English vocabulary building tips- Writing a Blog: A Beginner’s Guide

If you are looking to be a fluent English speaker, English writing skills are as important as spoken English. As an online English speaking course in India, we have observed that students do not really prioritize learning English writing skills. One fun way to hone your writing skills is to write a blog.

Starting a blog for the first time is exciting yet can be an intimidating experience. Anyone can connect with their audience through blogging and gain recognition from a new audience you might not have tapped into. Blogging is a fabulous way to experiment with your writing style.

Most online English classes will recommend blogging as a way to learn reflecting writing. But it may seem intimidating and confusing in the beginning.

Tips to write a great blog

When you are writing a blog post, it is necessary to keep things unique, engaging, and relevant. Otherwise, you may lose your reader’s attention before they reach the conclusion.

As the best online English speaking course in India, here are six simple steps to create a great blog post:

1. Understand and Know Your Audience: Before you start writing your blog post, make sure you know your target audience well. Not all things appeal to the audience, therefore you need to choose your content wisely. Consider the interests of the readers while you're coming up with a topic for your blog post so that they can relate to it. For instance, if your readers are looking out for content about online spoken English classes, you probably don't need to provide them with information about general English Literature. It is important to stay on point to make your audience engaged with your blog post.
2. Create Your Blog Name and Domain: As an online English tutor, I believe that your blog name speaks about you, so be creative and give a name that provides readers an idea of what to expect from your blog. A good blog name should be descriptive so that visitors can identify what your blog is about just from the name. For instance, if you are blogging about one specific topic, then you should try to include that in some way when you pick a domain name. For example, a travel blog doesn’t necessarily have to have the word “travel” in it. The words “journey”, “tour”, and “trip” would also let people know that your blog is about travel.
Once you have some name ideas, you need to choose a domain extension.
A .com domain extension is the most preferred, but .net or .org work as well. Also note that for the purposes of a blog domain, you cannot have any spaces between words. So “Travelling with Ana” becomes travellingwithana.com.
3. Customize Your Blog: Once you are done with your domain name, customize the appearance of your blog. For example, if you're writing about nature and environment, you can use green in the background while designing your blog. Include a logo and fill up the “About” section which can be a quick intro about your blog’s mission.
4. Writing First Blog Post: Before you write anything, make sure that you’ve read other articles about the topic and brainstormed upon what you would like to write. Try not writing something that many bloggers have already written unless you can do it better than them. Come up with an interesting topic that you would be interested to read. Use concise and write meaningful sentences. Once you’ve got your topic, you need to check that the user’s search intent would be fulfilled by a blog post. It means if someone is looking for “cooking ideas,” they might be looking for a tutorial, a video, an article, or a recipe to understand and prepare that item. However, if your post is not relatable, it won’t appear in search engines.
5. Captivating Title: Add a catchy title to your blog post. That’s the first thing any reader will read. Keep the title specific to your content. See that it relates to your blog post. Then, work on explaining it later, under different subheadings.
6. Edit and Fine-Tune Content: When you start writing, keep checking after every few paragraphs. Read what you’ve written and see if anything needs further clarification. Use subheadings to make the entire article more readable. Check your grammar and fine-tune it to make sure the information flows easily. The entire blog should be continuous and coherent, with one paragraph flowing into the next. Read the content aloud to see if there are any grammatical errors or repetitive words while proofreading.
7. Use Subheadings and Organize Your Ideas: When readers go through your article, they can have an overview of what it’s all about by the subheadings that you have used. Subheadings can engage your readers more as these are visually appealing, as well. The formatting also gives Google an idea of where relevant information can be taken.
8. Use of Images: We all know that images can add a lot of interest to the story and make it fascinating. Though it is not necessary to use pictures or illustrations in your blog, a few images at certain intervals can refresh the mind of the reader and help illustrate the points well. Add visuals to your blog to stimulate their attention back to reading your blog. Use medium-sized images, so that whether on mobile or on a desktop, will not be hard for the users to see. You can also add videos, polls, audios, or slideshows to your blog to make it more engrossing. Don’t forget to end your blog with a statement that drives readers into action.
9. Using Tags: You must be wondering why are tags important after we are done with the blog? Well, Tags are markers that are used to organize blog posts under a relevant category. These help the users browse for related information after reading the blog post. Additionally, Tags are also used when people are searching outside your blog. Therefore, give each post 5-10 tags, and file them under the appropriate category. If you tag everything, the reader might get confused.

Blogging means moving ahead casting your own light. It not only can help you build brand awareness, and expertise in your industry but also boost conversions. Before you can do that, you must know where you and everyone else currently stand.

Understand that blogging is not just about writing, it is also about reading other blogs and useful resources so that you can enrich your own mind and thereby, create more meaningful content. Therefore, keep blogging and creating compelling content in order to attract the attention of the users.