Hey, Hey, Hey! Guess what I have for you today? Another complementary gift that will walk you through the essential steps need to be followed for successfully creating a blog, from scratch.
Okay…!
So you have decided to start your own blog. Well, that is the big first step toward your blogging career. But, you know what? Before you get into the guide about “How to start a blog?”, you first need to be very sure about “Why do you want to do it?“
In recent years, blogging has taken a new wave with opportunities to make money for businesses either by advertising or selling different products & services.
But, at its core, blogging is all about sharing the knowledge and experience you’ve gained during your stay on this planet in the form of writing with relevant images, videos, and graphics in it.
Out of the world’s 1.9 billion websites, there are currently over 600 million blogs. Their authors are responsible for over 6 million blog entries daily, or over 2.5 billion annually.
How to Start a Blog Effortlessly?
Once you have got the answer to WHY? Now, it’s time to seek out the answer to HOW?
I understand that some people (just like me) are searching for the quickest ways to get things done. However, creating a blog successfully is a lot more work than that.
It truly is! I don’t want to make any false promises just to make it sound easy for you.
Even I was disappointed with all the headlines stating “Start a Blog in 15 Minutes!” as they were no less than the tutorials on buying hosting and setting up WordPress. Though this may be essential information for some, for me, this was something that I already knew. Instead, I wanted to have a closer look at every step.
It’s not just about starting a blog. But, it is about starting a successful blog. There is a big difference between both terms. If you think all you need to do is just install WordPress and take help from those DIY guides to start blogging for beginners, you are WRONG.
There’s an EASY way to do things, and there’s the RIGHT way to do them all. Either way, it is entirely possible. But the choice you make will determine the success of your blog.
It took me a while, but I finally figured out a decent arrangement that I’m going to share with you through this blog post for free. That’s right – For Free!
The following will be the step-by-step guide that will guide you through how to set up the blog of your dreams and get you on your way to designing your own life with it!
And believe me when I say this – if I can do it, ANYONE can!
Let’s get right into it!
A Quick Roadmap To Starting A Blog Successfully
This blog post is going to cover EVERYTHING you need to do to start your very own blog. Make sure to bookmark this and come back if you can’t finish everything. Set up your WordPress blog by following these 13 easy steps –
- → Step #1. Identify Your Niche
- → Step #2. Think Of A Domain Name
- → Step #3. Get Website Hosting
- → Step #4. Install Your WordPress Blog
- → Step #5. Perform Initial Set-Up
- → Step #6. Pick A Theme For Your Blog
- → Step #7. Improve The Game With Essential WordPress Plugins
- → Step #8. WordPress SEO
- → Step #9. Set Up Google Analytics
- → Step #10. Set Up Social Media Accounts
- → Step #11. Set Up Email Marketing
- → Step #12. Develop A Content Marketing Strategy
- → Step #13. Launch Your Blog
How To Start A Blog on WordPress: A Comprehensive View On Each Step
Starting a blog doesn’t take too long when you are serious about blogging. This step-by-step guide will help you understand things better and effortlessly start your own blog. Let’s begin with the first step –
Step #1. Identify Your Niche
How would you feel if you receive such comments on your wall? Of course, you wouldn’t like to listen to anything like that from your readers.
So pick something you are passionate about. Something that you know better than anyone in your community. Something that you specialize in.
You don’t have to be an expert at something. Don’t worry about that! Just be conversational about your passion. That’s it.
Your blogging niche,
- Allows you to show your expertise on your topic of choice
- Attracts an engaged and loyal user base
- Allows users and other blogs to make connections considering the vicinity of the interests
- Offers you the most excellent opportunity to become an authority in your field
- Helps you seize a phrase for your Domain Name to reflect what you write about
Essentially, your niche is the industry that you will be in. It may be about natural healing and nutrition, financing planning, weight loss, product review, gardening, fishing, hunting, knitting, politics, movies, music, or anything that you know better than the others.
The key element here is focusing on one specific market that allows you to concentrate in one direction. Slowly and gradually, you build the expert status that speeds up the process of your prospects coming to trust you, turning them into your potential readers.
Picking a niche might take a lot of effort, but once you have identified a niche market, you have laid the foundation for a successful and profitable blog.
Step #2. Think Of A Domain Name
You just have to decide on a name and get it registered. WOW! How simple is that, isn’t it? NO!
Picking a name for your blog is not a cup of tea, as it can sometimes be very overwhelming. Some of you are those readers who must be smiling right now because they know how much I disturbed them to finally end up with BloggersGyan.com.
Still, there’s an easier way to come up with a name for your blog. Want to know what that is? Okay…! So pick a pen and paper handy, sit down, and get ready to do some brainstorming.
Just think about your blog’s niche and write down some descriptive words that coincide with your blogging niche.
Once you are done with this, ask yourself these questions –
Q 1. Does the name fit your niche or the goal you are willing to accomplish with your blog?
Ans. Take my blog name, Blogger’s Gyan, for example. My goal is to help people level up their marketing skills with the best advice, insights, and how-tos.
Q 2. Would you rather visit a domain that goes by – youcangetblogginggyanhere.com or BloggersGyan.com?
Ans. The point here is that your domain name should be catchy and easy on the lips. You have to attract your readers, as your competitors, too, are fighting for that one view alongside you! If your domain name is not easy to remember/spell, you will surely lose a significant number of readers.
Q 3. Do a phone test?
