Have you been wondering how to start a blog but didn’t know where to begin? You, my friend, is in the right place! Starting a blog can seem like a daunting task… How do you register your own domain? How is a niche blog different from a regular blog? What is the cost? Those are just a few of the many questions we will be answering in this step-by-step guide to starting your blog from scratch.

Topics:
Your mission statement The technical setups Setting up your WordPress Essential blog ingredients Blogging for longterm success
All strategies mentioned in this guide are here to help you run a successful, thriving niche blog with an active audience base. These strategies may not be relevant if your sole intent and purpose are to blog for yourself or for keeping an online journal. That said, if you already have a blog and are looking to create bigger impacts with it down the line, many of these strategies will be extremely helpful for you.
Before we start, you will want to download the Blog Plannin’ Workbook to follow along. Just enter your details below and get them straight to your inbox:
1. Your mission statement
So you have decided that you want to start a blog, perhaps you want to teach about a specific subject like renovations for condo owners, or share itineraries and guides focused specifically on Hawaii, or maybe you specialize in recipes that only use 5 ingredients or less. Notice how specific these topics are in these examples? Whatever the focus you have decided for your blog, the more specific you are on your blog’s topic or focus, the better the chance for success. Here’s why.
Niching down your focus
Before we begin, it is important to recognize that there are billions of blogs out there, and more are popping up every day. Simply searching for “blog” on Google will return close to 7 billion results. Unless you are only writing for yourself, you’ll probably want people to find and read your blog, right?
But how will people find your blog when there are 7 billion other blogs out there? This is where niching down comes in.
Niche adj. denoting or relating to products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.
The more you narrow down on the topic or focus of your blog, the higher the chance of people finding you. It might be worth doing some research on the blogs out there that are already in your niche. How are they performing? Do they have a nicely active user base? What are some of their most popular topics and posts?
As you start out on this journey to become a blogger, I want you to really consider some of the questions below. These questions are the exact questions I had asked myself when I started BeBright.co and they have helped me significantly in defining my goals, purpose, and strategy for my blog.
1. What type of blog do you have in mind?
A blog is essentially an outlet for information. There are different types of blogs out there, depending on what you want to write about, your blog content would vary, and so would your blog audience.
Here are some ideas on the different types of blogs you can consider:
- Visual: content where visuals are the primary focus, like using visuals to convey information (ex. infographics and videos) or showcasing art and photography.
- Informational/Guides: for convince or educate your audiences about something within your space.
- Personal/Lifestyle: tales related to your life or lifestyle, usually consists of a combination of topics (ex. fashion, food, travel, etc.)
- Reviews: can be a form of informational content where you write comprehensive reviews about a product or service.
Of course, you can also have combinations of these content types within your blog, it all depends on your topic and what you want your audiences to take away from your blog. For instance, BeBright.co is an informational and visual blog where I teach topics surrounding digital quality (search engine optimization + branding).
Keep in mind the more specific you focus on a topic, such as narrowing down to a location, a subtopic within a broad topic, and/or a specific demographic, the easier it is to determine which of these types of content will work best for you. If you are unsure of the type of content you want to write, the next question will help you narrow down your topic even further.
2. Who are you writing for?
Most of us write for other people, as I am sure you would agree. We want others to read our posts and tell us how it had helped them. But, one of the hardest hurdles to cross when it comes to blogging is also just that, getting people to engage with our content. Chances are after you have released your blog into the wild, you will be hearing crickets for a long while, months, possibly, or even years.
But, there are a couple things you can do to get a better head start on day one, and that starts with determining your audience avatar. Defining your audience is important, but to really understand who you are writing for, you must narrow it down further by defining exactly who this person is, such as their name, gender, hobbies, where they live, etc. Literally, come up with as much information as you possibly can on this person, then, every time you write a new blog post, think about this person and really ask yourself, “would my avatar find what I am writing about relevant and useful?”, “what would they search for to find my content?”
Chances are when you are just starting out, you may have this urge to write for “everybody” because you want to reach as many people as possible. I have done this myself as well when I just started blogging, only to find out that when I write for everybody, I am really writing for nobody. My bounce rate was through the roof, no one was staying on my blog. I found it difficult to stay on topic within my posts because I wanted to make sure it’s applicable to everyone. Needless to say, when I started writing for just the “one person” that mattered — my avatar, I found myself coming up with more ideas than ever before and doing more publishing of posts rather than leaving them all in drafts.
