Just because you blog for fun and not financial gain doesn’t mean you don’t take pride in your writing. You still want your blog space to be beautiful, well-organized, and reader-friendly. This collection of useful tips and tools for hobby bloggers will help you to create and maintain a lovely blog you will be happy to share.
Most blogging platforms are pretty intuitive, but it can be helpful to know a few tricks. Innumerable resources can get you started quickly and moving along smoothly. So many, in fact, that it can be overwhelming—especially when starting out.
This post will detail specific useful tools for hobby bloggers you may want to incorporate as you build {or revise} your own blog. Many of the suggestions here {like plugins} are blog-specific, but others {like a good dictionary} translate to different types of writing as well.
Contents
Things You Won’t Find Here
Because this post focuses on blogging for fun, some typical “must have” tips and tools will intentionally be left out. You will not find, for instance, advice dealing with online stores, e-mail marketing, or social media scheduling.
Also, with the exception of hosting {which can be free or paid}, nothing on this list has a price tag. While some tools suggested here do offer a premium version, in most cases it’s probably going to be fine to start with the free option. You can always upgrade later, but you may discover that once you tweak the settings and get used to using the particular tool it will meet your needs just fine.
I also have not included programs that check your grammar. I know many folks swear by these, but I don’t find them to be particularly useful. They will often suggest changes you don’t want to make, and sometimes “catch” things that aren’t even errors. If needed, you can always do a simple Google search on the grammar point in question.
What’s the Best Host for My Blog?
Very simply, hosting is the place on the Internet where your blog “lives.” You can either find a free “home” via a platform like WordPress.com or Blogger.com or one you pay a fee for like WordPress.org or Squarespace.com.
The free sites can be excellent choices for hobby bloggers, if you are willing to work around a few bothers. I have personally used Blogger and the WordPress unpaid version and been happy with them—at least at the time. Ultimately, however, two factors pushed me to switch to self-hosted {i.e., paying for my blog space}:
- Being able to choose a domain name. With the free sites you can choose a blog name, and it becomes part of the domain address, but there will be an additional word or phrase added that makes it look cumbersome and less professional. For example, when I first started this blog I had the domain valeriefowlerwrites.home.blog. By self-hosting I could change it to simply valeriefowlerwrites.com, much easier to remember and more palatable to search engines.
- Not wanting my blog space to be covered in ads. They are, quite bluntly, annoying AF. They distract from the content, make navigation frustrating, and generally present an unkempt look. While I looked past this when first starting out, eventually I knew I needed to free myself, and the only way to do that is to pay for hosting yourself.
Even though some people will claim to have very specific reasons for choosing a particular hosting site, in all honesty they are mostly the same. I researched this to death, but in the end I realized that all I really needed was a hosting company with reasonably competent customer service and relatively inexpensive rates.
After starting with another hosting site {whose prices soared after the introductory period} I ended up switching to DreamHost and I have been pleased with my decision. Their customer service has been helpful when needed, the website is easy to use, and I secured three years of hosting upfront for under $100. This works out to just $2.59 per month, and it presents so many more options for design and customization. Well worth it, to me, even for “just” a hobby.
Where Can I Keep Track of Drafts and Ideas?
While you can draft your posts directly in your chosen platform, I prefer to have a discrete space to plan and to keep things organized. To me it just makes sense to have all of my random thoughts and half-baked ideas and disastrous first attempts separate from the actual blog.
I have been using Evernote for my blog drafts, to do lists, and general notes for almost a decade now. I consider it my primary go to tool for drafting every post I write {including this one}. It’s free to sign up {all you need is an e-mail address} and has a pretty gentle learning curve. The Agents even have individual accounts for keeping track of their own notes and writing.
You can organize your notes into notebooks {like folders} for each topic, and move them around easily. So, for example, I have separate notebooks for drafts and published posts for each of the categories I write about on the blog. I also have notebooks for the pages linked at the top of the blog, as well as one just called Notes and Lists where I have all of my general and blogging to do’s organized.
How Do I Create Pretty Graphics and Pins?
After trying a few other free sites, I settled on Canva for making all the graphics on this blog. Here you can easily generate all types of visuals for your blog or social media accounts. You can even upload your own photos.
You can only access a limited number of stock photos and designs for free, but I have found it sufficient. It keeps a record of all your designs, and you can even place them in {a limited number of} folders for organizing if you desire.
In addition to the ever-popular Pinterest pins, you can also build size-specific graphics for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It will also allow you to post directly to social media, although I find this feature less useful for Pinterest, as it does not give you the option to add a destination link.
What’s All the Fuss About Plugins?
Note that for the purposes of discussion here I will be referring to currently available WordPress.org plugins.
If you’ve been around the blogging world for more than 10 minutes you have probably heard both the praising and cursing of various WordPress plugins. Some bloggers tout the merits of popular plugins that do not help all that much in practice. Other plugins end up being demonized for no good reason.
So, what exactly is a plugin anyway? A plugin is a bit of software that adds a specific feature or function to a website. It essentially provides the answer to the question, how can I do xyz easier and more efficiently? For example, a plugin might provide a way for you to intercept spam comments, or display social media share buttons at the end of each post, or comply with the ubiquitous cookie notice.
