Hello friends,
How are you? What! It’s Easter already… Why don’t you come over to South Africa, the bunnies are for real… they’re everywhere? 😊 Promise me you will come when we’re done with COVID? I believe this could be soon.
Okay, first off, yes, I am trying to keep up with reading all the comments and yes, I am aware that I have loads of comments to respond to on the website. I promise, help is on the way for me, yoo-hoo! At least this article will cover all the questions you have been asking me or sending me with regards to blogging and websites.
Now, we will be reviewing the comments on this article, the reason being we are tracking to see how much help we can offer here or if we’d need to run a webinar and so do drop your comments in the comment section below this article so that we can gather everything that is coming up for you on this topic, best practise, it will reside here so that we can really make the best when it comes to targeted content depending on what the majority are having difficulty with.
This question is coming up the most, is blogging difficult?
The second one after that is this one, how do you centre yourself to write content with the frequency you’ve been writing with up to now?
The third one is how do you stop receiving spam messages?
Question 1: Is blogging difficult?
This might seem like a simple question for many people to answer, and to receive this question I have to ask, what are you passionate about? If writing about something is difficult then,
1) You don’t know it well enough, or
2) There is some sort of block you’re facing which could be, not sure how to use technology, not sure how to use social media platforms for blogging, how to position yourself, where to position yourself, overwhelm, perfectionism, having to put yourself out there and the list goes on.
Blogging isn’t difficult, the actual action that is, but I can see the challenge when it comes to technology. This makes it difficult if you are starting but if you think about it you just got to repeat these actions a couple of times once you have written your article and found your picture.
1) Add new post or on social media the part that says write an article.
2) Copy your article from the word document and paste it onto the blank space where one would add their content on the blank space, then look out for the area that requires you to put your title in. Hit save.
3) If you are on WordPress look at the right panel and scroll down, and there should be something that says, “set featured image.” When you click on this area it will ask you whether you want to use the current media you have stored on your site or if you want to upload the media from your computer.
You choose the option that best works for you but usually, you’d upload your picture. When you click on the picture itself WordPress also offers the option to resize the image if the image is too large by using the edit image option. How to Add Images to WordPress Blog Posts and Pages This video can help you by teaching you how to add images to your post.
4) Hit publish.
Now if the block is about writing an article then again, I will remind you that practice makes perfect, keep on writing, start the best way you know how and with time you’ll just get better, find your own style and even find how you are coming across, you will learn tons from just writing, editing and posting. The hardest part for most is the action, taking action, so if you’ve taken all this action on the answer that I have provided here you are off to a good start. Remember, consistency… this is what will make you better.
Question 2: How do you centre yourself to write content with the frequency you’ve been writing with up to now?
In question 1, I mention practice makes perfect, but I’ve also been a writer trying different ways to write over many many years, with emotions, with visualisations, sometimes just feeling poetical, perhaps feel like it’s storytime, or maybe even “lecture time.” I think, when I started blogging, I perhaps came out too strong (lecture mode), that’s just my self-critique.
Firstly, choose something interesting, especially if you’re a beginner at this. By choosing to write about things that are interesting to you and more so to others is a great way to enjoy writing and finding your own style. The better you get here the sooner you can try writing in a variety of ways or about a variety of subjects.
Secondly, music … yes, I use concentration music or study music, such as Study Music Alpha Waves: Relaxing Studying Music, Brain Power, Focus Concentration Music, ☯161 and my recent favourite is this one Music To Listen To While Writing – Essays, Papers, Stories, Poetry, Songs. This helps me get centred, but the truth is music settles a person down and brings them to a calm state, i.e., the right sort of music. The truth is when writing looking inwards is the key, feeling the story, knowing the audience you will be delivering it to better than yourself, but if there’s anything that is of the highest priority for me then it’s these questions to ask when sitting down to write that piece, i.e., Why? and then How? How will what I write be received, and What? What is the desired feeling or outcome for the person who is going to read it?
When I just started writing content, I would just write what was coming out, almost like the idea of the raw format (raw diamonds) and then once on paper I’d organise it and polish it up, I didn’t expect to get it perfect straight away, so my take is to go with what you’ve got, whatever that is, start there and work your way upwards, cleaning it up.
Question 3: How do you stop receiving spam messages?
Usually, it’s on websites that you can get spammed, so this article Are you an educated woman? Does this mean you’re educated in your romantic relationships? This article from 8th February 2019 is still very much out there and has been the most viral article of all my articles, since it was my first viral article I wasn’t very experienced, now what you’ll see is there are so many approved spam comments, purely because I wasn’t very experienced at the time and least of all, I didn’t expect the article to go viral. Till today it receives so many valid comments and I really must do some work at cleaning up the comments here and approving the valid ones.
Here is where I failed forward and paid a monthly premium for Akismet which is an anti-spam plugin. Many others can be used, just be sure to check which is the best one for the type of website you have. Now Akismet seems to be number 1 for WordPress sites.
I hope these long-awaited answers help you and feel free to put your comments down in the comment section on other questions you might have which I can help with.
Yours sincerely,
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by purchasing my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to re-evaluate them.