3. What value are you providing?
Value is important because it is the one ingredient that attracts and retains readers to your blog. If you are consistently cooking up blog posts that your audiences find relevant, useful, and solves a problem for them in some way, they’ll naturally return or maybe even tell their friends. That’s how you build a following.
On the other hand, imagine if you are reading a blog where the author just writes content with no real, tangible meaning or purpose, they may have shared photos and review of an interesting product, but if all they do is talk about themselves without going into detail how it can help you, you will probably leave their site. In the latter case, there were little to no value provided and you might not return to that blog in the future.
Think of it another way, imagine you are looking for a flour-less chocolate cake recipe and you land on 2 blogs that both have the recipe you are looking for. Upon weighing the credibility behind these 2 blogs and choosing the recipe to go with, you find out the first blog also share a bunch of things outside of cooking like reviews of the latest movies, or things about their dog, while the second blog focuses extensively on healthy, holistic baking recipes and nothing else, which one are you more likely to trust, not to mention come back to the next time you are looking for baking ideas?
4. Why are you blogging in the first place?
What is in it for you? When I am asking this question, I don’t mean it in a selfish kind of way. I want you to really ask yourself what it is you want out of this blog in the first place. What is your goal with this blog? Is it simply the joy of sharing and help others, or is it to practice your writing? Or perhaps are you want to make money with it, or a combination of all of these?
Your goal should be something that will mean just as much to you today as it will be 2 or 5 years from now. It should align with your personal values and deeply resonate with your passions and purpose. If you are blogging simply because you think it’ll make you money, then I suggest you forfeit the idea of starting a blog. I truly believe when you are coming from a place where you are serving first even if you don’t get any monetary returns as a result, that’s the energy that will sustain your drive to maintain and upkeep the blog in the long run.
A couple months from now, are you still going to have content to share? What about a year from now, 5 years from now? I have seen many blogs come and go simply because the owners behind them had “gotten tired” of the topic. And that’s not the only reason, sometimes owners leave because they are not seeing the rewards for their efforts, ie. in the form of visitors, followers, traffic, page views, income… you get the gist.
Which is why I cannot stress enough just how important it is to have real, tangible goals and purposes in the event that even though you don’t have any of those “validations”, you still enjoy every minute of the creation process. Being passionate in the topic definitely helps, but it is also the perseverance and that undying spirit to continuously create and serve.
Now that you have thought about those questions and you are still good with starting your blog, in the next section, I am guiding you through the step-by-step process of setting up your blog in the real world (ie. on the World Wide Web).
2. The technical setups
In this section, we’ll go over the technical setups of bringing your blog to life. Don’t worry if you are not technical, this guide is written for beginners who are just starting out and covers a lot of the basic set up in step-by-step detail so you won’t get lost. Here we go!
Deciding your blog platform
One of the most common questions people ask before they set up their blogs is which blogging platform they should go with.
There are so many out there on the market… WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Blogger, Medium, and more. What are the differences and benefits of each? I made a little chart below that rates a few of the most popular platforms on its available features.
WordPress.org | WordPress.com | Squarespace | Blogger | Medium | Wix | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Self-hosted | ✔ | |||||
✔ | ✔ | |||||
✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||
SSL Security | ✔ | ✔ | ||||
Themes | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
Plugins | ✔ | ✔ | ||||
Ads | ✔ | ✔ | ||||
SEO-friendly | ✔ | ✔ | ||||
Free hosting | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||
Pricing | $0* | $0 | $16-$25/month | $0 | $0 | $0-$25/month |
Suitable for: | ||||||
Personal | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Visual/Portfolio | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||
Business | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||
Professional | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||
*Web hosting cost is extra. |
I personally use and recommend self-hosted WordPress (aka. WordPress.org) as my platform of choice. Because it is self-hosted, you get to manage your own web hosting and you can manipulate the platform as it fits your needs. It is the most robust platform out there that gives you FULL control over your content and design. In fact, according to the latest stats on their website, close to 30% of the web out there are powered by WordPress, that’s pretty insane!
However, there is a small downside to a self-hosted WordPress blog, which is that it does require somewhat of a learning curve to set it up. Once it’s set up though, what’s right out of the box is straightforward enough for you to start using right away. Customizations are usually pretty simple, especially if your theme is set up for that. Otherwise, there are also many plugins and extensions available that can fit your needs.