The best advice I can offer is research as best you can, and know that nothing will be permanent and you can always deactivate or delete a plugin later on if it doesn’t work out. While you can go directly to the WordPress website or your hosting site for info, some other resources, like WPBeginner, also offer good advice on plugins {as well as myriad other useful tips and tools for hobby bloggers}.
Look for plugins that have been tested with your version of WordPress, and check the number of active installations. {While more people using something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s “better” I would be wary of anything that has only attracted a small number of bloggers.} It may simply require some trial and error, so don’t be afraid to try something and see how it goes.
Which Plugins Do You Recommend?
I currently use way fewer plugins than you would likely imagine. I only have the following dozen plugins installed on this blog. Each one is linked to a page where you can get more details. Together they help to optimize performance, make navigation and sharing easier, and comply with necessary legal notices.
Should I Worry About Page Speed?
One tip you will find recommended a lot that I’m gonna give you permission to let go of right now: Checking your page speed. Oh, you may want to do this once or twice at the beginning—just to make sure you don’t have major problems—but definitely do not make yourself crazy with this.
Every single time you go to the page speed website and enter your website link I guarantee that you will come up with a different number value or grade. Some of them will make you feel like you have it all together like when you see green numbers above 90 or good “performance” scores, and others will make you wonder what the heck you have even been doing. You will also begin to piece together that you almost always lose “points” for the same things even after you fix them.
Page speed used to be the bane of my blogging existence, until I made like Elsa. I suggest you do the same.
How Can I Improve My Writing?
While my intention with this post is to offer useful tips and tools for hobby bloggers specifically, many of the suggestions can be applied to not only other bloggers but also other types of writing and websites.
Choose Your Words Carefully
First, I recommend bookmarking {or downloading the app for} a good dictionary and thesaurus combo. I personally prefer Merriam-Webster. I consult it when I am not 100% sure about a spelling, or to confirm a definition of an uncommon word, or to search for a more specific way of wording something.
While I consider myself to have a pretty firm grasp on word usage and grammar {I worked as a copyeditor for nearly a decade}, I still look up at least one word with every post—just to make absolutely sure I am getting my meaning across correctly.
Pay Attention To SEO
Second, you may want to install a plugin designed to help with search engine optimization {SEO}, even if you are not particularly concerned with promoting and marketing your blog. As indicated above, I chose Yoast SEO. I have tried installing other SEO plugins in the past, but none worked as well.
Perhaps I had better backtrack a second here and explain exactly what search engine optimization {SEO} means. When you optimize your blog for SEO, you give search engines {i.e., Google for most folks} a reason to find and suggest your posts over other similar posts.
Have you ever done a Google search and something insane like 100 million hits comes up? Have you ever scrolled past the first, maybe second, page of options? The ones at the top—the ones most people click on—have been optimized for search engines to find them over others.
It is actually not as impossible as it sounds to get yourself closer to the top of this list; even yours truly has had a few posts appear on page two. However, there is another reason to pay attention to SEO suggestions: They also help to improve your writing.
When you review the recommendations from an SEO plugin like Yoast, it will give you a checklist of points that make your post both SEO-friendly and reader-friendly. Honestly, you will not be able to hit all of these points with every post, nor should that be the goal. Think of them more as reminders of details to focus on to make your writing stand out.
For example, it will remind you to set up a keyword or keyphrase {what folks would put into Google to search} and to create a customized Google preview {as opposed to having Google choose a sentence or two from your post}. It can also let you know if you have used a sufficient number of headings to make your post more readable, as well as prompt you to check for passive voice, repetitive sentences, and internal links to your other posts {always recommended as a way to keep readers connected and interested}.
More You Can Do
In addition to checking outside resources and plugins, you can also utilize your own checklist of points to improve your writing. A few things I like to look for include the following:
- Am I using the same word or phrase too many times? {The “find in note” feature in Evernote will help here.}
- Can I easily change passive verbs {is, are, was, were} to an active alternative?
- Have I used short paragraphs and descriptive subheadings to make mobile reading easier?
Is Anyone Actually Reading This Thing?
Even though you blog for fun, you still may enjoy sharing your ideas with friends, family, social media follows, and anyone interested in reading your thoughts. And at some point you may be curious about just how many people your writing reaches. There are two main ways you can do this; I use both simultaneously.
Google Analytics
If you have a Google account {I mean; who doesn’t?} you can use it to link your blog to Google Analytics and see all sorts of cool info, including pageviews, traffic sources, and more. This may require you to add a tiny snippet of code. Please don’t let this scare you; I am not the least bit techy and I did it without destroying anything.
Once the connection is there, I highly recommend using the Google Analytics app to check your info. I find it to be much more user friendly than the website, and you can easily create a simplified dashboard to keep track of key metrics.
WordPress Stats {Jetpack}
You can also check your stats through Jetpack {one of the plugins recommended above} if you have a WordPress.com account. {This is the free version of WordPress, and you can have an account set up even if you do not use it as your blogging platform.}
I use both together because I like to have my Google Analytics dashboard show me how my stats average for the last four weeks, whereas WordPress gives me a straight pageview number for the current week or month.
If you have considered starting {or have recently started} a blog as a way to share your thoughts and experiences with readers, I hope you have found this post helpful. Do you have additional useful tips and tools for hobby bloggers to share?
Thanks so much for stopping by today. If you enjoyed this post, I would love to connect with you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest.