SO, YOU WANT TO BECOME A BLOGGER?

So, you want to become a Blogger?

Being a blogger isn’t all al fresco lunches on the river, and sipping champagne whilst eating fancy food from the WA region whilst basking in the glory of your latest blog post accumulating a record number of views via the stats tool on your website.

To get to that point it’s taken a lot of hard work and effort.

I’m often stopped in the street, at the supermarket self-service till, the elevator at work and asked how do you become a blogger, Nick?

Well today I’m going to tell you with ten top tips!

How lucky you must be feeling right now having stumbled upon this handy guide.

First thing is to annihilate the grammatic correction feature on word!

It’s so fucking annoying when it pops up with this needs a coma or consider concise language for your audience! Ugh!

Ok here’s my tips!

ONE

Research a good hosting website for your blog. I currently use Word press. They have a free version and a paid for version. I also have a two-step verification that I use to log into my website which prevents someone from hacking into your account/webpage.

TWO

Back in the early days I had no clear direction of where my blog posts were going and who I was targeting with certain blog posts (gasps). Look I had to make a decision on what type of blog I was running. Was it an educational one, was it all about my life as an Autistic person, and then from there decide on what type of content I was going to be writing about. I would say overtime as I evolved as a writer, I have a broad selection of posts on my website. Ranging from opinion pieces to comedy pieces, to events that have happened to me during the week, and I’ll continue to write those types of content. I feel that what I write needs to be varied, if I’m reading my work, I’d like to see some variety in my blog posts, and I think that, that is reflected by what the audience and readers signal to me via the feedback and the statistics I see. Also you should be prepared for your audience to grow. Don’t expect that you’ll have an instant number of followers, you have to be patient and learn that you should be prepared to publish a number of blogs before you see any return, also your audience will grow with you as you grow as a blogger.

THREE

Have a social media presence otherwise how will people know where to find you? I have a twitter and a Facebook account which is linked to my WordPress account. I have it set up so that Twitter automatically publishes my blog posts, I did have it doing the same to Facebook but the thing with Facebook was that it published half the blog post which defeated the purpose of publishing the article! So, I just have it set for Twitter to do it. I also use hashtags when I publish on both Twitter & Facebook. These help by alerting people to see whatever hashtag you’re using and check out your post.

FOUR

Write what you like and how you like! I hope that that makes sense. There are no guidelines when you write a blog post, but just be careful not to become too opinionated or write a rant blog post full of anger or rage! I know it’s easy to get carried away with exposing your emotions, just remember if the event that you’re writing about took place at work don’t provide names of the people involved or where you work/company you work for.

FIVE

I have found that personal blog posts about something that has happened to you are the most popular, because that person whose reading it can empathise and relate to it. Relatable blog posts really work. If another person with Autism is reading your post, they may very well think oh that’s how he dealt with it, I had a similar situation, how did I handle it? What has Nick done differently to what I did? How did he act differently to how I did? How did he react differently to how I did? Non-Autistic people also may read your work and see the above and see how the situation affected you and how they can see what worked and what didn’t for that Autistic person which could be their child, friend, or work colleague.

SIX

Always end your blog posts on a positive! I know it can be hard to especially if you have recounted an emotional situation which resulted in a meltdown or a shutdown. I try to provide some hints and tips towards the end of my blog post especially if it’s been about something that’s happened to me whereby, I needed to take some sensory time or I had a meltdown etc. By ending on a positive doesn’t mean that the situation has been resolved in anyway but it’s just nice to see that there are solutions which may help someone else who has experienced that situation previously.

SEVEN

Use images to break up your article and caption them – but avoid GIFS! I’m saying these in reference to gifs because they are a non-stopping animation image, and they’ll keep moving and that can be distracting to the eye! I went back and took out all my gifs and replaced them with a still image sometime ago. When you are editing your blog post, you can hit select image and word press will give you a variety of options around what images are available for you to use.

EIGHT

If you receive a negative comment or are trolled, you can delete that comment and it won’t be published. When you log into your account find the comments section and then under that comment, you’ll see you can take the following actions. You are also able to edit people’s comments too.

NINE

Don’t get caught up in stats! A very good friend of mine Janine Ripper told me this a long time ago. If you do go down that road, you’ll end up thinking if that blog post got that number of views, then why didn’t this one? It’s not worth it, you have to keep your writing true and honest and that’s all anyone can ask from you.

TEN

If you don’t have anything to say one week don’t force a blog post out of yourself. Those followers/readers will read that on the page, and they won’t be impressed! I also never say which day of the week I am publishing a blog post too. That way I am not bound to have something however shit it may be published on say a Monday because I’ve said that every Monday a brand spanking new blog post will appear! You also don’t want to do this because you don’t want someone to message you and go “hey, are you publishing a blog post today? Only I don’t see it.” Also, always proofread your work before you publish! If there is a spelling mistake you can always log into your Word Press account and edit it!

Look I hope these tips help you in some way?

CARRY ON THE CONVERSATION

As always, I can also be found on Twitter:@AutisticNickAU and on the official Autistic Nick Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/AutisticNickAU/

Thank you for reading and I will see you next time for more thoughts from across the spectrum.