If a self-hosted WordPress doesn’t sound like something that’s right for you, Squarespace would be my recommendation if you are looking for something that is fully-managed (meaning, web hosting is all included in one bundle with the platform), easy to customize, and the most SEO-friendly.
In the following sections, you’ll learn how to set one up for yourself!
3 Simple steps to go from zero to blog:
Step 1. Registering your domain name
Your domain name is your virtual web address that others can access to get to your blog. Registering a domain name takes 2 minutes, but the hardest part is coming up with a name. A general rule of thumb is to keep your domain name short and easy to remember. Avoid dashes and underscores no matter how much you are tempted to include them, and try to stick to .com or .co extensions.
If you are stuck on a name, I highly recommend Bust-A-Name to help with coming up with a list of domain name ideas based on the keywords and phrases you enter.
Naming your blog after yourself: 9 times out of 10, the domain name you want is probably taken. If you have got a unique name, why not name your blog after yourself? Naming your blog after yourself is a great way to brand yourself and stand out as an expert in your field.
Once you have settled on a good domain name, there are 2 ways to register:
- Register through a domain registrar. Simply enter the name you’d like, confirm it’s available, add to cart, and check-out. The cost for a single domain is usually around $10-15/year, renewable on an annual basis. Pro tip: always stick to one domain registrar for all of your domains. It’s much easier to keep track of this way and you won’t have to waste money down the line transferring your domains between registrars.
- Register through signing up with a web hosting plan. Bluehost, one of the most affordable and beginner-friendly web hosts out there, offers a free domain name with any of their shared web hosting packages. In the next step, I will show you exactly how you can get one.
Step 2. Sign up for web hosting
Your web hosting provider is the company that provides you the virtual storage you need to house your blog platform, content, images, databases… in other words all of your website data and files. Think of these as your virtual file storage that is accessible to you anytime, anywhere in the world. Perfect for when you are on the road or away from your computer.
Here’s what to do:
1. Visit Bluehost and select a plan. The basic plan is more than enough for you at this stage, there are always opportunities to upgrade later on.
2. Enter the domain name you have determined in the previous step.
3. In the next screen, you will be prompted to create your account by filling out your personal information, payment details, and selecting your package. You have the option of paying for a 12-month price, 24-month price, or a 36-month price. For good reasons, the longer the duration of your package the more your savings.
Pro tip: Be sure to opt-in for Domain Privacy Protection as it hides your personal information when people look up your domain.
4. Click on Submit. Once your payment has been processed, you will be prompted to create a password for your account.
Once you have set a password, it’s time to install your blogging platform on your domain.
Step 3. Installing WordPress
1. Login to your Bluehost control panel. Once inside, you should see a screen with a whole bunch of icons. This might be overwhelming at first, but you probably wouldn’t use most of these anyway, if ever.
2. Look for the icon to install WordPress.
3. The Bluehost Marketplace will open up, click on the link at the bottom to start the installation wizard.
4. You will be prompted to select the domain you would like to install WordPress on. Choose the domain you have just registered. The page will take a moment to verify the domain is valid, once it’s verified, click Next.
5. Enter your installation settings. The Admin credentials will be your WordPress user and login information. Make sure to also checkmark the 2 checkboxes at the bottom, then click Install.
6. WordPress will start installing on your domain, wait until you get the Installation Complete checkmark. Ignore the progress bar and click on the view credentials here link once prompted.
Skip the next step on the screen and click on the link under “Installed to”, we are now ready to set up your WordPress!
3. Setting up your WordPress
The 5 Essentials steps to set up your WordPress blog:
- Getting started with WordPress
- Installing a theme
- Installing plugins
- Updating your permalink structure
- Connecting with Google Analytics
Step 1. Getting started with WordPress
1. First, log in to WordPress with your administrator credentials.
2. Then, follow the onscreen prompts to set up your new blog!
3. Once your blog is up and running, familiarize yourself with your new WordPress dashboard and the different menu options. WordPress is an extremely easy to use platform so don’t worry if you don’t get it right away. There are tons of information and tutorials on the web available so if you are ever in doubt, your answers are only a search away.
Step 2. Installing a theme
1. To set a theme, navigate to Appearances > Themes and then Activate a theme of your choice.
2. If you’d like to install new themes, you have a few options:
- Free themes: Head on over to Appearances > Themes > Add New Theme for a directory of themes you can directly download and install within WordPress.
