A blog is a type of website that focuses primarily on written content, often referred to as blog posts. We most often hear about news blogs or celebrity blog sites in the popular websites, but as you’ll see in this blog, you can start a good blog on just about any imaginable topic.
Bloggers also write from a personal perspective that lets them personally interact with their readers. Moreover, most of the blogs do have a section called “comments,” where readers can communicate with the author. Interacting in the comments section with your readers helps to better connect the author to the reader.
One of the biggest advantages of starting a blog is this direct link to the reader. This connexion lets you connect and share ideas with other like-minded people. It also lets you build confidence with your readers. Getting your readers’ faith and loyalty also opens the door to make money out of your writing, which is something I will discuss in this blog later.
How to Start a 5 Step Blog?
There are five main items you’ll need to do to start a blog. If you exactly follow this blog, then you can set up your own blog in 30 minutes or less.
- Choose a great blog platform
- Select your blog’s Web host
- Blog from your own domain
- Build your latest blog
How to Start a 5 Step Blog?
Practically the first thing you need to do is choose where to create a blog. I’m going to take a gamble and say you’ve heard of WordPress and that’s the platform that I’m supporting.
It is by far one of the largest blogging sites in the world, with countless plugins and add-ons, and virtually limitless ways of designing and building your site.
Over 82 million active WordPress users.
However, there are other alternatives, which are described below:
- Blogger – WordPress’s probably next best thing.
- Half social network, half blog. Interesting, and very easy to use.
Even though WordPress is bigger (and probably better) than those two, here are my reasons why you should still go with WordPress:
- Super easy to use and free to install.
- Thousands of free themes and templates (I’m not kidding, there are gazillions around). In case you are stuck (you won’t, but it’s good to have it there if you need it) there is a huge support site.
- Your blog will be insanely fast.
Step 2 – Self-hosting or a free alternative?
WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger provides free blogging to everyone. That’s great! – right? It’s desirable for those who don’t take blogging too seriously. Yet it has downsides to it:
1) You can’t have your Domain name OWN
On a free forum, the blog’s web address (their URL). In short, build a free blog with any of the free blog services listed above and it’ll look like this:
- yourblog.wordpress.com
- yourblog.blogspot.com
- yourblog.tumblr.com
2) Limits and more limits
Free blogs do have certain restrictions. You can’t completely monetize it, and you don’t have the option of uploading all the videos and photographs that you want to show to anyone – it’s all restricted. Worse still, the free themes provided by WordPress won’t even be available.
3) You DON’T OWN your blog
At first it may sound dumb, but you don’t own your blog. It is hosted on the web property of someone else and they can uninstall it if they wish so. They did so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. That means all your hard work on your blog, all those countless hours of blog post writing could very well disappear within seconds.
In the other hand, you are the True owner of your site, then getting a self-hosted site on your own domain name. If you like you can call your blog, for example, “YourName.com” or “YourAwesomeBlog.com” with.com,.co.uk,.net,.org or practically every other web suffix, you can finish it. Add videos, photos, and content to the unlimited bandwidth plus the free themes and you have a good combination.
And how much of a domain name and hosting? Hopefully not as much as you think. It typically works between $5 and $10 a month, depending on your hosting provider.
Step 3 – Create your own domain blog (if you select a self-hosting domain and a custom domain):
Based on the assumption that you have chosen WordPress, I will step forward and, if you have not, you should. Seriously that’s the best.
If you’re still really confused about what it’s like to be a self-hosted blog, then let me explain how you can set up one.
You’ll need to get your domain name and pick a hosting company that will host your blog.
Domain: The domain of your website is simply the URL. Examples: google.com (the domain is Google.com), Facebook.com (The domain is Facebook.com). Look? See? Simple and quick.
Hosting: Basically, hosting is the service that places the website on the internet so that everyone else can access it. Everything will be saved there. Think of it as a cloud computer hard drive where your blog is being saved.
Step 4 – Designing your WordPress blog
Let’s get your blog to look exactly as you want it to. You can either go to Appearance > Themes to select a new theme and install a free WordPress theme.
Note, the design of your blog should represent both your personality and you, but also what the blog is all about. There’s no point in getting a football-oriented theme if your blog is about tennis.
Blog should be easy to navigate when people choose to hang around. If it’s tricky and difficult to read it, people won’t stay.
Step 5 – Promote your blog
It’s just the start to create a well-designed blog and write great material. You’ll need to spend some time promoting it in order to get readers for your blog, particularly when you start first. Most of the Blog Marketing strategies are;
- Alert Your Inner Circle
- Use Social Media
- Comment on Other Blogs
- Engage with Your Readers
- Collaborate
- Submit to Search Engines
- Create an Email List
- SEO