I feel like I’ve written several posts like this recently, but this is different, I swear! I want to talk about the lessons I’ve learned since I started this blog in 2013, specifically what I would do if I was starting a blog today. I tried to include things that apply to all bloggers of all niches, and not just health bloggers.

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If I was starting a blog today, I would …

… use an editorial calendar – An editorial calendar is a calendar where you keep track of your blog post dates, categories, and topics ahead of time. Basically, you decide what you will write about on what days in a calendar format.

This will look different for different people; for some, the categories or topics in the calendar are more general, while for others, they are very specific. For example, my editorial calendar itself is very general 75% of the time; I write “health,” “lifestyle,” or “blogging,” which are my categories. If I have a specific post I want to write at a certain date, then I’ll write “holiday round-up” or “recent reads.”

The whole point for an editorial calendar is to help you stay organized, so you should find a system that works for you. 

I started using an editorial calendar probably 3 years into blogging. But it really changed my blogging life! 

Tips for blogging with fatigue and pain

… start (and stick) with only 1 blog post per week, except for special occasions – Way back in 2014, I wrote 4 blog posts a week, but most of them were shorter (less than 500 words) and they weren’t great quality. I cut back to 3 posts a week in 2015 when I started grad school. Then, when I started my current job in June 2018, I cut back to 2, and when I added more working hours per week to that job, I cut back to writing 1 per week. 

I like to think that I’ve written better and better posts every year, but in order to do that without sacrificing my stress levels, I’ve needed to write fewer posts. Plus, I want to like writing posts. Now that I’ve been blogging for over 8 years, I know that I won’t like it 100% of the time, just like any hobby or job. But I don’t want to dread blogging or wish that I wasn’t doing it. And I know myself well enough to know that that also means writing fewer blog posts.

The exceptions I make are a) months like this one where I went 2-3 weeks without posting any blog posts and b) when it’s gift guide season. I don’t want the only posts I write for a month to be gift guides, and I don’t want every post in a month to be holiday-related. 

Decreasing the number of posts I write actually made a big difference, and there are a couple of reasons why. 

One reason is that when I decreased the number of my posts, my posts also became longer. Writing longer, more authoritative posts increases your authority with others, “And being an authority on the topic, your article is likely to earn natural backlinks from those who refer to it on their blogs” (x). Longer blog posts also tend to get more social media shares, and longer posts also give you more opportunities to use different types of search keywords (x). And when you write longer blog posts frequently, your average blog traffic will increase, and then the people who go one long blog posts will go to other blog posts, and it becomes a cycle of bringing you traffic.

Tips for new health bloggers

… go to self-hosted WordPress a lot sooner – A blogging platform is the place where you do your blogging. It is probably the place where you will spend most of your blogging time. That is where you write your blog posts, unless you are writing your posts in Word and copying and pasting them into your platform.

Your platform is not your domain name. It is not your blog’s host (although theoretically it could be). 

My blogging platform is self-hosted WordPress. WordPress is available in two versions: free (.com) and self-hosted (.org). Free WordPress is, well, free. In that case, WordPress is your host. Self-hosted WordPress means that I use WordPress as my platform, but it is hosted somewhere else: Bluehost for me. Most importantly, self-hosted means that I am the owner of my content.

I knew basically 1 month into blogging that I wanted this blog to be a tool for advocacy and a long-term project. So I wish that I had gone to self-hosted WordPress sooner. So why didn’t I and what does that mean?

Best Social Media for Bloggers: How To Manage Your Social Media

Self-hosting costs money. It is not cheap, which is why I didn’t do it at first. Or for the first few years. In fact, I waited until I won a contest where the prize was getting set up with self-hosting and having all of your content transferred from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress. Because in addition to the price, it is complicated to switch.

But I am so glad that I did. At the very least, I actually owned my content. And then, my blog traffic started to increase, and it quickly paid off.

Getting used to WordPress.org was definitely difficult, but I haven’t looked back. Maybe you would feel the same about self-hosted WordPress and maybe you would feel the same about a different blogging platform.

All about common website hosts

… schedule all social media ahead of time – Social media is absolutely necessary for blogging, but no one has the time to real-time post on social media at the level that blogs really need. It took me a few years to figure out how much social media promotion is not enough and what is too much. I feel like I’m at a good place now, but creating and scheduling ahead of time was a game changer. 

