Eureka! You just came up with your next creative outlet. You’ve decided to take up blogging! The only problem is, you do not know where to start.
You begin to think to yourself, can I start my own blog?
Of course, you can! With the assistance of a good blogging software program, you can build the next innovative blog in less than 30 minutes.
To make sure that you create the blog of your dreams, we here at F22 Internet Solutions are giving you step-by-step guidelines on how to build a successful blog platform.
Start coming up with topic ideas for upcoming blog articles now, because if you follow these steps, you will become the next great blogger!
Why You Should Pay Money to Own Your Blog
Before we give you the steps on how to build a successful blogging platform, we want to make sure that you know the importance of owning your blog.
We divide all the current blog sites into two categories. Category 1 has all the blog sites built on free blogging services and category 2 has all the blog sites built on services that bloggers paid money to so that they could own their own content. As far as we are concerned, the only blogs that have a chance of reaching success are those in category 2.
Although choosing to go the route of not paying any money to build your blog may seem like a good idea, in actuality, it is the worst decision that you could make as a blogger.
Why is that, you may ask? Well, one reason why not paying money to own your blog is a bad idea is that you will have to attach the name of the blogging software program that you are using to your URL. That means that instead of the website of your blog being www.myblog.com, it will be www.myblog.wordpress.com, or www.myblog.squarespace.com, for example.
Having a blog URL that includes the name of your blogging software program in it makes your blog appear unprofessional. As a result, advertisers will not want to do business with your blog, even as it grows in subscribers. Another reason why not paying to own your blog is a bad idea is that, even if advertisers were interested in doing business with your blog, they likely will not be able to because you will not have the power to fully monetize your blog site.
Your lack of power will continue to affect the growth of your blog as you will have very limited space on your website for images and videos due to your lack of monetary investment in the site. Because the blogging software program you used to create your blog technically owns your site, you will also have no say if the software program chooses to one day delete your content without consulting with you first.
Thus, before we even go over the steps on how to build a successful blogging platform, we want to make sure you understand the importance of paying money to own your blog.
Now that we got that off our chest, it is time to go over the steps you should take to create a successful blog.
Step #1: Figure out Your Niche
Your niche is the area that you write your blog articles on. Before you create your blog, you need to take the time to decide what your niche is going to be.
To have a successful blog, it is vital that you choose a niche that you are passionate about and have a large amount of knowledge on. It is also important for your niche to be very specific.
For example, if you love food and cooking and your favorite form of cooking is baking, your blog niche should be baking. This is a good blogging niche because it is specific and something you are passionate about and knowledgeable on.
Step #2: Choose Your Blogging Platform
There are numerous blogging software platforms in the world. Some of these blogging platforms include blogger.com, squarespace.com, wix.com, Tumblr, etc. The biggest and most respected blogging platform to date is WordPress.
The form of WordPress that you pay a small fee to own your blog is wordpress.org. Thus, when choosing your blogging platform, we strongly suggest you choose wordpress.org.
Step #3: Decide on a Domain Name
Your domain name is your URL, or the name of your website. When choosing a blog domain name, it is important to choose something that is short, catchy, and fits your brand.
Step #4: Purchase Your Domain and Web Hosting
It is important to invest money into purchasing web hosting for your blog so that you own all your content. It’s also important to purchase your domain name so that others cannot use it as the title of their blog sites.
As a new blogger, the smartest thing you could do is purchase your domain name and web hosting from the same site. Lucky for you, most web hosting sites offer the choice to purchase a domain name through them and vice versa.
We also would like to note that most of the time the web hosting sites that people use differ from the blogging software programs that they use. This means that although your blogging software is WordPress, your web hosting could be a site like Hostgator or BlueHost. Luckily, to make things less confusing, most web hosting sites provide a button you can click on to automatically link WordPress with your web hosting site.
Step #5: Pick out a Blog Theme and Design Your Blog
A blog theme is a pre-designed template for the visuals of your blog. WordPress.org offers countless free blog themes for its users. Once again, the trick to choosing the right blog theme is to pick something that reflects your blog’s brand.
Step #6: Install Desired Plug-ins
Plug-ins are pieces of software that provide a blog with specific services. For example, the popular plug-in Yoast SEO helps bloggers figure out how marketable the blog articles on their blog sites are. To help your blog run smoothly, install plug-ins into your blog that you know you will depend on.
Step #7: Add Important Pages to Your Blog
What pages are best suited for your blog is subjective. The only blog pages that are necessary for all blog sites are the “About Me” page and the “Contact” page.
Step #8: Plan and Write Upcoming Content
To write high-quality blog articles, you should plan everything that you are going to write for the upcoming week ahead of time. That means writing detailed outlines to all your blog articles prior to writing the articles themselves. You should also create an editorial calendar to keep track of when you are going to publish each article.
Step #9: Publish Content
This is the time to put your content out on the internet for the world to see! Don’t be afraid to show the world what’s in that creative mind of yours!
Step #10: Promote Your Blog
To promote your blog and increase its engagement, you should always write high-quality blog articles, be consistent in your posting schedule, and advertise your blog articles on all your social media platforms.
Remember Rome Was Not Built in a Day
If you follow these steps when creating your new blog, you will have a high chance of your blog being successful. Just make sure to not get discouraged if this success does not come immediately. Remember, it takes even the best bloggers years to get to a point where they have large amounts of subscribers and are making money off their work.
If you are looking for a web design company to help you create your blog, feel free to come check us out. Click here to see past examples of our work.
