When I started blogging I had no real idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. I was dabbling and seeing what happened. I had a few friends who were blogging and told me I needed to get on it. So I listened and over the years I have learnt a lot. I’ve done things that have worked, I’ve done a lot of things that really haven’t.  So I thought it was about time I shared some of my tips.

How hard is it to start a blog?

It really is about as easy as setting up your Facebook profile. I love WordPress and started out with a free account with them. There are templates and themes you can choose that will allow you to add some images and then you can go for it and start sharing your knowledge.

Why blog?

For me the benefits have been:

• It is a great platform to use to share knowledge and recipes. I can then direct clients to my blog, send them certain links or I use my own recipes in people’s meal plans.
• It raises your profile and gives people an idea of who you are and what you do. 
• You can put examples of your work on there. I sometimes put up media work that I have done or a summary of a talk I have given.
• The public are hungry for knowledge and there is so much incorrect nutrition information out there. We need to counteract this by sharing the right knowledge. Even if you don’t blog you can share other people’s work.
• I’ve connected with brands, companies and people who I would not have met otherwise. Which can lead to work!
• You can use some things as CPD.

The key components of a blog post:

• Keep it short. Split a long post into a series.
• Use pictures or video and label these. When you upload a picture name it as your own. For example I name things in this way: Dietitian UK – banana flapjack 1. Either take your own photos, buy one from an images site or create an image using a website such as Canva. Be aware that you cannot just use a random image off the internet as it may be copyright.
• Blog about your interests, your specilialism and your passion. Add some of your personality in.
• Add tags to your blog post, these are for when people search for a certain topic your post will be more likely to pop up. See right down the bottom of the post for my tags.
• Share, share and share your blog post. Don’t hide it away once your have written it!
• Try to blog regularly as then people get to know you and follow you.
• Save your blog posts on your laptop or back up your blog.

If you are starting up a blog then do let me know as I would love to take a look at it and share it!