If you are a newbie-blogger or Pre-blogger looking for blogging tips to kick-start your blogging career smoothly, then this post is for you.

Due to lack of knowledge or misconception about blogging, lots of newbie bloggers end-up their career at the beginning itself!

This is an attempt to provide few Basic Blogging Tips to avoid the common mistakes newbie bloggers usually make while starting their blogging career.

1. Blogging Platform


Blogging platform plays a great role in blogging career. Choose it wisely.

Starting with a wrong platform and changing to a different one is not advisable at all. This is just like changing your home from one city to a completely unknown city. Making your newly changed blogging platform in-order and SEO friendly is a herculean task.

So, make yourself acquainted with different platforms available, and choose one with which you are more comfortable. These are few good blogging platforms you should try: Blogger.com, WordPress.com, WordPress.org, TypePad, Drupal and Joomla. Choosing the best blogging platform is one basic blogging tips I usually give to newbie bloggers.


Things you should look for while choosing a blogging platform.


1. UI (User Interface): User Interface is your everyday playground. Everyday you do lots of blogging activities via your User Interface or Admin Dashboard.
You should be comfortable enough with your Admin Dashboard. And, your dashboard should be feature rich to help you to perform various important activities.

Checkout the various UIs offered by various blogging platforms, and choose one with which you are most comfortable. I recommend WordPress.com or WordPress.org (Self Hosted), for its cutting edge technology and features. Beside that, WordPress is the most search engine friendly blogging platform, accepted by Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web-spam team.

2. Customizability: Checkout for customization option available with your blogging platform. You have to customize your theme to suits your niche or subject matter.

A well customized blog stands out in the crowded blogosphere. You have to look unique. You have to look professional.

So check for blogging platform which offers easy customization options.

3. Themes and Plugins: A theme gives your blog a look, and plugins add functionalities to perform various tasks.

For every blogging platform, there are thousands of themes and plugins available, both free and premium. So, look for the blogging platform which offers the theme and plugins which suits your blogging needs.

Finally, your blog theme should be SEO friendly, fast loading and well coded.
A SEO friendly blog ranks higher in search engines with minimal SEO efforts.
Your blog should loads in <3 sec time. The attention-span of web-surfers has reduced very much. If you blog takes more than 3 sec to load, they will simply click the Go-back button, or close the browser. And, due to bad user experience (Online memory) they will never come back again. Try this free tool to test your page-loading speed.

Coding is another vital thing you should check in your theme. Your theme should be W3C compliant. Validate your theme by this free validation service.


2. Niche


Niche is the thing which can either make or break your blogging career.

Your niche should be your main hobby or passion. Because passion is the thing which inspires you to work hard and achieve your goal. After a log time of blogging, it becomes monotonous and frustration supervenes. There comes the passion.

Again, you are already a pseudo expert about your choice subject or passion, and ready to teach people in a professional way. Your niche should be like this, if somebody ask you a question, you should be able to boast nonstop about the nitty-gritty, till the person droops.

Lots of newbie bloggers quit their blogging career only because they choose a wrong niche in the beginning. Instead of choosing their passion as niche, they look for the niche in demand currently (presently), and the subject which gives more money for AdSense clicks etc. Finally they quit blogging due to lack of knowledge, motivation and frustration.

So, take your time and choose your niche carefully for a long haul. This is one of the best blogging tips I usually offer to newbie bloggers

3. Domain Name


Domain name is like more than naming your own baby. Choosing a domain name with a cute meaning is not sufficient.

Your domain name should be short, catchy, meaningful, complements to your niche or subject matter, and finally partial keyword matching for your subject.
Few years back there was a hot trend for buying Exact Match Domain Name. Here they were looking for all the keywords in their domain name to rank higher in Google. And, Google was ranking them higher also. But the trend has changed now. Google is gradually ranking Exact Match Domain Name lower and lower in SERPs.

The main problem with exact match domain name is, they (bloggers) also strive for exact match anchor text or backlinks from external sites for better rankings. And, ends-up with Google Penguin Penalty.

