How To Get Better At Blogging
Hello, it's me again. Back on Bid's Things, today we're going to be covering the ultimate aspects of Blogging, this tutorial is mainly for beginners, but some of you intermediate bloggers can also learn a thing or two from this. I think we can start off with some basics.
Making a Blog
This is an important category, before you start blogging you need to learn about Making a Blog, and all the important aspects of it. This varies from people that are focused on that "Top Blogger" Status, those that want views, and those that just want to reach out and teach people about chess.
The button used to create a post
The first important aspect is to make sure you have a topic in mind, going straight into writing your blog without knowing what you want to make it about isn't really the best idea. Also, make your own unique topics, you'll probably get called out in your comments for stealing a topic.
The second important aspect is to make sure your blog title is related to the topic and is
1. Easily Readable
2. Not too Long
3. Not too Short
The third important aspect is to make sure you have a thumbnail ready before posting, this will definitely increase your views, and people will be interested in clicking on a good thumbnail.
Let's shorten these 3 important aspects to TTT (Titles, Topics and Thumbnails)
The best resources to make thumbnails in my opinion are
- Canva (Which is what I use)
- Pixlr
- Photoshop
But how do you get good TTT?
There's no specific way. For topics, you just need to think outside of the box for a unique, creative, fun and engaging Topic.
For Titles, you need to find an engaging Title that is correlated to the Topic, applying the 3 parts I mentioned.
For Thumbnails, you need to apply a good background, don't make it too bright or too dark, and don't make it too basic. It also depends on your style, lots of people may not like your thumbnail style and lots of people may do. Overall, it comes down to your idea, your skill (which is obtained through experience) and just having fun making your thumbnail.
Having fun making your whole blog is very important, you must make sure you don't overwork yourself but also don't procrastinate. Consistency is key to experience, and experience is key to improvement.
Inspiration
Inspiration is a huge key to success and improvement, you should look through the main blog page, where top blogger's blogs are advertised by chess.com. You should read some of them and grab some inspiration and get experience from them.
Some bloggers to be inspired by are:
- @Lightning
- @Rodgy
- @anikolay
- @alphaous
- @Nimzo-IndianaJones
- @YEAT
- @Fire
There are also important clubs to join to improve blogging, such as Blogchamps and The Blogging Awards, both being the best blogging competitions on chess.com.
Formatting
Formatting in a blog is another VERY crucial aspect of blogging, it is essential to keep viewers' attention and just keep the blog nice instead of being crumbled and hard to read.
Generally, my rule of thumb is to leave the normal text as it is, bold/italicize/underline important words, and make categories Bold and 24px/36px size along with adding the line feature at the top right to make it extra nice and clean. (Optional: Center the text)
Do not change your text alignment often, it makes for hard to read and un-neat format.
Consistency
We all are not perfect human beings, we can't pump out content, or whatever work as much as we want to. That's because of burnout, and burnout is caused by being Inconsistent most of the time. You should plan when you start working on your blogs, and when you should release them, don't make the duration too far or too close apart, and don't post blogs too often or too less, be in the middle and keep up your consistency.
Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.
- Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
Extensive Resources
Along with competing in and getting feedback from Blogchamps and The Blogging Awards, you definitely should consider using some Extensive Resources that chess.com has given you to allow new bloggers to level up their blogs, If you ever need any of these Extensive Resources you can just check back on this blog and click the hyperlinks. Some of them have helped me and many others improve their blogs.
Get to know your Topic Style
Most good bloggers have a style for their topics, you need to try every style and see which one fits your writing style best, this is another crucial aspect that will definitely change your game.
Here are 2 of the main styles that I think you should try.
- Educational (Most Titled Top Bloggers write Educational content, 2000+ rated players can do a lot with this)
- Entertaining (Most Intermediate and Beginner ELO players write this type of content if they can think outside of the box and practice a lot, this is a good style)
DO NOT TRY THESE STYLES IF YOU WANT TO BE A TOP BLOGGER
- <15-sentence blogs that don't give much use to viewers
- art-themed blogs that showcase art, often logos.
- educational/entertaining that could give use to viewers, but are very short and boring.
Word Walls
Word Walls are the biggest problem in blog formatting, a mistake that even the Best of Top Bloggers make sometimes. How do we prevent them and why can it be such a big problem?
Well, it's not that easy to prevent Word Walls, they can be described as 5+ straight paragraphs without something to break up the text, most people break them up with a Diagram or an Image, and some may also break them up with a Quote or Embedded Video. But sometimes none of those examples that can break up the text fit in, you might not be talking about a chess game/tournament, or you might not be able to find a good image to put, or maybe you don't know what quote is appropriate for that situation and you don't know how to put an embedded video/tweet.
Reasons why they are such a big problem:
- It can be annoying for viewers to read. Making them lose interest and click off your blog.
- It is not good and it is un-neat for the format of your blog. Making the blog lose its quality.
- Someone will probably point it out in the comments, making you feel embarrassed and unsatisfied with your blog.
Editing + Grammar and Spellcheck
We've all made the mistake of posting something without spellchecking it and maybe accidentally writing something you wanted to write in another part (I was guilty of that in my last blog!) But you can prevent that, first, a good recommendation to prevent as many spellchecks if you're too lazy to go over the whole blog is Grammarly, you can get it on the Chrome web store. (or if you write on a mobile device, you can download the Grammarly app) It helps a lot I assure you. It does try to correct some slang that you often use in your daily life but you can just dismiss or add to dictionary what you don't want it to correct.
If you want to put in more effort than that, you can spellcheck manually with every single word by yourself, sometimes it can be a lot more accurate but it's not so efficient and can be time-wasting too.
I recommend reading your blog out loud to make sure you made no mistakes or anything. If you do make a mistake, it is ok! Everyone makes mistakes and everyone should know that without bashing anyone that makes mistakes.
Put In More Effort
Last but not least, the classic statement "Put in more Effort". It actually is true even if it is overused. Putting in more effort and practicing anything will improve any skill, Including blogging.
Some people just don't put in the effort when making blogs even with their high potential, and it's sad to see, but it is what it is and some people just don't practise either.
Conclusion
Today, we have learnt nearly every important aspect of blogging. Whether or not you're a good, bad, or new blogger, I hope you learned something from this blog. This was a long one and I hope you didn't get too bored reading it. Don't forget to have fun writing your blogs!
REMEMBER THESE THREE THINGS.
- Practice makes perfect
- Put in more effort
- Try to Improve with every blog
- Try to be Consistent/Don't Procrastinate
- Have Fun!
I'll see you in the next one! Have Fun!
