Blogtober Week 1 – Roundup Post

Ok, I know I’m cheating a little by doing a roundup, but not everyone sees your messages every day so it’s good to give your readers somewhere they can reference all your blog posts quickly. A roundup is a quick way to add value during Blogtober. That said this roundup is nearly 1200 words long, so maybe it wasn’t that quick after all.

Anyway, let’s get started…

Blogtober Day 1

I started Blogtober with the obvious post you create when you’re about publish something on your blog once a day for an entire month. It was simply titled…

Can You Blog Every Day Without Getting Writers Block

Yes, Blogtober had only just started but I wanted to give out some handy tips on getting through Blogtober and turned to Zen Master Leo Babauta to guide me. My takeaway from that post was to make the time, clear distractions and just write. When you start writing you’ll mind will take over and it’ll produce something quite remarkable.

Just open your mind and don’t listen to those demons inside.

Blogtober Day 2

At this stage I have to stay I started to ignore my editorial plan for the month and react to things I was seeing in the blogging community. This blog was created not only to help people get a start into blogging, but to also guide the new bloggers with useful advice. I try to solve problems for the Basic-Intermediate blogging crowd.

So when I found a few blogs that still had the Bluehost favicon icon showing I thought this was something I could fix quickly for them to make them look a little more professional. So a video and blog post later it was done.  I now have a link I can give people if they need to improve the look of their favicon.

How to Easily Create a Favicon For Your Blog

Rant: It frustrates me that so many people are selling hosting plans and don’t give their buyers after sales support. Most don’t even use the products they sell and just leave the customer with problems to solve  for themselves. I think my point of difference is having the technical knowledge to support my readers who are generous enough to use my affiliate links. That’s the least I can do in return.

If you’ve used one of my affiliate links from my resources page and need help, then please ask because your success is all the motivation I need to keep helping people.

Blogtober Day 3

Now day three was a little different again and I focussed on your blog headlines.  Yes, your headlines are just as important as your writing and need just as much attention. Why?

Without a clickable headline, you’ll never get people to actually visit your website. Remember when you appear in search results people are distracted by ads and other links.

A great headline is going to capture your audience’s attention and hopefully you’ll get a new permanent reader on your blog.

Are Your Blog Headlines Awesome Enough?

This blog post also contains a Case Study so you can follow the process I use to create an awesome headline. Spending more time on your headlines might just get you that extra traffic you’ve been waiting for.

Blogtober Day 4

Images are almost as import as your content and as they say ‘A picture tells a thousand words’. So when it comes to creating branded images I turn to Canva. It’s a free product and it doesn’t require you to be a graphic designer. Plus you’ll end up with some professional looking images.

How to Use Canva to Create Free Images for Blogs

One of the best things about Canva is it has cheap royalty free stock photos at the low cost of $1 per image. And when you compare the quality with the bigger stock photography companies, it’s comparable and yet your minimum outlay is much smaller. They also have some free photos for you to use too, so they have most bases covered.

I love Canva and I rarely use a professional graphics editing tool like GIMP or Photoshop for my Blog. And by using Canva I’m also saving time so I can write more.

Blogtober Day 5

I was recently setting up a new blog and questioned whether we still need to create a sitemap anymore. Google says no but neglects to recognise it’s useful for other search engines. So I looked into the usefulness of a sitemap and came to the conclusion that it was still handy to have one.

Do You Need A WordPress Sitemap?

Again I provided a video with this blog post, explaining how to create a sitemap in WordPress. Fortunately, for the people using a self-hosted blog only a simple plugin called Yoast SEO was needed and creating a sitemap was simply a click of a button. Yoast SEO is one of the core WordPress plugins you should have for your blog so it’s not really extra work anyway.

A sitemap is also going to show you a thing or two about your blog. For instance, how many images you have for each post and when you last updated them. A sitemap is a great tool to use for a site cleanup, so go ahead and create yours today.

Blogtober Day 6

Blogging is like building a brick wall. First you must start with good foundations and then you need to keep adding bricks. It’s a slow process, but you will be rewarded if you just keep blogging and follow some of the basic SEO rules.

Are You Building A Successful Blog

Writing evergreen content for today’s readers and the ones who will find you in the future is key to your success. Trends and news are only relevant today, but will bring you little traffic when the Google Long Tail swings in your favour.

Start your blog with evergreen content to get a few runs on the board and then you can integrate trends and current affairs into this mix. There are plenty of people competing for your readers eyeballs, so playing the long game will bring you the most rewards.

Blogtober Day 7

Day seven was a little different from the useful guides and tools I was providing. This blog post was an attempt at answering my ‘Why’. You see I’d been so focussed on ‘What’ and ‘How’ I was forgetting about my ‘Why’.

Why You Must Start Your Blog Today

In this post I tried to explain my motivations for blogging and why it’s still a great time to start a blog. I’m a full-time blogger and am glad I left my boring and mundane job behind. I’m into blogging for the long haul and suggest it’s as good a time as any to get started.

Have you ever wanted to start a blog but were too afraid to fail? Sometimes it’s easier to live with temporary failure than with regrets.

Tomorrow is a new day and I’ll be continuing with the regular Blog Posts and please share and like if this format was useful to you.