I'm a new blogger in need of help

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   arnold3211posted 8 years ago

   I'm a new blogger,  I'm talking about in general I've never blogged before and I would like to know if I'm in the right track and what needs improvement. If you can please look through my 5 hubs and give me feedback here I'd like to know what to do before i go any further, if your a veteran it would be best.

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      Christy Kirwanposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Arnold,
      
      Welcome to HubPages! Please do visit our Learning Center. We provide lots of resources for writers like you who are just getting started in the landscape of online writing. Best of luck!

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2. 91

   RachaelLeflerposted 8 years ago

   Hey, I just wanted to say before looking at your hubs specifically a few tips:
   1) Make general rules and templates for different kinds of hubs. For example, whenever I do a Film Review hub, I always use the same basic format, which I have saved as a Word document. That way, whenever I know I want to do a Film Review hub, I can use that template to make sure I include all the body paragraphs, photos, and other capsules that I want to make that hub up to standards.
   2) Hubpages itself publishes a lot of content about hubbing. I think they email a regular newsletter and reading that might help. Searching the "HubPages Tutorials and Community" section will probably answer most questions you might have.
   3) Find and read other bloggers. Figure out what you like and dislike about their work. Follow bloggers you find that you want to be like.
   4) Edit, edit, edit, edit. Have a good dictionary, thesaurus, and above all a good guide to writing and grammar. I like "On Writing Well" and "Woe is I". I'm also in the process of reading Stephen King's "On Writing" but that is more auto-biographical in nature than like an actual how-to. When I write an article, I usually save it unpublished and then proofread it before publishing the next day. I also frequently check my own work for grammatical and spelling errors. I also try to omit unnecessary sentences and shorten clauses that are too wordy.
   5) I like to make lists of what I'm going to write and plan the hubs out in advance. Sometimes I get spontaneous ideas, but most of them were hubs on something I planned to write a hub on for a long time.
   6) Your first attempts are going to suck, but that's okay because if you keep at it, analyzing why the first attempts sucked, and make a serious commitment to improving, you will end up writing much better hubs than your first few over time. It really does take writing a few duds to get a feel for how to write something that will really shine.
   Anyway, good luck! I'll check out your hubs and comment on them, too.

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   WryLiltposted 8 years ago

   Firstly, Hubpages is not a blogging site. It's a place for stand alone quality articles
   
   Your content is written in very competitive niches, so it's unlikely you'll get traffic. The most important part of writing a hub is creating content with no big competition - or content that is far better than any of the competing content.

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   Marisa Wrightposted 8 years ago

   As WryLilt says, HubPages is not a blogging site, where you write short blog posts - it's more like a magazine where you write longer, information-rich articles.   Aim for 800 - 1500 words.
   
   To get readers on HubPages, you need to attract them from Google and other search engines - the active community inside HubPages is actually very small.  When you're choosing a topic, always ask yourself "what would someone type into Google to find this information?"
   
   Then try typing that into Google to see what the auto-complete does - that is based on phrases people are actually using.  Ideally, you need to use those phrases in your Hub title and paragraph titles. 
   
   Sometimes when you ask yourself that question, you won't be able to think of an answer - you'll realise that no one is likely to be looking for that topic.  That's a sign you should think carefully about whether the Hub is worth writing - because without Google traffic, your Hub will soon be "unFeatured", which means it becomes effectively invisible.
   
   If you still want to write an article on a topic that isn't likely to be searched, then it's better to put it on another site that doesn't have an unFeaturing system - say, PersonaPaper or DailyTwoCents or Wizzley.

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      DasEngelposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      You're advising that the other way round.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I have no idea what you mean by that sentence.

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   RachaelLeflerposted 8 years ago

   I hate everyone nitpicking about the semantics. Self-published writing on the internet is all called blogging, it's a descriptor, not a slur.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I didn't intend it as a slur, nor did WryLilt.  Both of us spend far more of our time blogging than we do writing Hubs!
      
      The reason we make the distinction is that writing on HubPages requires a different technique to writing on a blog.
      
      On a blog, you are probably writing about a single broad subject.  So your individual blog posts can be quite short, because Google also looks at the blog as a whole when looking at keywords and deciding whether you've got good information to offer.   
      
      HubPages is a generalist site so each Hub has to convince Google all on its own - therefore to be successful, each Hub has to pack in a lot more information and for that reason, will generally work better if it's a lot longer with photos, videos etc. 
      
      The other difference is that on a blog, readers will arrive at one of your posts and may then browse around your other posts.   On HubPages, navigation is set up to entice readers away from your other posts, to Hubs by other people on the same subject.  That's another reason why each Hub has to stand on its own - you can't assume your reader will ever read the other Hubs in a series.

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      makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      10 FACTS about blogs and what they have which hubs don't have (i.e. why creating a hub is emphatically NOT BLOGGING):
      1) an RSS feed - hence you can republish content (not just titles) on other sites and/or people can follow you in a feedreader
      2) scope to have people follow you who do not belong to this site
      3) scope to time the publication of your content
      4) dated content - specific to a date
      5) tagged content using keywords
      6) detailed statistics using Google analytics
      7) Nobody telling you how you must write (so long as you stick within the host's guidelines for actual content)
      8) Nobody telling you what you must or must not include
      9) No adverts if you don't want them
      10) use of your own domain name if you want one (i.e. NOT a sub-domain)

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   RachaelLeflerposted 8 years ago

   Those are characteristics that may make Hubpages separate from other blogging sites, but I fail to see how that makes Hubpages not a blogging site. It means, like I said, self-published internet content. The type of content and formatting differences only makes Hubpages a different kind of blogging site, not "not a blog". This is like calling an encyclopedia "not a book"just because it is different from a novel.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I guess we're guilty of using it as a kind of shorthand - and while it may not be semantically correct, I've found it does help newbies to get the right mindset. 
      
      It's common for newbies to arrive and think their sub-domain is their own blog and behave accordingly, when in fact it's just an administrative mechanism to allow them to publish articles on a large, heavily interconnected writing site.  It may be a subtle distinction but it's an important one if they want to do well.
      
      Besides, there are many definitions of blogging and many of them do refer to a blog as a single-author site:
      
      http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defin … glish/blog
      
      http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blog
      
      http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blog
      
      http://searchwindevelopment.techtarget. … ition/blog
      
      http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictio … glish/blog
      
      http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/blog
      
      And just to repeat - I definitely don't mean to insult bloggers, in fact I run several blogs myself.  But I've found my approach to the two things has to be very different and that's why I make the distinction.

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      makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      A sub-domain on HubPages is NOT a blog.
      HubPages is an article site. The name Google uses for this type of site is a "content farm".
      
      Blogging allows you far more latitude than HubPages do
      
      Blogs provide far more functionality and scope for integration with other useful tools than HubPages does.
      
      Re. Marisa's comment on the last post - blogs can also be group blogs. I've run four in my last 10 years of blogging - they're the type of blog that tends to come and go.

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      psycheskinnerposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      The words have different meanings, using one with the most appropriate meaning -- to the general public -- will result in the most successful writing. 
      
      And it is more like calling a cat "not a rodent".

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         paradigm searchposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         That depends on the cat.

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   RachaelLeflerposted 8 years ago

   You don't just have to take my word for it, when I looked up this question on Hubpages this article has a good way of putting it too: http://jsmatthew.hubpages.com/hub/Is-Hu … le-Content

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8. 65

   arnold3211posted 8 years ago

   Thank you guys for your advice, it means a lot that you were willing to take your time on helping me

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      Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Good luck with it, and sorry we got into a debate about the meaning of words on your thread!

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