Top 10 Tips for Blogging!

Last week I posted my Top 10 Tips for Baking and it has been a massive hit already – many of my followers are new to baking, or haven’t done it in years – and now they see success in every bake.  This also led to a flood of people asking for more ‘Tips’ blog posts, and in particular – this one!

These TEN tips are on blogging in general – so if you are looking to start one, then these tips will help you out!

1) Know What You Are Blogging About

When you decide to start a blog, you have to know what you want to blog about. It can be multiple things, or it can be one thing… it doesn’t really matter, but you just have to know what it is. When you then start your blog, you can write your ‘About Me’ page so that people understand you – and so that you yourself know what you are doing.

2) Research

When you have decided what you want to blog about, you should do some research into that subject. For example, I obviously chose Baking! I therefore looked into bloggers that have made a career from baking such as ‘Joy the Baker‘, ‘Sally’s Baking Addiction‘ and more! This gave me an idea of what sort of thing they post, how often they post, and how they have become so successful. I also found it extremely helpful to look at recipe books and such from my favourite Celebrity Chefs as it made me see how to write a recipe successfully!

3) Choose a Platform

I would personally always recommend WordPress – this is partly because this is what I start on, and still am on now. I LOVE how when you start on wordpress.com you have the WordPress Reader where you can easily interact with other wordpress bloggers, you can tag your posts so others can find it, and its an incredibly easy system to use. I have never used any others, but this is just my personal experience. I have no progressed on to wordpress.org and am self hosting my blog, but I can still use the Reader now, which I love. Look into other blogging websites so you can see what you like more!

4) Choose a Name

When I was attending Ashburton Chefs Academy back in January-June 2014 I realised that I had an insane passion for food, but didn’t want to be a professional Chef full time. However, I realised I knew I wanted to start a blog, and grow a business. This obviously led to the issue of what on earth do I call myself?! With the help of my colleagues at the school we went through ever name that had ‘Ginger’ in the title, but all the good ones were taken… or would have to have weird spellings that are hard to remember – so we all decided on simple. Thats when I settled on ‘Jane’s Patisserie’ as its easy to remember, and I can bake whatever I want under the title of ‘Patisserie!’

This shows that you want to have a relevant name to what you are blogging about – make it a name that people will remember or relate to, and make sure that you spell it correctly!!!

5) Get All Social Medias

Once you have decided on your name, and you know what you’re doing, then get ALL social media accounts in the SAME name (if you can). I was extremely lucky that on all social medias that I can think of (such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Blog Lovin, etc) I have the name @janespatisserie for them all – that way, everyone knows its me.

Even if you don’t think that you will use a certain website for a while, you want to get the account just in case. This makes it easier in the future, and so that you don’t screw yourself in the future because someone else has decided to snap up a popular name!

6) Interact with Others

Once you start blogging, you won’t be successful within the first week. It’s not impossible, but its HIGHLY unlikely that its going to happen – however, you will help yourself considerably if you decide to interact with other bloggers and followers. Once you have opened up your blog, and social media accounts, respond to everyone who comments on everything of yours, and comment on others posts too. Don’t generically type something if you don’t care about it though, don’t be fake – just be genuine and take an interest in others blogs if you can. This can lead to guest posts on others blogs, and your followers on your social media accounts will appreciate that you make the time for them!

7) Be Consistent

I decided from the beginning to consistently post 2-3 recipes a week, so that I am consistent in what I do. In my opinion, you can really start a blog, post 3 recipes a week, then randomly stop posting so much – you might have people lose interest, or you yourself with lose interest. I am not saying that you have to force yourself to post – if you go on holiday then thats different, you could maybe schedule a post to go up whilst you’re away so that your blog stays alive – but in the world of the internet these days, there are millions of blogs, and millions of people looking at them – so you want them to look at yours. People like consistency!

8) Don’t Spam – Don’t Get Carried Away

One thing I must say is my absolute annoyance is people that randomly post stuff every day, for no real reason. It relates to point number 1 – knowing what you are blogging about. If you are doing a photography blog, and post photos in relation to it every day, then thats absolutely fine – but for example with me, I wouldn’t post 10 recipes to Facebook every day, I wouldn’t want to annoy people – I would spam my twitter or Instagram with ridiculous about of photos – spamming your blog or social medias with a lot of items or posts will, in my opinion, just annoy people and push them away!

9) Be Patient

It is very rare to have an overnight success with anything – but especially a blog. I have been lucky with my blog getting as far as it has in a short space of time, but others have had much more success. Nothing really happened on my blog at all for the first few months, and then I got more confident, and things started to set in motion a bit more. However, you really shouldn’t be worried if a particular recipe, or post, gets less views than others – that will always happen! But seriously, be patient with your blog – if you’re passionate about what you are doing you will always have a success.

10) Be Yourself – Don’t Use Others Work.

Above anything else, I always think that everyone should be themselves when they are blogging or doing what they love – for me, I am so passionate about baking and cakes that I can’t help but love what I do, and that means I am being myself. Make sure you are passionate about what you are doing, and that will shine through in what you post!

However, the MOST important thing about all, is use YOUR work. Don’t steal others work. I feel like this is an obvious thing to say, but to some it doesn’t matter. You can reblog what others do, post your review of a recipe with your own photos – but you MUST credit the original baker for example, or show where the work came from. There is nothing worse then getting as far as I have with my most popular recipe for example, my No-Bake Caramel Rolo Cheesecake, and finding out that someone has copied and pasted it, and is pretending its theirs! Its heartbreaking! So as I say, be yourself – and everyone will love you.

If you have any more questions on blogging, or my blog, or how to start a blog then do comment on this post, contact me on my Facebook, or email me at janespatisserie@gmail.com!

All of these views are my own, and you may agree or disagree but these are my personal Top 10 Tips for Blogging!

ENJOY!

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J x

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