- Paid themes:
- ThemeForest has one of the best paid WordPress theme collections on the web. High-quality, professional themes are plenty for a low investment of $40-60 each.
- StudioPress is my personal go-to for their highly customizable framework, Genesis (which I currently use). They also have gorgeous premium themes available priced at around $99 a piece.
- Plus, Elegant Themes, Template Monster, and Themify.
- Customized themes:
- UpWork If you prefer a more customized route, you can hire freelancers who may be up for the challenge!
- Work with me My signature package offers personalized branding + website theme integration. If you are looking to craft a premium brand that’s tailored to your goals and visions, I’d love to work together!
Step 3. Installing plugins
Plugins are like upgrades, they provide extra functionalities and features to your blog. To install a plugin, head over to Plugins > Add New, once you have installed your plugin, click on Activate and that’s it!
Listed below are some of my favorite plugins that I highly recommend you to install:
- Yoast SEO: An excellent plugin that forces you to write better content, not only does it evaluate your writing, it is also the ultimate SEO cheat machine for people who don’t know SEO to learn what it’s all about.
- Contact Form 7: Emails made simple. How many times have you skipped contacting someone because they only had their email address listed on their site? Build your own form on your WordPress blog and remove the headache from your visitors.
- AccessPress Social Share: Easily share your posts on social media with these simple share icons.
- Simple Social Icons: Link to your social networks on your blog wherever widgets are accepted.
- WP to Twitter: Automatically post a tweet to Twitter every time you have published a new blog post.
If you are using the Genesis framework for your themes, here are some additional plugins I would also recommend (note these are Genesis-only):
- Blox Lite – Content Blocks for Genesis: Add a content block anywhere in your Genesis theme – great for customizing your blog’s look and feel without knowing how to code.
- Genesis Custom Headers: Similar to Blox Lite except it is just for adding a content block in the header area above your post/pages.
- Genesis Simple Share: Similiar to AccessPress Social Share above but a much more lightweight version for easy social media sharing of your posts.
Step 4. Updating your permalink structure
A simple but impactful step, permalinks are the custom URL structure for your webpages.
By default in WordPress, your permalinks are usually in the /year/month/post-name/
format. What we want is instead of having those extra numbers in your URL, which are typically irrelevant from a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective, we want to select an alternative format. In this case, simply /post-name/
will suffice.
To configure your permalink format, navigate to Settings > Permalinks:
Select the “Post name” option and click Save Changes. You are all set!
Step 5. Connecting with Google Analytics
A slightly more advanced but essential step and one that I would recommend to ANY website. If you are unfamiliar with Google Analytics, it is a useful, free tool for capturing web traffic and referral data. Metrics like which of your blog post is getting the highest number of visitors? Where are your visitors coming from? Who is linking to your site? Which days of the week do you have the highest traffic to your site? Etc.
To set up Google Analytics on your new WordPress blog, follow these simple steps:
1. Head on over to Google Analytics. Click on the Sign In link at the top. A dropdown will appear, select Analytics.
2. Login to your Google account or create a new Google account if you don’t already have one.
3. Once you have signed in, click on Sign up in the following screen:
4. Under New Account, select Website, then fill out the rest of the form with your information:
Once you are done, click on the blue button to continue. A popup will appear asking you to read and accept the Terms & Condition, select I agree once you are done.
5. In the next screen, you will be given your unique Google Analytics Tracking ID and tracking script. Go ahead and copy the script highlighted in the big box at the top:
There are a few ways to add these scripts to your WordPress, but to keep things simple, we are going to go with the plugin option. Following the same plugin installation from step 6 above, download the Insert Headers and Footers plugin.
Once the plugin have been installed and activated, navigate to your plugin configurations (found under Settings > Insert Headers and Footers):
Paste in the tracking script you have copied from Google Analytics into the Scripts in Header box:
Click Save.
It will take between 12-24 hours for any traffic data to be captured. After 24 hours, you will be able to access those metrics under All Web Site Data > Reporting in your Google Analytics account.
Congratulations, your blog is ready to go!
4. Essential blog ingredients
Now that your blog is good to go, it’s time to get serious. As I am sure you’d have noticed by now, running a blog is no easy feat: it is not just sharing content, but rather sharing with strategy and purpose. In this section, I am laying out the top 3 essential ingredients to running a thriving blog.
Ingredient 1: Write yourself a fancy about page
Who is the person behind that blog? Don’t we all wonder that the first time we land on a blog?
