As a fairly active blog poster I often get asked by friends if I think they should get a blog, and what they might post about if they did. My answer to the first question is generally yes, not because I think the whole entire world should be knocking up blog posts or would enjoy doing so. However, it’s so very easy to set one up these days. So if you have any curiosity why not give it a try and see if you enjoy it. Nobody will force you to continue if you don’t. I don’t personally believe that blogs will (or should) replace traditional and qualified journalism, but I do enjoy both reading and writing them, so I think it’s worth exploring if you are tempted.

If you are worried about how many visitors you will get, well just stop it! Writing a blog should be an enjoyable experience, so it really doesn’t matter if you get 5 visitors a month or 5 thousand, as long as you have fun. If you start a blog hoping to get a huge audience you will probably be setting yourself up for disappointment, as predicting the randomness of public interest is notoriously difficult and writing to please an invisible audience isn’t ideal. However, if your aim is to have fun and post things that interest you, anything else is a bonus.

Of course I am not saying you should completely forget about the audience, of course you should try to make your blog as entertaining and engaging as possible, just make sure you don’t lose what interests you and encouraged you to blog in the first place. As tempting as it might be to copy successful blogs or try to follow trends, posting about things that you care about will always be more entertaining and in my experience successful. If you copy someone else you will always be too late and will probably seem insincere, but sharing your genuine interests and opinions is not only enjoyable for you, but might just capture your readers interest too.

As far as having a strict theme for content goes, I don’t think it’s essential. Of course if you are setting up a blog about a specific topic such as snowmen or cats in funny hats then you should probably make that clear, but don’t stress if your interests are more varied. I like to write about all kinds of topics, ranging from personal to informative, so I clearly don’t think it’s essential to label or restrict yourself. If you are lucky enough to have interests that match a popular niche great, and of course sticking to a popular theme will give visitors a clear indication of what to expect, but you shouldn’t force it. Again, it’s all about what you enjoy posting about.

After all that you may think I am encouraging you all to blog about anything you fancy, no matter how dull, and forget that the public even exist, but you couldn’t be more wrong. I want you to follow the advice above not only to enhance your own enjoyment, but most importantly make your blog a great read, as you will certainly be more entertaining when posting about topics you know and care about. As important as your own enjoyment is, your readers enjoyment is essential, otherwise you might as well just write a diary and keep it hidden away.

Don’t forget that people will hopefully be reading your posts, so try to make them legible and enjoyable to read. As free as I might encourage you to be with your choice of content, I have little patience for blogs that are hard to read, full of confusing unknown names and unexplained references, making little effort to be concise or entertaining. You wouldn’t intentionally trap someone in a long, repetitive, confusing or self indulgent conversation at a party, so try to show the same restraint in your blog posts.

If you want to post about personal experiences go ahead, but remember that your readers might not know you. They may well be a completely new visitor who doesn’t know who Steve is or why you hate him, might not know where you live and probably have no clue about your broken marriage. So make sure you get the essential facts across or risk alienating people. Same thing goes for factual or opinion based posts. Of course you don’t want to be patronising, so there is no need to over explain things, but providing a few links and simple explanations could mean the difference between confusing and informing your readers.

Spelling and grammar are also vital. I have no doubt that there are mistakes in many of my posts, but for the most part I am confident that my posts aren’t made too difficult to read by excessive errors. It might seem unimportant, but bad grammar and spelling do genuinely confuse readers, and will definitely reduce their enjoyment of your posts. Nobody is perfect, and you aren’t expected to produce amazing prose with no errors, but reading through your post a few times or even asking a friend to check it is a simple way to deal with this.

I am not going to attempt to give you a strict guide or formula for your actual posts, and this will vary depending on your chosen topic(s), your style of writing, how much free time you have and your personality. All I will say is play to your strengths. You can write long posts or short posts, Funny or serious (or both). If you would rather not write so much you can use videos, music, images, excepts and links. You can share your deepest darkest most personal secrets, or you can write posts you would be happy for your mother to read. However you decide to post, and whatever you decide to post about, make sure it’s as engaging as possible for you and your readers.

Of course it isn’t going to be for everyone and not everyone will be a great blogger. Some people will write one post and decide they find it dull. Others will write hundreds of dull posts despite everyone else wishing they would stop. However, if you are lucky enough to enjoy creating your posts I have no doubt you will find it rewarding, and hopefully you will entertain and inform a few people along the way.