5-step beginners guide to creating your own blog

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If you’re wondering about how to start your own blog, then look no further. This comprehensive, step by step guide will take you through every facet of creating your own blog from helping you find an idea to launching it successfully.

Step #1: The Idea

The first step in creating a blog is coming up with a theme or “idea” around which your blog will revolve. Of the zillion web pages and blogs on the internet, why should someone read yours? What makes your site so special?  You do not have to go through bulk of websites on internet to search “how to start your own blog”?

An easy way to answer this question is to identify what makes YOU special. Do your friends often ask for your recipe after coming over for dinner? Then maybe a cooking blog is the right way to go. Look no further for the “how to start your own blog” articles and utilize your skills and talent for creating one instead.

You want to know how to start your own cooking blog? Great. So how do you differentiate yourself from your competitors who probably have several thousand visitors per day? Simple, position it in a niche such as - Cooking for the Paleo Diet, Recipes for Vegans or voila you have yourself a blog in an underserved niche.

Pro Tip: In your quest to beat out the competition, don’t select a niche that has no audience.

Step #2: The Platform

This is a crucial step that will determine the direction of your blog. If you are like me and don’t like dealing with messy stuff and would just like a platform that would allow you to write quickly then consider one of the following free options

·         WordPress.com

·         BlogSpot

·         Weebly

·         Tumblr

I encourage you to look at each of these options and choose whichever one is best suited for your blog. For example, Tumblr is great for short form blogs and perfect if you want to run a photography blog. These tips will come in handy when you are looking for how to start your own blog.

Pro Tip: Choose a platform that allows you to import data from another platform. You’ll be thankful for this feature when you decide to change platforms after you’ve written hundreds of blog posts.

Step #3: Domain & Hosting

Think of a smart domain name which is easy to remember, simple and related to your blog’s theme. That is how, readers will remember you and keep visiting your blog. Find out if it’s available by visiting GoDaddy, Namecheap or similar registrars.

A cheap but comprehensive hosting plan should be next on your to-do list to start your own blog. Look for a hosting provider that has servers in your country, a 99.99% uptime and is rated well by the Better Business Bureau. You don’t want to end up in a long-term contract with a provider who causes your blog to crash during peak times.

Pro Tip: Often you can get great discounts if your domain and hosting providers are the same company.  

Step #4: Write & Publish

The most important step of all, start penning down your thoughts. When you start out, split your writing tasks in small, manageable chunks to make it easier on yourself. For instance, you can start with creating a rough draft with whatever you know about the topic and keep researching and collecting facts until you’ve fleshed it out into a full blog post.

Remember content is king. People read your blog because you have useful content, so it never pays to laze through this part. After you are done, you can style your writing using catchy quotes, bolded statements, bullets and categorization which will keep readers glued to the end.

Pro Tip: Do not hire someone else to write your content, at least until your blog has scaled. You are simply sinking money into a venture you are not sure will pay off.

Step #5: Share Share Share

Great! Now you have a bright and shiny blog with useful content for your target audience. But wait a minute. No one knows you exist. You may think you have the best idea since sliced bread but it doesn’t matter if no one knows about it. So, it is very important to share your blog articles as much as possible. So that people may come to know that you have accomplished your dream to start your own blog. No more searching of “how to start your own blog” articles.

As in real estate, the best advice for sharing your blog post is location, location, location. Sharing on your Facebook or Twitter pages is great but if you don’t have as many followers or fans, it is not going to increase your readership. Instead, try sharing it in related blogs which have similar audience profile. Your reader conversion is very high when you do targeted sharing to relevant industry websites.

Pro Tip: Create a separate Twitter and Facebook page for your blog. Privacy first!

Now that you’ve learnt about how to start your own blog, here’s one final step. Go do it! Nothing beats experience and the worst that could happen is you end up not having as many visitors as you would like. But along the way, you would have gained valuable experience. Remember, the most difficult step is the first one. Good luck and happy blogging!