This is a practical guide explaining blogging for beginners, the do’s, don’ts, tips, and tricks to get started, promote and maintain their new blog site.
Blogging for you can be a means of sharing your thoughts or a way to generate passive income. While it may seem like just creating a blog website in WordPress and publishing fresh content, there’s so much more to it.
Especially with the intense competition on the internet, only a practical and planned approach to blogging can bring you the desired results.
After all, if you are already putting all your best efforts by publishing high-quality content on your site, you might as well read this guide that thoroughly explains blogging for beginners.
- Prepare for a new blog, know what you want
- Choosing a blogging platform
- Blog design and customizations
- Start a WordPress Blog
- Extra tools for blogging
- Make money blogging
- Maintaining and Optimizing your WordPress blog
- Blogging for beginners:Tips and tricks for new bloggers
Step 1: Prepare for your new blog
If you are thinking about starting a blog, there are a few questions, you must ask yourself before getting started. Because blogging is wide and deep subject and can really bring you (pleasantly) surprising results if pursued properly.
There are a few questions you must ask yourself to define a clear picture of what you want to achieve. This blogging for beginners guide will help you guide through the most important phases of starting a blog.
To make sure that you are heading in the right direction, you have to make the following points clear in your mind before you start blogging.
Blogging for beginners: Define your purpose
The purpose of blogging can be different for different bloggers. It is really necessary to identify the purpose of blogging for your website because that helps you plan the approach and proceed with it.
You cannot start blogging without a long-term plan or value in your mind. Even if you start without thinking about your purpose, sooner or later you will have to stop a while and think about it. The purpose of blogging for you can be any of the following:
Share information, knowledge
You might just want to start a blog because you have wanted to help people with the skills you have. We can call it a type of hobby blogging where you want to help people by sharing your knowledge and skills.
For example, there are programmers who blog about new programming patterns, or new updates in software, just to help people. So they create their own blog to share their programming hacks.
Earn more exposure as a professional/business entity
A website for your business is to represent it online. With regular blogging, you can make your website more interesting by talking about your business ideas and values.
Regular posts and updates make your website more interactive and interesting for your users. With more blogs, your chances to score a rank in the organic search also increases.
Make money through monetized blogging
There are blogs that serve as the main source of income for the blogger. There are several ways you can make money through your blogs.
I stumbled upon a knitting blog that provides some patterns for free, while the advanced patterns are paid. The blog is a good example of a carefully planned and monetized blog.
A part of your content marketing strategy
Whether your blog is service-based, or product based, it can always work wonders as a part of your content marketing strategy. Writing useful series of articles for a pre-defined subject to attract the attention of the targetted readers works for almost every product/service/
Promote your service or product
Blogs are a wonderful way to promote your service or products. You can write in-depth articles on your website to explain your services/products to your visitors.
You can, in fact, set up a blog along with your eCommerce website & write product review posts, or posts related to the products you sell.
Blogs in association with some other channel
Blogs can also be complementary. You can start professional blogging alongside your YouTube channel or a business website. For example, there can be a blog for your eCommerce or Learning management system. You may have come across many YouTube channels with a corresponding blog.
A blog associated with your website
If you already own a website and have an unused blog section on your site, you should probably start using it. Here are some of the advantages of starting a blog with your corporate business websites.
- Helps you drive organic traffic to your site
- Improves user involvement on your site
- A good way to keep your client base/users informed and updated
- Opportunities to convert better with blogs
Your reason to start a blog can be any, but the process remains the same. Also, the efforts and persistence required to keep it going, stay the same.
Starting your blogs with a clear idea in your mind will help you make better choices. Besides, it also helps you plan the course of actions for future implementations.
Blogging for beginners: Research and analyze
- List out all the impressive website that you’ve been & that inspires you
- A little bit of competitive analysis
- Decide on the name and content of the main pages of your site
- Design a menu structure such that all the important links are accessible
- Make a list of all the elements you want to show on your homepage (This will help you choose a theme for your site)
In short, you should know about the territory you are about to enter, and for that a little research and know how is must before you move forward.
Once you have a clear idea about the things mentioned here, these are the things you should know before you start your blog.
Blogging Basics: Things you should know before you start a blog →
Step 2: Choosing Blog Platform and Creating A blog site
When it comes to blogging for beginners, there are many important choices you need to make before you get started. Because maintaining and updating blog/articles already is very difficult. So you need to find a blogging platform that is easy to use and maintain.
