Many people think that blogging is just for young people to write about personal interests or drama in their daily lives. These groups of people do make up many bloggers, but blogging after age 50 can provide many benefits for older people, too.
Starting a blog after age 50 is easier than ever as there are many free, intuitive tools that can make launching a blog easy. For older people, blogging promotes good mental health by acting as a stress-coping mechanism and sharpening cognitive ability. It also helps keep older people in touch with technological advances and having fun.
It might seem intimidating to an older person to start a blog if they have never done it before. However, there has never been a better time to get a blog launched, either as a hobby or as a passive stream of income. Read on to learn more about starting a blog after 50 and how it can benefit you.
Tools for Starting a Blog
The tools for starting a blog are easy to get together. All you really need is a smart device (such as a laptop, desktop, or smartphone) with word processing software and access to the Internet.
Here are a few tools that are useful for starting and running a blog:
- Snipping tools:Snipping tools and applications allow you to clip, save, store, and categorize all kinds of things from the Internet easily, from photographs to news clippings. You can then turn around and archive this media on your blog. It’s a good idea to keep several folders full of this type of media related to your blog’s theme so that you always have plenty of visual interest you can add to break up long paragraphs or pages of text on your blog.
- Writing books:Some basic books on writing can help you get a refresher course on your grammar skills and give you inspiration for writing when you’re not motivated. Writing books can also teach you techniques for drawing in new readers and keeping them interested in what you have to say.
- A digital camera:If you want to take stellar photographs to help add visual appeal to your blog, a real digital camera can often take photographs with higher resolution than the photographs you can take with a smartphone.
- Blog writing software:Websites like Wix and WordPress offer free places for people to build blogs along with a huge number of free tools to help them customize their blog spaces. There are also more advanced design options available for small subscription services. For a small hobby blog that you’re writing for fun, the basic free versions of these platforms are usually more than enough to get started.
How to Start A Blog
The first thing to do is decide your reasons for writing a blog. Do you want a digital scrapbook to keep journal passages and personal photographs as mementos? Or do you want to write about something in particular that you’re passionate about, such as tropical aquariums, vintage cars, or baking recipes?
If you want to maximize the exposure for your blog rather than keeping a blog as a personal record, you can narrow your blog down to a specific “vibe” or aesthetic and narrow down the focus of your blog to a certain niche topic. For example, instead of writing just a general baking blog, you might write a blog where you bake a different type of bread every week for a year, or you might feature recipes for vegan cupcakes.
The narrower your focus, the more likely you are to find an audience with your blog. However, if you are only building up a blog for personal use, it doesn’t matter if you use it as a catchall for your interests or not. So, determining your blog’s goal is the first thing you need to do before you start typing out your first post.
Here are some other tips for starting a blog:
- Collect media related to your blog:If you’re writing a personal blog, why not start by making lists of all the media you like (TV, movies, video games, music), your interests, and anything else that you like? Once you have a good list going, you’ll probably start to see some trends. For example, if you like watching movies, movie reviews would probably be a good addition to your blog.
- Try working out a posting schedule:It is very easy to fall out of the habit of posting to your blog if you’ve never started one before and aren’t receiving very much interaction with it at first. This can be combatted by committing yourself to posting at least once a week. Choose a day of the week that is the least hectic for you (like an easy Sunday evening) and plan to post at that time each week to build your blog up.
- Try brainstorming blog topics and keeping a list.Keeping a list of topics to write about for your blog can help you break your writer’s block if you get stumped and find that you don’t have anything else to write about. Brainstorming blog topics is a good activity to roll into checking out other blogs in your niche, too, since you can see what has been written about already (and what hasn’t). This increases your chances of earning visibility in search engine results.
- Try writing a few blog articles ahead.Some days it is easy to write, and the words flow; other days, it’s harder to find the time and inspiration to write. A good way to set up some insurance for yourself so that you can maintain a steady flow of updates for your blog is to write a few extra blog articles ahead of schedule. Keep them set aside for weeks where you’re very busy or don’t feel like writing for whatever reason.
- Cross-post to social media for more visibility.Especially when you are first getting started, it can be hard to find people to read your blog. Posting links to your blog on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms can help get your post out there and let people know where to find your blog so they can read it.
- Be sure to respond to any comments.If anybody takes the time to interact with your blog, be sure to comment back and interact with them! Speaking directly with your readers is one of the greatest pleasures of starting a blog to begin with. Just be sure to delete any trolling comments or spam bots that come your way. Here are some ways you can deter spam bots from your WordPress blog.