How to Start a Successful Blog
Have you ever stumbled across a blog and, after reading it, come to the realization that the people who run it are full time bloggers? Jealousy may set it when you’re left wondering why you can’t do that for a living as well. Just starting a blog isn’t enough. You also need dynamic content and a way for your ideal readers to find you. Here is where to begin:
1) Follow your passion. Not everyone can blog about their lives remodeling and redecorating their house, or spend each day writing about what goes on in the fashion industry. Find your niche. Do you love your pets? Collect comic books? Are you obsessed with the 1970’s or 80’s? Pick a blog topic that reflects what you love and you’ll discover that you have all of the expertise that you need.
2) Pick a clever name. Don’t call it “Your name here’s – blog” unless your name happens to be famous. Come up with something creative that reflects what you’re blogging about. A commonly used comic book phrase, or 1970’s slang are both examples of things that can be twisted to become the name of your blog. Just don’t use one that’s copyrighted or you’ll be in trouble.
3) Buy your own domain name. It’s a lot easier to draw in readers if your blog is located at “clever name”.com. Since many blogging platforms offer domain mapping for a small fee (or for free) you don’t have to necessarily host it yourself, just own the domain. Visit WebsiteSpot.com for reliable and affordable blog hosting.
4) Come up with logo. Your logo doesn’t have to be complicated – it doesn’t even need graphics! All you need is a colored box with the name of the blog in a cool font. Look up the blogs that you love and get inspired by their logos.
5) Write your first post. Finally! Once the technical stuff is taken care of, you’re free to write away. Make sure to spell-check and grammar-check the post before it goes live. Your first post should include something in the way of an introduction to your blog, as well as a preview of what you’re going to be blogging about. The specialized content? Save that for your second post.
6) Include pictures. Make sure that your digital camera is at least 10mp and that you have its photo setting on “high” or “medium” quality. Once the pictures are posted to your blog you can make them smaller so that the page doesn’t take forever to load, but they need of decent quality first.
7) Join a blogging network. Once you have several posts under your belt, it’s time to get the word out. Go to Ning.com and find blog groups that fit into your geographic area and blog topic. Feel free to join several of them. You’ll pick up from traffic from any networks that you’re a member of.
8) Make sure that search engines can find you. Do a search on Yahoo and Google about submitting a link. It won’t cost you anything, and all you’ll have to do is fill out a small form and tell them your URL. After a period of time, the search engines will crawl your site and it will start showing up.
No matter what you choose to blog on, make sure that you have fun doing it. The next thing you know you’ll be the one who’s a professional blogger providing inspiration to others!