Teach Your Kid to Blog Like a Pro

• Blogs have gone from little more than self-important diaries to a prime source for information on a global scale.

• If your child is interested in blogging, rest assured that blogging isn’t just a trend: it’s a potential source of income, and an amazing opportunity for your child to hone their writing, research, and communication skills.

• We’ll teach you what you need to know to help your child become a great blogger, and stay safe doing it.

The Basics

• Blogs come in many shapes and sizes, so your child will need to pick the one that best suits their needs.

• Creating an appropriate design is not as important as content, but can help draw in readers.

• If your child is interested in blogging, they’ll need to come up with a specific topic like art, sports, comedy, daily life, fashion, news, etc.

Safety and Privacy

• Most blogs expose your child to a wide readership and the opportunity for feedback on their writing, so deciding to make the blog public or private is an important decision.

• Comment settings are also very important. Leaving them on leaves the blog open to any matter of comments whether helpful or inappropriate.

• Engaging with the audience is a great way to increase a blog’s popularity, but again opens your child to any matter of feedback.

Daily Upkeep

• To get the best benefits- reading, writing, and communication skills, alongside a broad readership, your child needs to keep up with it daily or almost daily.

• Keeping blog entries short will help with this, or if it’s a complex topic- breaking it down into a multi-part series.

• Avoid plagiarism.

• Eliciting feedback from readers can help generate new content.

• Pay attention to the posts your readers seem to best respond to.

Blogging: The Technical Side

• Search engine optimization, usually called SEO, increases the likelihood that your blog will be picked up by search engines.

• Gaining readership is a tricky feat for child bloggers, but carefully evaluating who can read your child’s blog and when can allow you to pick an appropriate strategy to attract new readers.

• There is a very small chance that your child will be picked up, and become a paid blogger, but advertising on your child’s blog page is another way to draw revenue.

Keeping Up With Your Child’s Blogging Habits

• No matter how gifted your child is as a writer and no matter how popular her blog becomes, you’re still the parent, and the responsibility rests with you to keep track of what they’re up to.

• Without exception, you should see every blog post your child makes, screening your child’s posts will prevent any inappropriate content from being posted.

• Keeping an eye on comments and other discussions on your child’s blog is also essential to making sure your child’s blogging experience remains fun and safe.

For much more content and a full list of references, resources, and contributors, download our original eBook entitled

“Teach Your Kid to Blog Like a Pro”.

For more information on cyberbullying, sexting, online predators, and keeping children save online visit our resources page.