The second part of Students Blogging Guide attempts to show how easy it can be for students to create a blog. I will also briefly highlight the 5 useful tools you can use to create a great blog as a beginner. Though this series is for students, any person interested in blogging can also use the tips to start a blog.
As mentioned in Part 1, blogging is a useful way to improve students’ writing skills. That is why I would like to (again) encourage students, both secondary and tertiary students, to take blogging as a means to improve your writing potential. A 600 – 800 word post is just right to get a good Google ranking. Some examples of blog posts include assessments, poems, short stories and many more. You may not need plenty of mobile phone *data* to publish your work. Write offline (using Microsoft Word for example) and post when you are online – to help you here is the link to tethering your smartphone and laptop. From experience, 60 Megabyte is sufficient to publish your post.
So if you have not started yet, take a look at how easy it is to create a blog. You only need your Gmail account to become a blog owner. That is as easy as it is! Start a blog.
5 useful tools for student bloggers
Here are the 5 online tools that will make your blog stand-out from the others.
Grammarly is a useful online grammar and spelling checker. Just copy and paste your final assignment or blog post in the window pane and click Check Your Text. Obliviously, English is second (even third) language for many Papua New Guineans. Grammarly, the Grammar and Spelling checker tool, is one blogging tool I've used many times and I'd recommend it highly to any student wanting to eliminate errors in their assessments and write-ups. Check it out here.
Make sure you have used the correct English version by choosing English (US) or English (UK), or whichever one you prefer. Grammarly is free on Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browsers. You can install the app as an add-on on Chrome or use the online version to check your work for both Grammar and Spelling errors.
2. Social Media
It is important to create social media accounts for your blog. Social media is probably the most important platform for reaching a wider readership. My top picks are Google +, Twitter and Facebook. These three are the most used platforms in PNG.
If you are planning to use images on your blog, try Pinterest. In fact, Pinterest is a useful tool for showcasing your work as well as getting visitors to your blog. Another way to find the ideal social media platform, fit for your blog, is to experiment with various platforms that you believe will give your blog a good coverage and stick with it.
3. Images/visuals and messages
Creating attractive visuals and powerful messages are good for your blog. Think of it this way: the images attract readers, and the messages give the readers a taste of what post is about. So, make the images appealing to attract readers and messages stimulating so that the readers will want to read further.
Many people are good with Photoshop. If you are one of them, please use Photoshop to create or collate better images to use on your website. For biginners, the two free image editors I have been using are Canvas and Ribbet. My favorite is Ribbet. You can auto-edit photos, add texts, use free photos and do many other formatting styles.
Many of the photos on PNG Insight are examples of what you can do with an image editor like Canvas and Ribbet. My top tip is to always keep your photos the *same size*. Consistency is the key to making your blog stand out amongst the others.
4. Google Search Console & Google Analytic
Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA) provides insights into your blog or website. The GSC is, in simple terms, the platform where you tell Google about your website by submitting URLs. For example GA is the platform where Google provides you (the blogger or webmaster) with the data and information about your blog or website.
So, if you want to understand how your blog works (and improve its performance) you’ve got to use both platforms provided by Google – and they are free!
5. Google Trends and Adword Keyword Search
This is the important part of blogging that many beginners ignore or did not know about. If you want to rank well in Google’s searches, you must learn to identify (and use the keyword in a post) that you want Google rank you for. For example, this blog has ranked well (first and third on Google) for the keyword ‘free education policy in png’.
It’s not hard. You just have to identify what is trending on Google and used Adword Keyword Search to choose a keyword. Then, use the keyword in your writing (and also in the post’s search description before publishing it). It is basically, the anchor text that Google shows to people in search results when the search matches your keyword.
In fact, these may seem like a mountain of work to do. It, probably, is. But blogging is fun and easy if you do it right from the start. In Part 3 of the series of Students’ Guide to Blogging we will look at how to *value* your blog. This is interesting so stay in tune.
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Check out the complete series on Student's Guide to Blogging here.
