If you are thinking of starting a blog there are a lot of things to think about, so where do you start? Whether you are considering adding a blog to your business website or starting a blog from scratch here are 5 things to think about before you start.
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| For a successful blog you need a bit of planning before you start |
What You Need To Know When Starting A Blog
1. There Are No Guarantees
If you want to blog for your love of writing and you genuinely don’t care if anyone reads it then that’s fine, but most people will have a different goal. Whether you want to start a blog to raise awareness of an issue, to bring in more customers to your business or to create an income for yourself you will need to people to visit your site. Unless you already have a large audience eg via a newsletter, YouTube or social media, it can be very hard to get readers initially. You need to put in time and effort to create content and even then there are no guarantees that it will create any financial benefit for you. Having said that I still think there is a place for blogs and with the right approach you can absolutely deliver on your goals.
2. Love What You Do
You might already know what you are going to write about, but many people decide to start a blog before they really know what sort of content they want to produce. If you are one of the undecided my key advice is: write about what you are passionate about. There is some content which will more readily get readers and which might be more commercial, but you will stick with your blog longer and enjoy producing content more if you write about topics that interest you. Often the passion comes across in the writing as well making it more interesting to read.
3. Get Your Own Domain Name
There are many different platforms you can use to host your content with popular options including Wordpress and Blogger as well as micro blogging on Facebook or Instagram. Some of these are free while others you have to pay hosting for. My recommendation is to use any platform as long as you can use your own domain name with it and that it lets you export your content. This means that if you want to change platforms in the future you can without losing anything and all your links should still work. Any progress you have made sharing your content or getting posts visible on search engines wont be lost. If you back up your content it also means you wont ever lose your content unlike on platforms like Instagram where accounts are sometimes hacked or removed with little chance of returning.
4. Start Putting Content Out There
Does your content need to be perfect before your blog goes live? No. Do you need to have a set number of posts before your blog goes live? No. Do you need to post on a schedule? No. Ultimately people will only start reading your posts after you publish them so in the early days while you are working on getting your blog established you are better off publishing posts as soon as possible.
5. Learn The Basics Of SEO
One of the things established bloggers often say they wish they knew from the beginning is the basics of Search Engine Optimisation. While having good quality and interesting content is really important, an understanding of SEO will mean your content is more likely to be found by search engines like Google, and ultimately you are likely to get more readers.
If you need further advice on whether starting a blog is right for you, feel free to get in touch.