There are several free & self-hosted blogging platforms you can choose from. However, we highly recommend using WordPress.
Because it is so easy to start a blog with WordPress. Even if you have never created a website before, and totally new to the technical world, you can still create and maintain your own blog with WordPress.
WordPress is an opensource programme that is free to download and use. Moreover, it makes blogging for beginners a breeze. The WordPress dashboard comes with simple options to let you control your site.
Choose WordPress themes and plugins →
Step 3 -Blogging for beginners: Design & Customizations
When you choose WordPress to create your blog site, you have ample options to choose the design of your website. There are hundreds and thousands of WordPress blog themes that you can purchase or download for free to create your blog site.
Because even if you have the best quality content in your website, the design actually matters.
Blogging for beginners: How to choose a WordPress theme for your blog?
- More than anything, you need a responsive design for your website. Your readers should be able to read flawlessly regardless of the device they use to access your site.
- Choose a design that focuses on content
- The theme you use must come with enough customization options to make your site look the way you want
- The design must complement your blog niche. Make a list of all the features you need for your site, and compare it with the features of your blog template you have chosen
- Your WordPress blog design template should support high-quality multi-media elements like images and videos
- If you are new to WordPress, make sure that your WordPress Blog theme is easy to use. Read the reviews and contact support if you must
- Your WordPress blog theme should be safe, SEO friendly and fast
- While choosing the blog design, focus on the blog page template. How your blogs are presented to your readers is important.
All these WordPress themes are easy to use, highly customizable and professionally designed to make blogging for beginners easier.
So without touching a line of code, you can create amazing blogs on your own. No need to hire professionals or spend hours designing your site. Getting your blog website live is a matter of minutes with these blog themes. It is affordable and easy.
Choose a WordPress Blog Theme →
Step 4 – How to create a WordPress Blog for beginners
Getting your WordPress blog is easier than ever with the available technologies and platforms like WordPress. You can become a blogger in minutes
With WordPress, you can create and manage your blog on your own. Because when you run a blog, you must have the full control over your website.
Since WordPress was designed for blogging, it comes with all the features and facilities to aid you to create and manage your blog site. There are a few things that you will need to create your blog website with WordPress.
- Domain name: The unique name/address of your blog site, to identify it on the internet.
- Hosting space: A rented server space to host your website.
- WordPress theme: A ready-to-use template to create your website. There are abundant designs with diverse designs to choose from. You can either choose a premium WordPress theme or download a free WordPress blog theme.
- WordPress plugins & blog tools [Optional]: Tools and add-ons with additional features to enhance the usability of your blogs.
With these accessories, you are ready to start your blog website. There are typically 5 steps to get started with your WordPress blog:
- Choose a domain name and procure hosting: Depending on your requirements, you must choose the domain name for your website. Also, subscribe to a reliable host for hosting space.
- Install WordPress: This step will be eliminated with some advanced hosting that comes with WordPress installed by default. Check out WordPress Optimized hosting from Bluehost.
- Choose a WordPress theme, buy/download & install it: It takes just a few minutes to install the theme on your WordPress setup.
- Customize your WordPress website as per your requirements: Now you can change the default settings of your WordPress theme to fit your blog’s requirements.
However, creating and maintaining a blog in 2018 is much more than just making a site live. It is unlike a simple business website where you just publish a site with some static pages.
Create a WordPress Blog in 20 minutes →
Step 5: Enhance your blogs for your readers
Blogging for beginners is a bigger challenge because there are too many tasks to take care of. For example, you are supposed to regularly write articles and publish them, take care of promotions and make sure that the people coming to your site enjoy their reading.
No matter what blogging platform you choose, there are always optional tools and programs to modularly add more features to your new blogs.
With these functions, blogs can be made as interesting as possible. There can be different ways to enhance your blogs and make it more appealing to your readers.
There are different tools to:
- Improve the readability of your content
- Check the SEO of your article
- Grammer check and spell check
- Enhance the readability of your site
- Added features to make money through blogging
- Help with image and media optimization
Besides the ones mentioned above, there can be different tools for the different purpose. Ultimately, these blogging tools for beginners intend to help you m optimize your blogs for the readers as well as search engines.
Best blogging tools for beginners →.
Step 6 – Blogging for Beginners: Make money blogging
Creating and maintaining blogs need time, investments and patience. Once your blog starts receiving enough hits, you must think about the ways you can monetize it.
