How to Start a Blog

Starting a blog is no longer as easy as ABC. Abandoned blogs are very common nowadays. There are millions of them. If you don’t want to end up being one of those, you should follow the right path to start a blog.

Blog services and platforms allow you to start a blog easily, but don’t let it distract you from doing the preliminary steps first. At the very least, know the ultimate outcome that you want and create a strategy.

Without knowing which destination you want to go exactly, it doesn’t matter which fork you take. In my opinion, a blog without a strategy is a big time waster.

Here are the steps that you need to take if you need to start a blog:

1. Decide on a theme

Know which type of a blog you want to start. There are two main types of a blog:

• Business blog is a blog used as a corporate tool for communicating with customers or employees, share knowledge and do other things related to an existing business. Blogging is part of a strategy that integrates into the business and marketing mix.
• Niche blog is another type of blog created with the intent of using it to market to a particular niche market. Usually the owner starts the blog as an independent publishing venture unrelated to existing business. Selling advertising space and recommending affiliate products are two main sources of income for a niche blog.

Knowing your theme means targeting a niche and using a blog to communicate specifically about that topic. Are you going to summarize news? Do you publish tips, comments, or articles?

2. Define your outcome and create strategy

What do you want to accomplish with a blog? Maybe it is to build your expert status, build traffic to your site, involve in conversations with other bloggers, or others. Making money may be the ultimate outcome for niche bloggers.

Once you have the ultimate outcome ready, create strategic plan on how to achieve that. How do you plan to promote your blog and get readership? Which types of products are you going to review to make money?

3. Allocate your resources

Do you have the time to blog regularly? Blogging requires that you update your blog every so often to keep the readers coming back.

If you don’t have the time, could you possibly hire others to do that? Is it suitable for them to do it for you instead? Know who will be responsible for each part of the blog publishing process. Plan on.

You shouldn’t try to overwhelm yourself even more if you are already too busy. Consider yourself warned.

3. Make decisions on features, contents, and other policies

Will you moderate comments? Do you want to offer trackback? Which RSS version do you want to publish? How do you want the structure of the blog? Think about the design too.

When it comes to content, you want to create content strategy. What type of content are you going to blog?

Finally, if you are blogging as part of your business and marketing strategy, you need to create a blogging policy.

4. Select your blog platform or service

You can choose between hosted blog service or standalone blog platform. Both have their own benefits and drawbacks.

In short, if you go with the hosted service, you don’t have to install and maintain it. The drawback is, you don’t have much control over your blog and you are limited to using the sub-domain of the service.

Some hosted services have added the feature to host on your own domain, but still the control is much less that with standalone blog platform.

5. Choose your tools

Select the tools that will help your blogging easier and faster. You can use the built-in blog editing feature or install a desktop or offline blogging client. Web browser integrated blog tools are also available. Use what’s convenient for you.

If you often create screenshots, you may want to choose one of the screen capturing programs to make the process easier.

You can always update and install more tools later. For now, just get what’s necessary to jumpstart your blog.

6. Add bells and whistles

What you want to put on the homepage of the blog, sidebars, top navigation bar, etc., depends on your needs and blog design.

Based on the outcome you’ve defined above, you may want to create a design that is suitable for you. For instance, if you are to build traffic and generate leads, you may want to put an opt-in box on the sidebar.

You may also put a list of your favorite books, links to other blogs, and so on. Don’t get too fancy, you can always go back and add them later. For now, just pick a design that can support your outcome.

7. Write and publish your blog

Now you’re ready to create your first post. If you haven’t done a lot of writing, you may be confused about where and how to start.

If you are getting stuck, writing a welcome message can be an option. Alternatively, you might want to write about the reasons why you start the blog and what the readers can expect in the future.

Probably only you and your spouse are going to read this right now, but at least it gets you started.

8. Publicize your blog

Assuming that you want your blog to be available to everyone, you want to ping major weblog tracking sites.

Your blog service or software platform should have the option to turn this on. In standalone blog platform, you can even choose the services you want to notify via ping.

9. Start networking

A blog is communication tool. You want to start listening and joining the conversations as soon as you can. Let others know about your blog. Being visible to others mean getting found and linked.

At the very least, track your name and brand name so you know what others are talking about. Start responding to them and make it obvious that you are listening.

You can accelerate the growth of your blog by participation. This is important to get your more traffic and readers.

10. Keep it rolling

Now that you get your first post up, schedule your time to post regularly. Involve as frequently as your time permits. You need to keep the momentum going.

If people like what you write, keep delivering it, or they will lose interest soon. Many bloggers post several times daily, but you can start to post twice a week. Try to blog daily if possible.

What’s next?

In the 9th step above, you already get the words out to some extent. Once you get it rolling, you need to promote your blog to get more audience and increase visibility.

That doesn’t come overnight. You have to be patient with yourself. If you can’t write well, you will improve as you keep blogging. Stick with it, do what it takes to keep it going and grow your blog.

Enjoy the ride!

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