Thank you to the many Pen Pal friends I met in early 2021 from across the world. Today is the day I’m sharing more “free game” for inquiring minds who want to know about what I do. How to Start A Blog as a Hobby is easy. So I narrowed it down to six essential steps for helping someone figure out the basics of creating a blog.
Slowly is a geosocial networking app and Pen Pal generator. It’s an app for “people who yearn for meaningful conversations in the era of instant messaging.” Users send letters, photos, and audio clips to their matches based on language & commonly interesting topics. What makes Slowly authentic to the Pen Pal theme is the time taken by a message to be delivered. Messages deliver depending on the distance between the sender and the recipient. So if someone who lives in Baltimore, MD expects a letter from Egypt, they’d prepare to receive it within 26 hours.
I made over 25 pen pals from around the globe using Slowly. But I remain connected to a core group of 5 people from Ghana, Brazil, India, Malaysia, and Egypt. I downloaded Slowly to meet new people from other countries and gain personal pandemic survival stories from people during Covid. I intentionally sought for the differences and similarities of how we all cope with implementing social distancing into our daily lives. See, I’m interested in how others handle living in a global shutdown. All in all, we were doing fine.
Turns out, everyone’s finding new things to learn and hobbies to take on to keep ourselves busy. While getting to know these people, I learned about the privilege I have compared to people living outside of the United States, too. Upon finding out I’m a blogger hosting my own website, I quickly realized I possess certain technology and knowledge that many people around the world do not have. When asked to share what I knew about blogging so they could take on starting a blog as a hobby, I thought ‘why not share this mini luxury of mine. So as another “free game” post, in which I give free advice for something that doesn’t require much to figure out with time and patience, I’m spilling the tea on how to start your own blog.
[Read Busting out of the Barrel: How to Support Baltimore Artists on Doc’s Castle Media]
How Doc’s Castle Media came to be is from years of trial and error, and genuinely wanting to understand publishing my own content. It’s easy and done for free if you know where to find the correct resources. Aside from what I’m sharing here, YouTube is a great resource for further information. Ten years into blogging, it is still my go-to for new ideas on ways to improve Doc’s Castle Media.
Here are Six Steps to Starting A Blog As A Hobby for my Slowly App friends
What motivates you to start a blog
Start by thinking of your reason. There’s a reason people want to create a blog. One pen pal from Slowly tells me they want to share information about their culture. Another pal wants to use it as an outlet for their poetry. I also have a friend from Brazil who wants to create an anonymous online diary. Anything can be the spark to get someone started on the path towards blogging. Mine was for a good grade in school. Figure out your why for your site.
Choosing a blog name
A lot of bloggers choose whatever they’re writing about to also be included in the title of their blog’s name. People mainly do this to appear easily in Google’s search engine. But your blog’s name can be anything. I named my blog Doc’s Castle Media because I didn’t have a specified genre to write about, just wanted to write about what I enjoy. It took a while to figure out what I enjoyed exploring. So I kept my blog’s name simply by using my nickname because my commentary is the common theme on the site.
Choosing your blog’s hosting platform
Deciding where your blog is hosted is one of the most important steps in the process. This is where you’ll think about what you’re truly investing in, whether this is something for fun or if you have an extra income coming your way. If this is a hobby, finding free websites, like Blogger or WordPress.com, are great free tools that provide easy-to-use templates to start. The interface for some of the administrative dashboards on free hosting sites can be more user-friendly and targeted to beginner bloggers. So use these tools to your benefit when creating a website tailored to your passions.
Use free templates and plugins
Explore and experiment using your blog site as the playground. There aren’t any rules to what you create. Researching free templates and plugins gives your blog personality. This is where you build upon your original content and how you’ll structure how you want to physically appear to your readers. Colors, pictures, or plain text format, you learn through using free tools how your finished product should look like.
Myspace in 2008 was where I originally learned how to edit a webpage using basic Html. Basic Html skills are easy to learn online these days because the information is free. Using free resources, like W3Schools and Html5 Editor, teaches me how to build a page by showing me the coding language that communicates with the backend of my website. A combination of using free templates, plugins, and HTML coding editors can help you build the best website for your blog.
Share your content in an online community.
Sharing your original content on social media gets it in front of an audience that supports what you put into the world. You can subscribe to the big social media sites, but the cool thing about the Internet is you can find even smaller communities within bigger social networks that are more geared to your specific content. It places your material in front of people who genuinely enjoy the same things as you.
Join groups that are specific for the topic or genre of blogging you participate in. Places like Reddit, Meet-Up, or Facebook friend groups are great places to start to find your niche support group for your blog. You aren’t limited to these websites. These are just a few to name.
Don’t be discouraged in the process of starting your blog
Your blog is your voice. Remember you have complete control over what you post when you’re the creator. You have that ability to constantly recreate yourself. So even if you feel stuck or reached a block, change it up and explore something new. Change the topic of what you write about. Do what you need to do to keep your voice. You could even start a new blog. But don’t give up if it’s something you love.
Let me help you:
This was a fun video to record for my Slowly friends. I’m intrigued with what other questions any of you may have about blogging. Remember, Doc’s Castle Media started as a hobby and is still a hobby, but I do make a little money from what I enjoy. I make it work for me. Leave in the comments below questions that you have about blogging.
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