When blogs and blogging began, the original purpose was for individuals to share their personal lives online, similar to an online journal.
Over the last decade, blogging has evolved from having more personal to more professional goals. Instead of individuals solely blogging for their friends and family, blogging began to encompass professionals blogging for the public to promote their personal brand and their business. If you are thinking of starting your own blog, you should read our in-depth guide.
In this blog, Pritish Halder gives his advice on how to start blogging.
How does blogging work?
People who begin their startups buy a domain name and design their websites by themselves, while established businesses create new landing pages for a blog on their existing websites to fill them with good content. With simple websites, blogs enable visitors to use them easily and find the necessary information.
Different bloggers choose different blog themes. Some prefer to talk about marketing and product reviews, and others discuss fashion, healthy life, cooking, or any other topic. Bloggers create a series of posts and make them available for reading on their websites. Articles usually appear in a certain order, starting from the most recent ones. They are also divided into categories to enable people to navigate them easily. Besides, blog posts have another unique feature, such as interlinking. This way, bloggers link to other blogs and promote each other to expand their audiences.
If you are interested in starting your own blog from the very beginning, let’s explore some steps you need to take to get started.
6 Steps to Start a Blog
With basic computer knowledge and an understanding of what your heart desires, you can easily create a blog by sticking to our guide.
Choose a niche.
Firstly, you need to select a niche in which you have a high level of expertise. Your passion and interest in the chosen industry are essential. Secondly, once you choose your key topic, make sure that it has a wide audience so that you have some space to grow your blog. If you don’t have any idea what to blog about, consider sharing your life experiences. You can start a personal blog and tell about your daily routine: makeup and cosmetics, style and clothes, traveling, or anything else. The key is to create quality content that will attract the public.
Pick a catchy and easy name for your blog.
To make readers recognize your blog, you need to select an easy-to-remember domain name. It’s your address on the internet, so it should be unique. Your domain name will enable people to find your website or social media account easily. Your title should be descriptive so that new users can catch the main idea of your blog.
Select a unique design.
You need to have some understanding of your blog and its design since it needs a face. As an option, you can consider leveraging WordPress since it has special layouts for blogs. The platform enables you to obtain a layout and its design just in a few clicks.
Write your first blog post.
Once you decide on your design, it’s time to create your first piece of content. Bear in mind that to blog successfully, you need to create unique, engaging, informative, interesting, and relatively long posts. It’s not an easy task to always come up with fresh and interesting ideas, but they help attract people, engage them, and make them loyal to your brand. Besides, don’t forget to add some photos to create visually appealing blog posts and simplify the way visitors perceive your content.
Promote your blog through different platforms.
Now when companies and bloggers promote products with the help of digital and traditional marketing, you can’t remain inactive. Use various forms of ads like PPC, native advertising, pre-roll ads, create email campaigns, and leverage social media channels to popularize your blog. More and more bloggers use paid ads that appear on users’ Instagram Stories and feed. Consider collaborating with other bloggers in your niche, commenting on other famous pages, communicating with your audience, and posting regularly to build a follower base and gain your readers’ love and trust.
Optimize and update your content.
Once your blog post is published, remember to update it frequently. If you want your blog to rank higher on Google, utilize relevant keywords, write quality content, add SEO meta tags, optimize images, and reduce your bounce rate.
Now that you’ve already explored our guide on developing a blog, let’s jump into the next section to figure out the ways to gain revenue from your blog.
Main reasons: Why do people blog?
To share their passion
When you are passionate about something, you want to share it with the world. Whether it’s a passion for fishing, photography, or marketing, blogging is an excellent way to share that passion.
When you blog about something you are passionate about, it opens the door to connecting with those around the world who speak your language and have the same passions.
To educate others
If you are someone who loves to teach, blogging can be a platform for teaching people who have an interest in your areas of expertise. Through blogging, you will not only teach others, but you will also teach yourself more about the topic.
You will learn because you will always be looking for more things to teach your readers. Teaching through blogging can naturally lead to monetization by creating online information products.
To gain exposure
Business owners who blog increase exposure for their business in a number of ways. Creating blog content on a regular basis for your website gives Google something new to index, thus increasing your website’s visibility in search results.
Creating blog content for other publications in your industry gives new, relevant audiences the opportunity to discover you and your business. This exposure gives you more traffic that you can convert into leads and customers.
To build authority
For those that want to speak at events in their industry or become an author, blogging is a platform that you can use to build authority.
As you blog about the niche you are most knowledgeable about, people will begin to recognize you as an authority in that niche. This recognition will lead to interviews, podcasts, and ultimately invitations to speak and contracts to publish a book.
To rank in Search Engines
As mentioned earlier, your blog gives Google new content to index on a regular basis. You can use each piece of content to rank for specific keywords that will attract your target audience to your website.
For businesses, a combination of static web pages and blog posts allows them to target commercial keywords (those that attract customers) as well as non-commercial keywords (those that attract information seekers). Both audiences – customers and information seekers – can lead to new business.
To have content to share
Social media audiences are more receptive to blog posts than they are ads or sales pages, and likewise, are more likely to share blog posts with their connections than ads or sales pages.
By creating blog content, you give yourself more to share on your social media profiles, and you give your visitors something to share when they visit your website. Social sharing of your content will increase exposure to your target audiences and lead to more incoming traffic.
Blog posts also give you a non-sales way to promote your business. If someone were to ask to do something on a social network, you could easily reply with a blog post. As opposed to replying with a sales page for your products or services, replying with a blog post will be seen as helpful. It will naturally lead the person to your products and services, especially if you incorporate a good call to action at the end of each of your posts.
