What Is A Blog?

A blog is a personal collection of online posts created by a person or company on its website. Think of blog posts like online articles that cover various topics on a particular topic or similar topics. For example, there are blogs that focus on specific topics like celebrities, food, fashion, business, technology, pets, parenting, beauty, and many other things. The list of blog topics is endless, and the blog niches can be broad or highly specific. Your blog can be about anything you want it to be. Here are a few tips and tricks to help get you started with creating your blog! 

6 Tips on starting a blog successfully 

The success of your blog relies heavily on how well you plan. It’s not hard for anyone to start a blog, but if you’re looking to launch your blog successfully and keep it performing well, you’ll want to follow these ten tips that will help you plan for a winning blog.  

#1 Identify the goals and niche for your blog

The first place to start is figuring out why you want to start a blog. 

• What’s driving you? 
• What are your goals? 
• Do you want to start a blog because you’d like to share your experiences and knowledge on a particular topic? 
• What skills and knowledge do you have that make people want to read your blog?
• Do you know who your target audience is going to be?
• How much time can you realistically dedicate to your blog each month? 

These questions and others are very important because they will help you lay the foundation for your blog, the ongoing content, and every activity relating to your blog going forward. If your blog is personal, you may want to name your blog. Choose the name carefully and think about how it will work with the website domain you choose.  Sit down and brainstorm blog post ideas to help you with a blog name that has a meaning. It should be a name that can capture the attention of your target audience. If it is a business blog, it may or may not have a name.  

#2 Select the best platform and design your blog

Not all website hosts are the same. It’s important to make sure that the company that you select for your blog will be able to meet your needs as your blog grows. There are many web hosting companies like Siteground, Bluehost, Godaddy, and others to choose from. Do your homework to ensure they offer the features that you need. After you’ve done this and selected your domain for your site, you will need to design your blog. There are tonnes of really great blog themes out there, most for WordPress that you can customize to fit the look, feel, and layout of your perfect blog design. Make it your own in a way that compliments the name of your blog as well as your content. The appearance of your blog is important for attracting readers. After all, who would want to stay on a site that has no real style or structure? When you’re selecting a platform and website host you need to consider at least these things before you make the leap.  

• Layout
• Functioning
• Navigation
• Colors
• Maintenance
• Complexity
• Integrations and plugins
• Support
• Scalability
• Performance
• Security
• Stability

Jumping in with both feet can set your blog up for failure. Make sure your website hosting company can meet your current and future goals for at least a year to two, and that the platform you select works best for the type of blog structure you want to create. Take your time with this step to avoid unnecessary stress later. Once you make your selection, you want to be able to focus solely on your content going forward. 

#3 Plan your blogs’ content strategy

It’s important to ensure that your blog isn’t disorganized, unfocused, or scattered all over the place. Format, structure, and of course, grammar, spelling, keywords, and overall search engine optimization (SEO) should also be well planned out. Without careful planning, your blog post may start to seem disconnected from your original goals, and ultimately from the interests of your target audience. Map out blog post topics well in advance and make sure they also have internal links to other pages or posts to help your blog rank well. 

Poor planning will also lead to dismal performance, like low traffic and search engine ranking. You know the saying “measure twice and cut once.”

#4 Post with regularity

People who have been drawn to your blog and like what they read are likely going to return, looking for more great content. If they don’t find fresh blog posts, they are likely to drop-off. Once they do, it can be difficult to get them back to your site. Make sure that you post as often as you can, either every day or once every few days. Search engines crawl your site daily and if there is nothing new to crawl, your search ranking will suffer. It’s vital to ensure that your readers know that you are dabbling. They want to know that they matter, and your commitment to providing relevant content is an indicator of your dedication to them. Make sure to use tools to help you target the right keywords so that your content can be found.

#5 Promote Your Blog

If you’ve selected the right name for your blog, blog design, and you regularly post good quality content, it is time to go to the next that will help you start a winning blog. Promotion! People around the world have no way of knowing that your blog even exists unless you promote it. You can do this by sharing each of your blog posts on your social media channels (make sure to set these up), telling everyone about your blog, sharing with email subscribers, and of course making sure that your blog uses one of the top SEO tool plugins like Yoast, SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant, SEO Squirrly, The SEO Framework, or others to optimize your keywords so that people can find you when they search the internet using keywords. Sharing is caring! 

#6 Use website analytics to measure your blog success 

Measuring blog performance is one of the steps that many people miss. Remember, if you can’t measure how well each of your posts are doing, there’s no way to know how well your blog is doing as a whole. It’s essential to know which blog post topics your audience is gravitating towards. What they are reading the most is an indication of the types of content you should be expanding upon. 

You should use top analytics tools like Google Analytics, SEMRush, Moz, Ubersuggest, Alexa.com, and more. These tools help you to measure traffic to each post, keyword performance, your blog ranking against competitors, and much more. Compare these tools carefully because they aren’t all the same. 

This is not the end of the work to be done. Get feedback from family, friends, peers, and other professionals, then adjust your strategy so that you are always improving the quality of your blog. Most importantly, don’t give up. Making the decision to become a blogger is easy, but building a successful blog takes hard work, focus, and above all else, dedication and perseverance. So make sure your goals make sense, the timing is right, and don’t give up too soon if you don’t see results fast. 

Great blogs take time. Be realistic and give your blog at least six months to a year to see good results. You’ll know whether you are on the right track based on things like website traffic, returning visitors, comments, and post views, and how well your content is shared on social media.