Personally, my reason had always been to understand who the blogger is, is he or she similar to me? If they are similar, that means their content might be more relevant to me. I would also be curious to understand what this person specializes in, and how they got to where they are today. The more of my questions that are answered, the higher the credibility and trustworthiness I have towards the blogger and their content.
As you outline your about page, here are some ideas of things to include:
- Your story
- Why did you start your blog
- How you got to where you are today
- Some quick facts about yourself
- What your hobbies and interests are
- Behind-the-scenes of a day in your life
And don’t forget to add a photo of yourself as well! Feel free to take a look at my about page for ideas.
Ingredient 2: Include visuals in your blog posts
Regardless of what type of blog you have, pictures are a must. These can be stock photography, graphics, charts, icons, photos of yourself, anything. Not only are pictures worth 1000 words, they are also visually engaging for the readers. Remember, your readers are always looking for ways to connect with you so finding pictures that speak to your brand as well to your readers are one of the best ways to capture their attention and keep them exploring your blog.
Ingredient 3: Link to relevant external resources
If you are blogging about a product, tool, or an influencer in your niche, it’s always a good idea to include those external links in your post just in case your readers want to learn more about them. It could be a link to their homepage, a sales page, or even a social media account.
Remember… If your link is an affiliate link, be proactive in letting your readers know. Some people may not be comfortable clicking on an affiliate link,
by letting them know, you are also building your trustworthiness.
5. Blogging for longterm success
Tip 1: Coming up with an editorial calendar
Editorial calendars are excellent ways to keep yourself accountable. What it is is a plan of all your blog tasks laid out in a calendar or journal format.
I like to rotate my editorial calendar on a 2-week cycle. You may want to have yours stay the same within a given cycle too or you may want it to vary over time. I find it’s much easier to keep track of what my tasks are when they are always happening on the same day every other week, but of course, yours may be different depending on your needs.
Here are some ideas of the type of tasks you can include as you build your calendar out:
- New blog posts
- Social media updates
- Writing days
- Blog maintenance
- Post graphic creation
- Social engagements
- Research days
Pro tip: Try batching similar tasks to one day in your calendar. Don’t bombard yourself with different types of tasks in a single day, and definitely stay away from multitasking if you can help it! Trust me, it will be much easier to stay consistent and make progress if you focus on one thing at a time.
Tip 2: Optimizing for search engines
When it comes to traffic generation, search engines are going to be one of your main sources of traffic. This is why it is absolutely essential that you prepare your blog posts so they can be found by your target audience. Here are some key points to help you optimize your blog posts:
Keywords and/or phrases: Which keywords or phrases do your audience have to search for to land on your blog? Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to plan out what keywords to focus on throughout each post and highlight them throughout your content:
- Page title: Your page titles should always be between 50-65 characters. Google search results typically display up to 65 characters including spaces and symbols. Be sure to have your keyword in your post title as well.
- Page URL: In WordPress, you can set a permalink with every blog post. Try keeping your links short, sweet, and only contain your keywords or phrase. For instance, if your blog post is titled “The 10 reasons you should take up hand lettering”, your permalink could be condensed to something like “reasons-to-hand-lettering”.
- Page description: Useful for increasing clickthroughs through search engine results. This is a roughly 150-160 character description of what your post is about.
I highly recommend installing the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress which reminds you to configure these properties for every blog post. If you want to learn more about finding the best keywords for your next blog post, check out my extensive guide on keyword research.
Links: Links can be external or internal. External links are links to your blog from a source outside of your own site, while internal links are links from within your site targeting each other.
- External links are deemed as far more trustworthy and reliable than internal links according to search engines, the more third party websites that link to your blog, that is usually an indicator to search engines that you are a credible source for whatever information you share. The general rule of thumb is to link between your posts but also connect with external influencers to get your website linked from their sites, usually this can be done via commenting on other people’s sites with a link to your own blog (of course, not as a mean of self-promotion but rather to leave a relevant comment), guest posting, or getting featured.
- Internal links, on the other hand, are great ways to retain readers on your blog and keep them reading. Aim to include at least 2-3 internal links with every blog post to maintain engagement. It also tells your readers just what an expert you are in your niche!
Page content: Is your content valuable and relevant? Does it actually help the people who are searching your keywords? Are you on-topic throughout your writing? These are all questions that play a huge role in raising your credibility.
Images: Often overlooked but frequently picked up by search engines. Include any keywords in your image file names and image titles (or ALT tags). These are great ways to get your images to show up in Google image search results, which is yet another way for your audiences to find you.
