Beginners Guide to Blogging - 1

This is my first post as a member of the team and I will be moderating the blog for the month of June. I have decided to use the theme of blogging to get us started for a few reasons. 1. I am addicted to bloggin now, between posting on my own one, hunting down new and interesting blogs and learning tips to increase my blog traffic, I am always thinking about blogs. 2. It is a great way to boost interest in what we are doing within the team and share our knowledge.

First image I loaded to my blog, a photo of a thistle from my garden altered using Photoshop

So, I'll get started and ramble less from now on I promise.

I started my blog in October 2007 after finding an interesting website while looking for information about illustration. I found this artists website with a link to her blog and from there I found lots of other really interesting ones and Etsy. I fumbled around for a few months leaving comments and making friends and thinks have grown from there.

Here are my top tips for blogging and increasing traffic to your blog

1a. Write and write often. Write about what inspires you, what you are making/ selling, what you have found other people making and interesting sites and blogs. Try and post a couple of times a week. People get put off if they link to you and head by to read what you have been up to and it is the same post from 3 weeks ago, people get bored.

1b. Decide on who you are writing for. Freiends/ family, or work. If you want your blog to be a promotion for your work, try and keep most post connected to this. You can make it really personal too, but think if you want potential customers knowing what you did last night!

2. Make friends/ post comments. This is how people find you to begin with. If you are using blogger and click on your dashboard then on one of your underlinded interests you'll be sent to a list of other bloggers who share your interests. Take a look at some of them and if you like what you see say so. Keep going back and maybe they will come and see you.

3. Have interesting post titles and tags. These are what get you found in searches. Keep them relevent to what your wirting about but think outside the box for catching peoples' eyes.

4.Submit to blog search engines. I'll be doing a post about a few of these over the next few weeks. But to begin with just google the heading and have a look at a few of these yourself. This way more people can find you and you are on the radar for the big search engines to see you too.

5.Add photographs. It makes it more interesting to look at and can keep readiners looking longer. Use photos of your work, what your making, things that interest you or things other people are up to. (If you are going to do this always ask permission from them and quote who took it and where you found it.) You can use Flickr too, here you'll find a bank of images you can use, but again send the person a message to let them know you are using their image. I'll do a post in this series about this later on.

6. Tell people about your blog. Anywhere and everywhere.Again look at blog search engines, or have your blog address added to your business cards ect.

7. Share your expertese. People love learning from blogs. How to's and tutorials are great for getting return visitors and again bump you higher in search engine searches. Here is one of mine for a gift bag.

8. Run competitions and Giveaways. Readers love this sort of thing. At the moment my reader numbers vary from 5 - 8 per post, but when I run competitions it jumps.

9. Ask questions. Get your readers involved, give them a reason to comment.

10. Have fun and be patient!

There we have it. Over the next 4 weeks myself and some of our other team mates will be telling you about lots of other blogging related stuff, successful bloggers, photography how to's, why we blogs, and maybe even a Blogging 101 surgery! Let me know what you think or if you have any questions about the tips I have and am using myself. But whats more join in and get blogging!