To be clear, I schedule my Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest content in advance. I post questions, inspirational quotes, another blogger’s post, or some combination thereof on my Twitter and Facebook pages every day. This helps me interact with my audience, which, at least on Facebook, ensures that my posts reach them more in the future. It’s also great because then my Twitter and Facebook pages do not only post my own content. 

I use Tailwind for Pinterest and Instagram scheduling, and it is beyond incredible. According to their website, they have “Multi-board pinning, bulk upload, drag-and-drop calendar, and many more shortcuts built with your busy schedule in mind.” I love it. 

My blog traffic grew so much when I started using Tailwind … and then it grew again when I actually started using Tailwind Communities, Tailwind Create, and some of their other tools.

In this post, I share how to get the most out of your Tailwind for Pinterest account. In this post, I share why Tailwind is worth the money. 

As for Instagram, one of the biggest draws is that Tailwind is one of the only sites that can automatically post to Instagram without requiring you to open the app to post. So, while you’re at a day job or a doctor’s appointment, Tailwind can post for you. If you’re posting to your Story or you’re posting a Carousel, you do need to use that method. But otherwise? Go live your life.

I also love that Tailwind helps you figure out what is the best day and time for your to post on Pinterest and Instagram, that they have “hashtag lists” where you can store lists of your favorite hashtags to use for different purposes on Instagram, that they provide suggested hashtags for Instagram, and so much more. 

When you click here for a free trial, if you opt for Instagram, you get your first 30 posts free instead of the first month. 

I use Buffer to schedule Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn posts. With the subscription that I have, I can schedule up to 100 posts on each network (aka 300 posts total, not 100 across the 3). 

One thing I really like about it is you can look at your scheduled posts in a list or in a calendar format, which is very helpful when trying to figure out if a time is already being used for one post. I made the switch to Buffer when Hootsuite changed their subscriptions; if I stayed with them, I would pay more for less posts a month.

50+ Incredible Free Blog Resources

… familiarize myself with the applicable laws – Not breaking the law is a good thing! I wish I had researched blogging laws before I got in trouble. 

What happened was I didn’t use nofollow links. This led to Google saying that I was in violation of their Webmaster Guidelines, so they stopped showing my blog in search engine results until I fixed it. “Nofollow links” are links with the attribute “nofollow” in the HTML. These instruct search engines to not follow the links when crawling, aka that they shouldn’t count the link towards the destination’s search engine ranking. Basically, Google wants to make sure that companies are not artificially inflating their search engine ranking by paying people (like bloggers) to have them on their page.

If a company pays you to write a post about them in any capacity, you need to use nofollow links. As another example, let’s say that a restaurant provides you a free meal in exchange for a blog post review. In that post, even though they are looking for people to go to their restaurant and not necessarily to raise their search engine ranking, you need to use nofollow links. I know that the second example applies because Google identified several posts with “suspicious” links where I received a product in exchange for a review.

If you’re on WordPress, get the Ultimate Nofollow plugin. When you go to add links in posts, after you’ve clicked the link button, click the gear button for link settings. All you have to do is click the box for nofollow link and it adds an attribute to all links in the post! If you’re not on WordPress or prefer to work with HTML, you can add it manually.

My favorite WordPress plugins

No matter your niche, you need to have a cookie notice. The GDPR law in the EU requires you to tell website visitors when your website uses cookies (which is most). If you don’t have readers from the EU, this isn’t necessary, but this is the Internet, so you probably do. I have the Cookie Notice plugin, which “allows you to elegantly inform users that your site uses cookies and to comply with the EU cookie law GDPR regulations” (CN). 

You also need to be extra careful if you’re a health blogger. Because people might be taking health advice from you, if you’re not a licensed medical professional you need to say this in any posts with health advice.

A Self Guru, who is a lawyer, says that disclaimers “limit your liability surrounding the content that you create […] a proper blog disclaimer lets your readers know that the information you are providing is for informational and educational purposes only and includes language in there to reduce your legal liability in case of harm to the other person” (x).

Writing blog posts about health

… keep a running list of all blog post ideas I want to write – This is super helpful because you never know when inspiration is going to strike. I used to figure out what I was going to write about the day before. The day before! It was stressful.

Sometimes, when I had no idea what to write but felt like I had to, I would search for blog post ideas. Just, like, in Google or Pinterest. To help with that, I’ve written several blog posts with blog post ideas to help other bloggers. 

As for keeping a running list of blog post ideas, I use Evernote. (I use it for a wide variety of purposes, but this is one of them.) I use it on my computer and my phone so when inspiration strikes, I’m ready. 