With all the efforts you put in to sustain your blogs, you would want to receive some benefits in return.
Following are the tips to sustain your blogs and maintain it’s usability among the readers:
- Choose a blog template flexible enough to let you monetize your site
- Pick a design that allows displaying advertisements on the sidebars
- If you want to monetize your blogs in future, start working on building your brand and promoting your website right from the beginning
- Only quality wins. So make sure that whatever you put on your site is of the best quality
- Build long-term plans for monetizing your blogs
- Earning passive income through blog takes time. Patience & persistence is the key
- Keep away from the black hat techniques to earn through your blogs. Rely on subtle advertisements, affiliate marketing, etc.
- Try not to overdo anything. Too many advertisements on your page that overshadows your content may annoy your readers
Monetizing your website may or may not be your primary goal, but after a while, your website can start earning for you.
Step 7 – Promoting & Maintaining your WordPress blog
You need to make consistent efforts to promote your blogs and bring it to the readers’ notice. This can be done by properly promoting your blogs.
Moreover, you also need to take care of the search friendliness of your site. SEO is one of the most important parts of your website building. No matter how much you invest in paid advertising and direct references. You always need some organic traffic and that’s why SEO is vital.
Blogging for beginners: SEO facts you should know before getting started
- Choose an SEO friendly theme, with SEO optimized code
- Use SEO plugins to ensure that the content & pages are well optimized
- Add optimized images with proper alt tags
- Optimize the title and subtitles of your site
- Speed is important: Learn how to speed optimize your blog
- Use external tools and editors to enhance the readability of your site
- Pay attention to the SEO basics: Titles, keywords, optimized images, etc.
You can learn a lot about SEO from this guide.
Where SEO helps you attract organic traffic to your site, there are other ways through which you can bring traffic to your site. They work well for almost any blog niche or a multipurpose blog. Be your own marketing expert for your blog using these DIY techniques.
Blogging for beginners: How to Promote Your New Blog →.
Blogging for beginners: Tips and tricks for a successful blog
- Research well before each blog: Besides fresh and unique data, make sure that you provide your users with the latest, refined information.
- Blog Consistently: Keep posting your visitors with new blogs every once in a while. Regular blogging
- Write for your readers: Let each of your blogs be about your readers. What you write should not be about what you want to tell your readers, make it about what your readers want to read.
- Listen to your reader: Your websites’ readers must be paid for their loyalty. Don’t just reply to their comments but also consider any advice/request they make.
- Write – Read – Refine: That is how you can write quality, error-free content.
- Quality counts: You have to keep in mind that ultimately, it is quality and not the number of articles that matter. So whatever you write, make sure it is comprehensive, easy to understand and provides value to your readers.
- Evaluate how the posts you write can help your audience: What matters most is the value your writings provide
- Make sure your blog is mobile friendly: When running blogs, you cannot afford to lose the traffic
- Choose your topic smartly: More than how you write, what matters is what you write about.
- Write unique content, Never copy: what your users need is fresh, unique and useful information. And Google hates copied content, so avoid it at all costs. Take your time and create content that is different and provides a value to your users.
- Design matters too: The theme/design you use matters a lot. You may think that quality content is all you need, but the design of your blog has a significant impact on readability and the overall performance of your blog.
- Title and keywords: The titles and subtitles of your blog are very important. Make sure that the titles and subtitles are intuitive and reflect exactly what the content following it explains.
- Engage with your readers: Your readers will really like it when you start interacting with them. It makes them feel that their voice is heard and their opinion matters. A good networking and happy readers are a key to a successful blog.
- Focus on readability: Make sure you write content that is easy to read and understand. You may be expert in your field but remember to go easy on your readers.
- Have patience: You will only find disappointments if you start measuring statistics too early. Blogs take time to reach the targeted audience and drive traffic. Therefore, what you can do is continue with your efforts and know that you cannot expect instant results.
- Internal Linking: Make sure that you provide your readers with enough resources for further reading. Internal links are good for SEO,
And now you are good to get started
These were the blogging basics that can really help you get started with your website. Even though starting a blog may look a little difficult, you have to keep in mind that it always gets easier once you get started.
Also, blogging for beginners is much more than getting a blog website online in 2018. With the cut-throat competition and thousands of blog websites online, you have to focus on promotion, maintenance, etc.
However, there is no need to be overwhelmed with all the efforts it takes. It will be all worth it once your blog starts gaining enough traction.