Today, you have plenty of options on how you can express yourself and writing a personal blog is a great way to do that.
There can be many reasons why you would like to write a blog about yourself. But, you probably want to do this mainly because you consider yourself as an outspoken personality who wants to express his feelings, thoughts, and experiences.
No matter what your ultimate blogging goal is, it is always a good idea to follow general blogging guidelines. Those will help to keep your blog organized, and generally successful.
Here we will cover the best practices of writing a blog about yourself and reveal how you can get the very most of it.
But before that, let’s dive into the benefits of personal blogging and why you should choose this self-expression method.
Why Should I Start A Personal Blog? (Top Benefits)
Writing a personal blog can benefit you in numerous ways. By blogging, you not only get the chance to present yourself to the world but also comprehensively develop your personality.
Here are the main benefits and reasons why you should start a personal blog:
Enhance your creativity
No matter what topic you are blogging about your brain gets creative within this process. Thinking of the right topics to write about, structuring, and designing your content definitely enhances your creative thinking.
Relieve anxiety
Blogging, and especially personal blogging is a great way to relax. Just because you don’t have to research as you blog about yourself, all you need to do is sit back and let your thoughts come out of your head.
Improve writing skills
Blogging requires a lot of writing and you are going to write thousands and thousands of different words. The more you write the better and more efficient writer you become.
Establish your identity
A personal blog can open new gates to worldwide audiences, therefore you get a chance to present yourself as an influencing professional.
Get discovered by other people, build successful relationships and even business partnerships while being present online on your blog.
Make money
It’s not a secret that blogging can potentially make you tons of money. There are many ways how you can make money online by blogging about your personal life, including advertising and affiliate marketing.
All you need is the right strategy with the consistency and the results will come after.
Have a personal diary/notebook
Blogging can be a great convenient alternative to your personal diary or notebook. You can write down all your thoughts and ideas, and get back to them whenever you want.
You can either keep your notes private, secured with a password, or accessible to the public.
How To Write A Blog About Yourself?
Regardless of what your blogging goal is, you ultimately want to engage your audience. There are points and steps you need to follow for the best results when writing a personal goal.
These points will help to make your blog outstanding, professional, engaging, and valuable.
1. Choose the right blogging platform
It’s all about how far you want to go with your blog when choosing the right blogging platform. There are many free and self-hosted (paid) blogging platforms online where you can express and present yourself to people.
If you consider your personal blog more like a hobby and you are not expecting to earn money from it, going with free blogging platforms is absolutely fine.
There are plenty of free blogging platforms for you to choose from, such as:
+ many more
The main cons of free blogging platforms are their limited functionality and capabilities. With the free blog, you just cannot do as much as you could do with the self-hosted blog.
That includes the inability to freely design and empower your site with custom themes and plugins, as well as the lower chances of appearing on the search engines.
Also, free blogging platforms require to use their subdomain on your site’s URL (for example – www.mypersonalblog.tumblr.com), and that may not look professional in front of your audience.
So, if you want to establish a professional and fully functional personal blog online, we recommend choosing a self-hosted blogging platform, such as WordPress.org.
WordPress is a king when it comes to writing and growing your blog. It’s not a surprise why this platform runs 35% of the entire Internet and why the top world’s brands are using it today.
WordPress allows you to do limitless things on your website from integrating an online store to establishing community forums.
Also, it is the best platform to turn your personal blog into a business.
In order to utilize WordPress for your blogging needs, you firstly need to sign up with a domain and hosting provider, which costs a little.
By that, you will receive a full domain name (without sub-domain) as well as get your blog hosted on your own server.
It means you will be able to take full control of your website without any limitations or restrictions.
The good news is that the price of a self-hosted blog is very cheap compared to its capabilities. For example with Bluehost, you can receive a free domain and get your website hosted for just $47.7 a year.
If you want to learn how you can easily build a WordPress blog with Bluehost, here’s a complete step-by-step guide for you.
2. Define your blogging purposes
It is clear that you mainly want to express yourself, but why exactly do you want to write a personal blog?
Defining your blogging purpose will help you to focus and move towards the right direction.
There can be a few reasons why you are willing to write a blog about yourself, and those include:
- Inspiring others
- Gaining popularity
- Earning money
- Teaching others
- Just expressing yourself
It’s perfectly fine if these points clash with each other as you can have multiple blogging purposes.
For example, mentoring and teaching is a great way of personal blogging, as you not only provide people value by expressing yourself but also increase your chances to earn money.
3. Be professional
Regardless of your ultimate blogging goals, you want to look professional in front of your audience.
Keep in mind that while writing a personal blog online, you are granting access for everyone to come and read it.
Nobody enjoys catching vulnerable language, or bad grammar while reading your blog.
Also, you definitely don’t want to end up sitting in court and paying huge penalties for copyright infringements by just expressing yourself on your personal blog.
Here are the most important aspects to follow in order to create a professional presence online.
Avoid spreading hate
As you build your blog, you will get many readers, that may represent different cultures, nations, races, religions, and approaches.
Be careful while expressing your thoughts, and avoid expressions that could offend or insult others.
By acting offensive online, you are not only missing out on your new followers but also risking to commit a hate crime.
Be grammatically correct
Also, you want readers to enjoy your content without noticing any grammar issues. Not everyone is capable to write immaculately, therefore there are tools available to help you.
It is always a good idea to write your content in Microsoft Word before you put it online, as it has a grammar check built-in feature.
Another very powerful tool to check your grammar is Grammarly. It is cloud-based software where you can not only spot grammatically incorrect words, but also styling issues in your sentences.
It has an advantageous free version, and it is considered a much more effective alternative for Microsoft Word.
Beware of copyrights
As you write your blog, you will most likely use pictures or photos as they are a great choice to visualize your ideas.
But you must understand that you cannot just simply take and use every image you find on the Internet.
Most of the images found online are protected by copyright law, which forbids images to be used for your own purposes.
Ignoring copyrights and using pictures illegally can lead to significant penalties – up to $500,000 per image, depending on who owns the copyright, and how impactful is an infringement.
The best way to avoid copyright issues is to contact the original author of a picture and ask his permission.
Or, there are many sources online where you can find and download thousands of copyright-free images and use them for any purpose you like.
Here are the best sources for copyright-free images:
Images are the most common type of media used on blogs, but the same applies to all formats, including video and music.
Be consistent
Consistency is key when it comes to growing your blog. Fresh and updated content is what attracts the readers most, so you really want to be active on your personal blog.
As you write a blog about yourself, your blog reflects your personality, and you do not want to look like a lifeless person who publishes content only once or twice a year.
You want to present yourself as an active on-going person who constantly brings new ideas to the world, so being active online definitely creates such a good impression.
Another reason why you would need to be consistent while blogging is improved SEO (search engine optimization).
Search engines like Google are great sources to get people to visit your blog, and nowadays Google just loves fresh and updated content.
The more often you write the higher your blog posts are going to rank in search results!
Be active on Social Media
Today social media has significant power and there are currently more than 2,5 billion social media users worldwide.
Being active on social media is not only a great way to bring visitors to your blog but also to build your personal reputation.
Choose the right social media platforms you feel you want to be active on and connect them to your blog.
Every time you publish something new on your website, it is always a good idea to share your content on social media by leaving a link to the original blog-post.
By doing this, you not only attract new visitors to your blog but also strengthen your overall website by creating a backlink (advantageous for SEO).
Depending on your target audience, you can choose from following social media platforms that you want to be active on:
- YouTube
Remember, don’t always just spam your link everywhere on social platforms, but also try to engage and be a part of the communities. That’s how you are going to create the authority around yourself and build a real follower list.