Page speed: Fast loading web pages not only provide a great user experience, it also retains readers on your site. There are a number of ways to speed up page load, especially optimizing your images for the web, deactivating any inactive plugins, and reduce unnecessary content and assets that are part of your page template. I have written a more in-depth guide about speeding up your page load here.
Tip 3: Creating shareable social media graphics
Are you a visual person? One of the things I find myself often doing as I scroll through my social feeds is how frequently I’d skip over text updates but stop when I see a visual update. In fact, our brains process visual information 60,000 times faster when text, which totally doesn’t surprise me.
As you blog more, you will want to create shareable social media graphics for each and every one of your posts. Not only because they are great visual representations of your content, they are yet another way for your audiences to engage with you.
Some ideas of what you can have in your graphics:
- Blog post title
- A quote pulled from your post
- Certain highlights pulled from your post
- Facts and figures
- An action your audience can take based on your post
You can also use combinations of these in a single graphic, the key is to be creative and keep the text to a minimum. It is a visual graphic after all! Keep in mind that depending on which network you want to promote on, the sizes for your graphics can also vary. Here are the most recent social graphic sizes for your reference (as of January 2018):
- Twitter: 440px x 220px in preview, 1024px x 512px expanded view
- Facebook: 1200px x height varies
- Instagram: 1080px x 1080px
- Pinterest: scaled to 236px in preview. General rule of thumb is to create them as a vertical rectangle, the longer the more real estate your pin is taking up on your audience’s screen (the better)! Infographics are also great for Pinterest.
- LinkedIn: minimum 646px x 220px
- YouTube: minimum 1280px x 720px (16:9 ratio)
- Tumblr: 500px x 750px in feed, 1280px x 1920px expanded view
- Google Plus: 497px x height varies
Tip 4: Building a mailing list
When a reader goes to your blog, reads a post or two, and then leaves, none of their information is captured (other than the basic demographic/technology data that’s captured within your Google Analytics). If you want to notify that same reader that you have just published a new blog post or that you are releasing a product, there’s no way you can find and target that reader again.
This is precisely why having a mailing list on your blog from day one is so important. Your mailing list is essentially a list of your readers’ email addresses. You might be asking “but why should they give me their email address in the first place?” To answer this question, let me begin by directing the same question back at you: what would make YOU offer up your email address?
You will probably answer… well, there’s gotta be something in it for you, right?
That’s why this strategy is really a 2-step process. Step 1 is providing that incentive to your visitors to propel them to opt-in, and step 2 is to provide the opt-in form for them to actually type their email address into.
- An incentive: Provide something of value that your audience would get in exchange for their email address. This incentive could be a free download (kind of like what I am doing at the bottom of this blog!), a free checklist, an ebook, an e-course, some bonus strategies, etc. Again, be creative. What is your post about? What can you provide in addition to the post itself that the reader might find helpful?
- The opt-in form: There are a few ways you can have this opt-in form on your blog. Using a free WordPress form plugin like Contact Form 7 to manually keep track, or use an automated third-party tool like ConvertKit (what I use) or MailChimp (more beginner-friendly) that will manage and host your list for you.
Tip 5: Maintaining an active social media presence
In today’s digital-centric world, connections are hugely important in positioning yourself as an expert amongst all the competition out there. If you are an introvert like me, you will find this strategy extremely difficult to carry out. Don’t be disheartened, though, with practice you can get better at it. The important thing is to take a deep breath and start. One tweet, 2 follows, 3 replies… every step counts.
Not sure where to begin? Here are some ideas to help you start:
- Follow other bloggers and influencers in your niche
- Share and retweeting their content
- Comment on their blogs and social updates
- Engage with your own followers by replying to every tweet
- Share your own posts and tweets regularly on your social media accounts
When people see that you are active, they are more likely to trust you and follow you. When you engage with other bloggers and influencers regularly, those bloggers and influencers might follow you back one day and be more open to collaborations down the line. You never know where your connections might lead, so keep at it and keep reaching out!
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And there you have it, how to start a blog in a nutshell. I hope you have found this post helpful. Many of these sub-topics I have brought up can be an entire lesson in itself, I have only scratched the surface of what maintaining a blog is all about, the rest is up to you!
Wishing you all the best in your blogging journey. If this guide had helped you, I would love to hear it — let me know in the comments below!
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