Congratulations on starting your journey on this, in our opinion, very noble and relatively new profession of blogging.
Yes! We consider blogging a profession.
Blogging is not only about us. It's about that one thing we want to share with the world. Something that will potentially help others live a better life.
One of the misconceptions about starting a blog is that you need to be a great writer to be a successful blogger.
However, nothing could be farther from the truth.
To become a successful writer, you need to write short sentences, construct paragraphs with no more than 3 sentences, and use words from everyday life.
This quick guide by Jeff Goins is a good starting point on how to become a good writer. It also covers a few reliable resources at the end of the article.
Without further ado, let's dive into the technicalities of how to start a blog:
- Decide on your intention
- Pick a topic
- Get your blog online
- Write!
- Optimize your blog for SEO
- Promote your blog
- Make money blogging
1. Decide on your intention
As you get started on this journey, be clear with yourself about why you are blogging. Then, jot down several intentions and slowly narrow them down.
It may feel a bit daunting, but if you get over this initial hump, the rest are technicalities that can be achieved with consistency, training, and experience.
Your goals could be personal:
- Share your story
- Advocate about something you feel strongly about
Blogging goals could also be professional:
- Grow your following
- Gain recognition with your expertise
- Teach about a particular subject
- Amplify your business or product
- Monetize
Eventually, once you're consistently posting new content in your blog, your intentions will expand. However, it's paramount that you focus on one thing initially and let your efforts sprout from that one intention.
2. Picking a topic
Suppose your intention is purely personal without the need to ever monetize your blog. In that case, it's Ok to write about any topic that interests you, without having to focus on a single subject regularly.
With a professional intention in mind, it is a bit different. You want to focus on a single topic that your audience associates your brand with.
A single topic is good for SEO. Search engines will "know" what your blog "talks about," which means it will more likely serve your blog to the correct reader.
How to go about finding a topic
A good starting point is to list various things that you're passionate about.
Progressive subjects you're curious about daily.
Topics you're constantly looking to learn more about.
Exploring more about what you're interests are
These are topics relating to the jobs you've held throughout your life. Classes you've ended up taking in school. Things that may come easy to you.
Sometimes these professions feel boring to you because you know how to do them well. These are instances that cause others to thank you, which may make you think —"Why are they thanking me? That was easy!"
That's where your gold is.
Researching what is currently a hot topic
Being aware of what is being talked about in and around the internet and reading up on Quora and Reddit about what topics are constantly bubbling up is where you may encounter exciting issues on the rise.
Your unfair advantage
Think for a few minutes about what your unfair advantage is over other people? Is it "knowing" people in a specific industry? Grasping more than the regular person about a particular topic because you have first-hand experience with it?
Finalizing your topic list
After you've exercised the methods mentioned above on finding a topic, select the top 2 or 3 that you feel most professional about.
Notice how we didn't say "passionate."
A profession is something you can focus on in the long term.
Ultimately you want to focus on a topic that you can monetize.
- Either directly: by selling a product or a service through your blog, or
- Indirectly: by being hired for your expertise.
You can also look at this article on how to choose a blog topic you love by our friends over at ConvertKit.
Selecting a name for your blog
One way to go about this is to stick with something that is descriptive of your topic. In other words, playing it safe so new readers can quickly relate to your blog.
Technically speaking, you can jot down a dozen or so names and pick the one that resonates the most with what your new blog is about.
Being descriptive of what your blog is about is great because your readers will know exactly what content they will find in your blog. However, there are downsides to that.
As an example, the domain "cookingwithsourdough(.com)" explains exactly what the blog is about, but in case you want to branch out down the line and write about other things, you're sort of limited to write only about in and around "cooking with sourdough" posts.
Otherwise, the domain name wouldn't make sense, or it could sound like spam.
The idea is to be descriptive but leave room for interpretation of what may come down the line.
3. Get your blog online
In the olden days, you had to pick a hosting company, install WordPress, install plugins, etc. And, after you've done all that, tweak any bugs or quirks that you're not happy about.
All of that before doing what you actually want to do: write and blog.
Here at blogstatic, we've streamlined this process so you can start writing your first post within a minute. We're so excited about helping bloggers that we've made the process amazingly simple. There's nothing to install, no plugins to connect, and fast hosting is included.
With blogstatic, you can create your new blog in less than a minute.
You even get a free "xyz.blogstatic.io" domain.
If you want to have your own custom (www) domain, you can purchase one at Name.com, Namecheap.com, or GoogleDomains.
4. Start writing your blog posts
Now that you have a single topic to focus on start thinking about what readers may want to read about that particular topic.
One way to go about this is to use Google Search and just type about any subject around your topic.
Here's a specific example with "architecture" as a topic:
Sidenote: If you want to get a bit fancier, purchase a service like Ahrefs, which gives you details on search results and how each keyword is ranking. It can help you with understanding how difficult a particular topic can be to rank for. The Ahrefs blog is packed with many articles on the topic.
- One subject on the topic may be: how to plan a kitchen?
- On Google Search, type "how to plan a kitchen" and look at the search results.
- Focus on first-page search results and observe what each article has to say about the subject of planning a kitchen.