The current trend is registering a Nonsense domain name, which has no meaning, but catchy, short and easy to remember. To some extent it’s OK. But you shouldn’t follow the trend. Because trend has to end someday.

Think about the keywords in your subject matter, have a great brainstorming session, take your time (days to weeks) and register your favorite domain. Don’t buy a domain in impulse.

You may try HostGator.com and GoDaddy.com.

4. Custom LOGO


Your logo is your brand identity. It represents your blog in the vast blogosphere.

Actually, a blog or website starts from the logo. The colors which you are going to use in your blog starts from your logo only. So choose your logo colors judiciously.

A well designed logo speaks a lot. It should be ingrained in the mind and brain of your visitors at the first look only. That way they will recall it later and come back again to your site. Thinking about Love at first site? It’s something like that.

Always go for a professional logo, if you want to make a serious blog, or want to make blogging as your career.
DesignCrowd and 99Designs are the right places for making a professional logo.

5. Premium Theme


If you want to make your blog premium, your theme also should be premium. A premium theme standouts in the crowd.

Tell me one thing – Why you wear your best dress on your first date, or why you wear a designer suit on your wedding day? The answer is simple. To present yourself in the best possible way in front of everybody.

You can’t pull crowd without having a premium theme.

Secondly, if you buy a premium theme, they will give you all the support you need for customization and all. Premium themes are usually light weight and loads fast, SEO friendly and well coded.

Finally, choose a theme which compliments your niche in terms of looks and feel. You should start with TheThemeFoundry and StudioPress.

6. Social Media Promotion


You can’t be a successful blogger without proper marketing and promotion. As, blog marketing is a vast subject, I will be covering social media promotion part only.

Social media promotion is the current hot trend, and it will go a long way for sure. You should promote your blog content insanely in social media sites for wider exposure.

It’s a proven fact that – The more Facebook likes, Re-tweets and Google+ your blog post gets, the more will be its search engine ranking in Google. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web-spam team has confirmed the addition of social signal in Google search engine algorithm.

Apart from better search engine ranking, you will get plenty of free traffic from the social media.

You should join at least Facebook, Google+, Twitter and StumbleUpon.

7. SEO


SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the secret of every successful blogs. The famous blogs you read everyday, even my blog MoneyCTL, couldn’t be successful without SEO.

I’m not telling you to be a professional Search Engine Optimizer. Basic knowledge of SEO is what you need at the beginning. Gradually when you gain more knowledge, SEO will be more easy for you.

SEO will send you free organic traffic from search engines by placing your blog posts higher. And, the fun part is you don’t have to spend a penny for that, provided you are doing your SEO in-house. I strongly discourage PPC (Pay Per Click) for gaining traffic for newbie bloggers, unless you are selling some products.

8. Hard work and Patience


You can’t make blogging as your profession without hard work. Hard work and patience are cornerstones of every successful bloggers. Probably, the best and basic blogging tips for every newbie bloggers.

Spend atleast few hours everyday to create good contents and promote your blog. I usually spend atleast 3 to 4 hours everyday on my blog (MoneyCTL) for different activities.

Even after doing hard work, sometimes success doesn’t come early. So, keep patience and things will fall automatically in places.

Actually, there is no periodicity of blogging like one post/day or 5 posts /day. It depends on your comfort factor. And, always strive to produce great content.

Few More Basic Blogging Tips


9. Content is king: Produce awesome and unique content for your readers, not for search engines. Google loves to rank unique and fresh content higher.

10. Interact with your readers: Reply each and every comments on you blog post. Try to make a community around your blog. If you don’t respect their thoughts and address their query, they are never going to come again.

11. Email list: Build a long Email Subscriber list, capturing via Email subscription form. Send only important newsletters and blog posts to your subscribers. For God’s sake, don’t SPAM. Otherwise, you will loose their faith.

12. Read famous blogs a lot: You should read atleast few blog posts of famous bloggers everyday. I recommend ProBlogger and CopyBlogger for you to learn the tricks of the trade.