Everyone can reach out to their followers by blogging and benefit from its numerous advantages: search engines provide organic traffic, content is promoted through social media, your business gets extra recognition from a new market. In case you already know something about blogging but are a novice and aren’t sure where to begin, the time to make excuses is now over. In this article, we’ll provide a succinct but straightforward and practical guide for starting your own blog.
Definition of a Blog Post
Basically, any piece of news, guide, or article in general published in the website’s section for blogs is a blog post. It usually discusses a distinct subject or question of interest, is educational in nature, consists of 500 – 2500 words, and includes other types of media (videos, images, interactive charts, information graphics).
Blog posts enable you and your company to share your thoughts, insights, and news on any subject. They can advance your brand’s visibility and online presence, increase credibility, revenue, and conversions. Mainly, they assist in driving customers to your site.
However, in order to start creating blog posts, you must learn how to start a proper blog in the first place.
How to Start a Blog
1. Understand your audience.
Ensure to get a clear vision of your target market’s features and demands before you write your first post. In order to achieve this, ask yourself questions such as: What things do they want to learn about? What really affects and inspires them?
At this point, you might want to create buyer personas, which is a highly beneficial process. Take a close look at the information you have concerning your customers’ interests before brainstorming ideas for the blog article.
For example, if your audience consists of young adults who want to launch an enterprise, chances are you do not need to provide them with basic details about social media since the majority of them already possess that information.
2. Investigate your competition.
There is hardly a better method to get motivated than to check out your successful competitors in the field.
Examining the most publicly acclaimed and positively reviewed blogs is a remarkably profitable endeavor since their approach and nuances of execution have helped to skyrocket their reputation. The goal here is not to duplicate these strategies but rather to get a better grasp of what aspects readers really value in a blog.
There are a variety of perspectives to consider when analyzing your competitors, such as visuals (blog’s logo, general theme, and color palette), tone and writing style, and utilized topics.
3. Choose the subjects you’ll be covering.
Before writing anything, choose a subject that you’d love to blog about. It can be fairly broad until you discover your niche in the world of online blogging.
The best approach to picking topics to discuss is by asking yourself questions such as:
- What audience do I want to address?
- Do I understand the subject well enough?
- Is this subject pertinent?
4. Determinate your unique perspective.
What is that thing, a set of views and principles, that sets you apart from the rest? This question is absolutely crucial in identifying your blog’s direction, and there are many options to consider during the process.
- What remarkable thing makes you a respected authority or intellectual influencer in the field?
- What issue will you help readers solve?
- Are you willing to share your thoughts on current debates?
- Or maybe, guide your audience on how to achieve something?
5. Name your blog.
At this stage, you get a chance to think up a catchy and unique blog name to give the readers an understanding of what to anticipate from the blog. Here are a few tips on selecting an appropriate blog name:
- Make sure the blog name is easy to spell and pronounce.
- Connect it to the message (or mission/vision statement) of your brand.
- Take your target market’s demands into account.
If you’re still unsure and require outside help, you can give online name-generating tools a go or ask an expert for help (check out StudyCrumb, where you can find all sorts of creative writing services).
Ensure your chosen name is not already employed because it might decrease your exposure and baffle those who are looking for your site’s content.
6. Create your blog domain.
A domain is a component of the web address terminology that a person would utilize to locate your site or a particular page from it on the Internet.
Your blog’s domain will be similar to this: www.thisisyourfirstblog.com. You may come up with anything for the phrase between the two periods while your domain name is unique and not yet available on the internet.
And what about creating subdomains? Suppose you already own a business at www.nameofyourbusiness.com; then, you might start a blog that looks like this: blog.nameofyourbusiness.com. This means that the blog’s subdomain will be located within its own area of nameofyourbusiness.com.
Certain CMS platforms provide subdomains as a complimentary (and, in most cases, free) service: your blog’s content is stored on the CMS and not the website of your business. For instance, it might be like this: blog.cmsofyourchoice.com. Last but not least, if you want to create a subdomain as a part of your company’s website, you should register it with a hosting service.
7. Decide on a CMS and then set up your online blog.
The CMS (content management system) is a program that lets users create and manage a website without writing code from scratch. CMS platforms control domains (where you build your website) as well as subdomains (where you design a page linked to an already existing site).
8. Customize your website’s look.
After the domain is in place, you can personalize your website’s image to match the style of the content you intend to create and your branding.
For instance, if your blog’s core topics are sustainable practices or environmental issues, then green may be just the right color.
In case you already supervise an existing website and you’re creating the first article for it, be sure it fits the site’s look and subject matter.
9. Finally, write your first blog post.
As soon as you’ve got your blog wholly set up, the final thing on your to-do list is content. While the layout, structure, and design are enjoyable and essential, the primary means to attract your visitors and keep them returning is the content itself. And don’t forget that you can always use free write examples.
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