Are you starting a blog? It’s not nearly as easy as it seems. Starting a blog requires a lot of hard work and dedication that most people can’t put enough time into. However, running a blog is incredibly rewarding and fun to do! To help you start your blog, follow these tips below.
1. Choose Your Blog Topic
One of the first things you want to consider when starting a blog is what you want to talk about, or what sort of topic you want to centralize on. This can be anything from a hobby or something your passionate about, a cause, a product or service, etc. When you choose your blog topic, it should be something that’s discussable; it’s something you enjoy talking about and can be a niche that you can set yourself as an authority figure over.
2. Choose a Domain Name
Your website domain name is how you are identified on the internet. It will be your website address and should be fairly easy to understand and pronounce. Although you can choose any name you want, as long as it’s available, you should choose one that best fits your blog’s brand.
3. Choose a Website Hosting Company
The website hosting you choose will lay the foundation for your blog. You’ll place your blog on their hosting server so everyone online can see it. However, without a good host, your blogging experience will become a nightmare.
4. Choose a Blogging Platform
Now that your domain name and hosting company is chosen, it’s now time to choose what kind of blogging platform you want to use. Although there are plenty of choices online from hundreds of different blogging platforms, most people choose blogger and WordPress due to its customizability and room for growth. Whether you choose WordPress or not, most people end up switching to it regardless.
5. Choose a Template for Your Blog
A template or a Theme for your blog will improve both its functionality and appearance without having to do too much coding. If you’re fairly good at using a computer but have no idea how to code, I highly suggest using a template. This way, all the coding work is done for you in advance, now all that’s left is the finishing touches on your blog’s website.
Just remember, the better the Theme you choose, the more professional your blog will look and the more appealing it will be to your readers.
6. Create an About Page
Your blog’s about page is where you get to talk all about you and why your blog came into being. For example, you can cover topics like what the subject of your blog is, why readers should invest in your blog, and why this blog is important to you. This is also a great place to assert yourself as an experienced professional in your niche, so make every word count!
7. Create a Contact Page
Unless you don’t want to be contacted through your blog, this is an important page for your readers. You can include a little bit about you and how people can contact you, whether it be through social media, email, or a phone number. Usually, the more contact options you offer, the better, especially if a client is trying to hire you for a job. We also highly recommend creating a contact form on this page to get in touch with your readers .
8. Invest in Content Marketing
One of the most important things to focus on when creating fresh, new content for your blog is to value quality over quantity. Without quality, your readers will get bored with your content. However, it’s still important to focus on quantity, since it can help increase your website traffic.
9. Learn the Basics of HTML
With the recent increase in blogging platforms, there’s no need to learn how to code, such as learning CSS and HTML. However, it’s often challenging to customize your website’s theme and plugins if you don’t know how to code at all. This is why it’s important to learn the basics of HTML and CSS at least. Doing so can help you customize your site a little more and improve the functionality of your site overall.
10. Learn the Basics of SEO
Learning the basics of search engine optimization, or SEO is incredibly useful to driving traffic to your blog. Since traffic from search engines, like Google is a company’s key to growing, it’s worth it to invest time into SEO. Even though it may be challenging to learn for new business owners, it’s crucial to running your business.
11. Format Your Site for Easier Reading
It’s okay to write long posts, but you need to break up your content, so it’s easier for your readers to comprehend. You can do this by incorporating subheadings, photos, quotes, etc. to make your content easier to read. Plus, most of your audience will be skimming your posts, so it’s important to make your main points stick out.
12. Post Regularly to Your Blog
Generally speaking, the more often you post (keyword focused posts) on your blog, the sooner you’ll get a larger audience. However, you don’t want to spam your readers, so you should create a content schedule in which you pick a day of the week to publish a blog post to stick to. The more your following increases, the more you can post and make with your blog.
13. Add Photos
Large chunks of content usually don’t look great on their own; you should incorporate some form of media to make them more readable and interesting. You should break up large bits of your blog with graphs, screenshots, and text with imagery. This will prevent your reader from getting bored reading your blog post. Plus, there are tons of online free photos to snag from sites like Unsplash or resources to create media like Canva.
14. Take Advantage of Social Media
One of the best ways to spread your content around the internet and reach your target audience is to take full advantage of social media. Fortunately, there are plenty of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest for you to share your blog posts. However, you can also buy ad space on these platforms to increase brand awareness as well. Just avoid over posting, or else your audience may be turned off by your content marketing approach.
15. Be Original
It’s important to maintain originality on your blog. You’ll never get anywhere from reposting other people’s content and it lowers your trust as a brand. Although it’s fine to borrow some ideas from other bloggers, we never suggest completely copying content from other blogs.
