madness; you may develop a headache, bite your nails until there’s nothing left, and stare into space with a laptop on the knee and stare at the walls. The ideas will come! Trust me!

You must not leave your mobile phone behind. Numerous times I have been out and about and opportunities galore present themselves to be photographed and documented, which would have made great posts. Carry your phone with you at all times!

You must not feel guilty for not posting every day. I did this at first and it’s not necessary. I can go days and days without any ideas for posts, then 3 will hit me in one fell swoop. Relax and go with the flow with your every day interesting lives, and the ideas will come.

You must not be a solitary blogger. Engage, engage, and engage. I cannot stress this enough. Join Facebook blogging groups and help each other out. You pin a post for them, and they’ll do it for you. It’s really worth it, because you will make friends with the odd few who can give you advice and support.

You must be genuine and honest. Let people see the real you and be as open as you feel comfortable. If you suffer from anxiety, write about it. Your readers need to sense a real person behind the words. Be warm and friendly.

You must not steal chunks of other blogger’s work. This is plagiarism, obviously. I do look at others work to gain inspiration and ideas but would never steal their content.

You must not plod along if you want your blog to succeed. If you want traffic, get your posts out there on all the social media sites that are available. Stumbleupon generates a large amount of my traffic. Experiment and see what works best for you.

You must post the odd article about food. I am a pretty random blogger; with a quarter of my posts centered on art, which I suppose is my niche. However, I seem to get a lot of traffic from recipe articles, and the reason for this is because everyone near enough loves to eat; so this, of course, can only make sense. I cook out of necessity and not for pleasure, but I will post the odd article for food lovers.

You must not write a blog post and leave it at that. SEO or Search engine optimization means using keywords in your posts and titles before you publish, to get the best results once it’s out there. Mine’s at the bottom of each new blog post I write, where you can add your title and keywords etc. Do this also with Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook etc. Use hash tags with your posts in social media but do not overdo it. You’ll look desperate.

You must always respond to reader’s comments on your articles. They have taken the time to read it and respond, so be courteous and give a reply and use their name. It shows an interest in them as individuals.

Blogging, as I’ve learned over the past 6 months, is a complete trial and error. I find that every week I’m learning something new. I would advise though, to make friends with other bloggers who are in the same boat as you because it’s beneficial to have their support and advice.

The 11^th commandment is:  You must continue to blog and completely enjoy the experience. Do not give up x