What should I blog about?

… start my newsletter at the start – Your newsletter is super important because it might be one of your only audiences that you can guarantee you can reach. Additionally, the readers who are subscribed are often your readers who are most interested in your content.

Your newsletter can bring you more traffic and it can make you money. But it can take a while to build your audience, which is why you want to start building it ASAP. You can send them new blog posts, give them sneak peaks of your content, make them free downloads, or something else all together.

Sign up for my newsletter

It is not easy to grow your newsletter! Please do not think you are a failure for not having a thousand subscribers or for taking years to get 100. But since it takes a long time to get subscribers, you should start your newsletter ASAP.

You don’t have to go with a paid newsletter platform! There are several free newsletter options. I personally use MailerLite. They have what’s called the ForeverFree plan, which is for less than 1,000 subscribers and less than 12,000 emails per month. Since I send emails weekly – and only occasionally more than that – it was perfect. I’m not sending 12 emails a month! But even the free plan has awesome forms, landing pages, newsletter templates, and more.

Check out 8 different newsletter services, as well as my review of MailerLite.

… start treating Pinterest as a search engine way sooner – First of all, Pinterest is a virtual search engine and not a social media network. So you really need to treat it as much, and a great way to do it is by taking a course. I thought that I was pretty good at Pinterest already (and, not to brag, I was definitely better than the average user), but Pinterest with Ell showed me more ways to use Pinterest that have clearly brought me more traffic.

I’m not going to share what exactly I learned from Ell’s course because that’s not fair to her. But I will say that I implemented what I learned in it, and I’ve used it frequently over the years. The reason that I chose Ell’s course is that I’ve heard so much about it since I’ve been in her Facebook group, and it wasn’t just from people who were new to blogging and using Pinterest for blogging. It was also from bloggers like me, who already used Pinterest and already thought that they were experts. The course itself is $39, which is a pretty good price, especially if you’re new to Pinterest and using it for blogging. To me, it’s worth it. Especially because Ell regularly updates the course, so you can get up-to-date Pinterest information without paying again. 

Sign up for Pinterest with Ell here.

… learn about SEO as soon as I can – SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” The goal is to optimize your site for search engines to find you. In individual posts, I choose keywords that fit the topic I want to write about. Do you want your blog posts to be found online? Do you want them to be found on Pinterest? If the answer to one or both of these is “yes,” then you should care about SEO. The big thing for me personally is Pinterest. Yes, Pinterest is a search engine! Over 50% of my blog traffic in the last month came from Pinterest.

I try to use a bunch of similar keywords in each post to increase the likelihood that my post will be found – and clicked. I also try to use keywords that are searched for somewhat regularly – aka not only 10 searches per month – but have a competitive level below 50. That way people are likely to look for what I’m writing about, but my posts are also likely to show up. The goal is to show up on the first 3 pages of search results, but ideally to show up on the first page. 

I did this challenge by SEO Ibérica, and it’s a free way to improve your site’s SEO. Not every task will apply to you and your blog, either because of your niche or because you’re already doing it. Some of them take 5 minutes, others several days.

That challenge taught me that SEO can involve so much more than what I knew! I knew it could be tricky – I’ve been utilizing it for years – but doing that SEO “boot camp” really emphasized that. 

The best WordPress plugins

… start using Missinglettr to aid blog post promotion – Missinglettr is a tool that lets you set up an automated set of social media posts, and I learned about this resource from taking a blog course course. The free plan gives you 1 social media network and 50 scheduled posts at any given time.

These are the steps for creating a campaign in Missinglettr:

• Set up a campaign for a new blog post
• Accept or reject different quotes it pulls from the post
• Choose hashtags and images from the post
• Review the posts
• Decide if I want the posts to be scheduled over the course of an entire year or over less time
• And I approve the campaign

Then I don’t think about those posts any more!

Since I started using Missinglettr a year ago, I have gotten 1152 clicks just from Missinglettr. And that does not count the total number of pageviews that I’ve gotten as a result. That’s so many to get from a resource I didn’t know existed a year ago! Go sign up now. 

If you’re starting a blog, what do you want to know that isn’t mentioned in this post?

Like this post? Check out: 

12 Tips for New Health Bloggers, The Blog Tools I Use and Love, The Dos and Dont’s of How To Get Your Blog Noticed, How To Be Good at Blogging: Blogging with Limited Time