- Jot down ideas on how you can write a more straightforward article, although jam-packed with only the essential information on the subject.
- Example: This post is a simpler version of the top-10 results on Google on "how to start a blog."
- We have jam-packed this article with only the essentials that you will need at this point in your journey of becoming a successful blogger.
- Start writing!
Technically speaking, this is one way of writing a blog:
- Start writing about anything that comes to mind about your selected subject on the article,
- After you've done all that, take a pause and come back to it a bit later with a fresh eye,
- Edit and refine before hitting publish.
Specific to focus on:
- Aim for the golden 1200 words: Easier to write, edit, as well as consume by your reader.
- Revolve your article around one main long-tail keyword.
- This is a keyword: kitchen
- This is a long-tail keyword: how to plan a kitchen
- Long-tail keywords have more intent.
- Single keywords are generic.
- Focus on long-tail keywords.
- Write short sentences and paragraphs with no more than 3 sentences each.
- Use photos and illustrations. Look at our ever-growing list of blogging resources with various tools at your disposal.
- Use bullet points wherever you can
- Stylize your entire article with headers, quotes, italics, and bullet points, so your post is more readable and engaging to the eye.
Remember: Internet readers are most likely scanning your article. So you want to help them find exactly what they're looking for and easily avoid sections they're already familiar with or not interested in.
Focus on evergreen content
An evergreen article can be read any day and season for years to come.
Take this post, for example. Chances are, with minor tweaks over the following months and years, it will remain relevant for some time to come.
If you can, stay away from content relating to a specific time frame, such as sports events articles or daily news. These articles will be relevant only a few days, at best, after the event has happened.
Use your energy wisely and invest it in content that can serve you and your readers for a long time to come.
This article by Milk&Tweed goes in-depth on how to write evergreen content.
How to write constantly
One mistake bloggers make is trying to cover everything in a single article around the chosen subject. For one, this is hard, and second, it will take a long time to write, edit, and publish.
In this post we briefly mention monetization, but we don't go to great lengths to explain it. So instead, we have another post on monetizing your blog that we have gracefully linked at the end of this post.
Sidenote: You want to crosslink your articles and explain what the link is about. Some blogs drop links anywhere on the text, which feels anxiety-inducing.
5. Optimize your blog for SEO
SEO, which stands for "Search Engine Optimization," is very powerful.
SEO helps readers find your blog.
People searching on Google and asking questions have high intent. Which, means that they are looking for a specific answer or a solution to which Google Search is very good at serving.
Besides your written posts, your entire blog needs to be SEO optimized, so Google knows how to read them. So it can serve it to the right reader.
With blogstatic, your pages are already SEO optimized. You don't have to install any plugins or tweak the code. You are also provided a sitemap.xml and robots.txt to submit to the Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Sidenote: We automatically include sitemap.xml to your robots.txt file, so you don't have to go through Google Search Console if you don't want to.
A "sitemap" tells Google about your most recent published posts, so it can analyze and start serving them to readers searching for your particular topic.
The way Google decides on how to serve your content is a science. However, here are a few things you can do to help Google learn that you're relevant:
- Post regularly: Posting daily is ideal; however, you want to focus on quality rather than quantity.
- Share your post on various channels: Ideally, share your content where your audience hangs out the most.
- Ask other relevant blogs to link to your articles: This is called "backlinking" and increases your domain authority. One way to achieve this is by guest posting qualitative posts on other popular blogs where you can link back to your own blog.
If you want to dig in a bit more on the topic of SEO, here's a Beginners Guide on SEO Basics packed with easily digestible SEO topics.
6. Promote your blog
Without promoting and sharing your articles, chances are no one may ever find to read them. Therefore, you need to share your blog posts everywhere you can so they accumulate visits, increase your relevance (especially in "the eyes" of search engines), and grow your domain authority.
Here are some of the channels you can promote your posts:
- Your inner circle: Friends and family
- Your Email list: Start growing an email list with Convertkit or Mailchimp
- Share your posts on social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Snapchat, TikTok, Quora, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube. See which one works best for you and double down on that.
- Republish on Linkedin: Here's a guide by Esperian on how to republish your posts on LinkedIn.
- Facebook Groups: Join relevant Facebook Groups and engage with your potential audience.
- Reschedule posts: Use tools like Buffer to batch schedule posts.
The point is to constantly share your article and repurpose it as you see fit.
7. Monetize your blog
Making money with your blog is the ultimate motivator to help you continue sharing your knowledge and expertise on the subject.
The most direct and straightforward way to make money with your blog is via advertising and ad networks such as Google AdSense.
Indirect ways of monetizing your blog include being hired to speak at conferences. For this gig to work, you need to blog for quite some time and grow your audience.
Here's our in-depth article on how to make money with your blog.
Conclusion
Blogging is a noble profession. It gives you the chance to share your views with the world. Something that comes easy to you may be life-changing for someone else across the globe.
You must get in the habit of writing every day.
Even if you cannot publish your article that same day, the more you write, the faster you communicate your ideas.
Write your first post within a minute by creating your new blog with blogstatic.