Ans. Make a call to your best friend and tell him/her your domain name! Does he/she understand it at once? If yes, that’s the good one.
Q 4. Is the domain name you chose available for you?
Ans. SORRY!!! The names coming to your mind have already been taken by the others. So when you think of your domain name, make sure it is available. For this, you can take help from GoDaddy or Namecheap to check out the availability of your domain name. It is up to you which domain you prefer, like, .com, .net, .org, .me, etc. It depends on the niche of your blog.
Has the name you chose passed the above test? If yes, why are you still reading, my friend? Just hurry and buy that domain name before somebody else does.
And don’t forget to come right back! There’s a lot in the story you wouldn’t like to miss!
Step #3. Get Website Hosting
Settling on a name can be one of the most time-consuming tasks. Congrats! The hard part is over. Now, it’s time to buy web hosting.
A web host is basically where your site will live. Just like a rental apartment, you rent the server space for your blog to reside in. But, how wisely you choose a web host determines the performance of your blog/website.
Let’s assume that you are going to lease an apartment.
What do you do? You don’t just go and pay for that. Instead, you take notice of everything from Kitchen, Bathroom, and Bedroom to Parking, Neighborhood, Transportation, and whatnot! Once you are satisfied, you pay the amount to begin living.
Similarly, there are so many website hosts, both Good and Bad. You have to find out which is best for you. I suggest choosing web hosts from HostGator, Bluehost, and SiteGround, as they offer excellent servers.
A few things to consider when choosing a web host –
- While picking a web host provider, make sure that the servers are fast so your readers don’t have to wait over a second to land on your website pages.
- Make sure to buy enough space for your blog, as your requirements will increase as and when you add content.
- “Security” is another essential factor to consider in this regard. All your files will be hosted on your web host server. It has to have adequate security to keep your files safe to avoid data loss.
- Apart from backups and one-click hosting, look at some other basic features your hosting provider offers.
- Keep your budget in mind while selecting a package from the Hatching Plan, Baby Plan, and Business Plan.
To help you make an informed decision in choosing a web hosting provider, I’ve covered a detailed guide on “How to Pick the Right Website Hosting Solution for Your First Site?”
Now that you have a fair understanding of niche, domain, and web hosting, let me take you to the next important step.
Step #4. Install Your WordPress Blog
You have several blogging platforms to choose from. For your blog, I recommend using WordPress.
WordPress is the world’s most popular platform among all blogging platforms, as it powers some of the web’s most popular blogs, including The New Yorker, TechCrunch, BBC America, Sony Music, MTV News, etc.
It is a powerful blogging platform that can be used to create any site you want, such as photo galleries, online stores, membership sites… The list is a bit longer!
Installation
The installation process of WordPress is just a One-Click task. You got that right – Just One-Click! Let’s see how it’s done –
- Go to the C-Panel of your web host provider, which can be found on the “Accounts Tab“
- Click on that blue “WordPress icon”
- Click on the “INSTALL” button
- Once it’s done, find your domain name in the little drop-down menu
- Put in your blog’s name and the description
- Choose your username and a strong password
- Enter your email address
- Click INSTALL
Don’t worry! This all will take less than a minute!
That is it! Congrats, you have become a proud owner of a brand-spanking new WordPress Blog. Now, whenever you feel like logging into your blog, simply go to your blog’s domain in the address bar and add “/wp-admin” to the end. Then, put in your credentials. And you are in!
Step #5. Perform Initial Set-Up
Knowing how to use WordPress is undoubtedly very important, as I detailed above. However, knowing how the WordPress Dashboard is set up and how to set up your base settings for your blog is another essential part.
Here’s a brief overview of the WordPress Dashboard, in case you are not familiar with it –
- First, set up your General Settings
- Next, set up your blog’s Permalinks
- Then, set up your base categories
- After, set up your essential pages, i.e., About Us, Contact, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, etc.
Now that you are done with all that, it’s time to add a tad of style to your blog with a WordPress Theme of your choice.
Step #6. Pick A Theme For Your Blog
Here comes the fun part. Making your blog BEAUTIFUL! The same you have in your mind. A theme is a template for your blog. In simple terms, this is how your blog will look like.
I don’t think I need to say much about the significance of the theme for a blog.
Go to Appearance > Themes in your dashboard, and you will find some free themes. However, the majority of bloggers choose to buy paid themes as they come with more customizable options to match your particular needs.
WordPress is a huge platform where tens of thousands of themes are available. While searching for a theme, ensure it’s responsive, meaning it is designed to work with all portable devices and desktops.
When picking a theme for your blog, keep this in mind – The Simpler, The Better!
Do not forget to create a LOGO for your blog! Having a professional-looking LOGO is really important. It is helpful to influence people to put their trust in you.
You should also use a FAVICON.
Step #7. Improve The Game With Essential WordPress Plugins
Plugins are the main reason behind the ever-growing popularity of WordPress. They are its heart and soul as they enable you to add entirely new features to your blog, making it extraordinary and unique in the process.
Even installing them is quite painless. All you have to do is to hover over the Plugins tab and then select ‘add new.’ A screen will spring up with all the featured plugins for you. Also, you can click on the search bar to type the desired plugin you wish to install.
Install the plugins of your choice to improve the functionality of your blog/site.
Step #8. WordPress SEO
When setting up your all-new WordPress blog, one of the most important parts is ensuring you optimize it for WordPress SEO. This process will enable you to get the most out of your site with higher rankings and free organic traffic from Google.
SEOPressor Connect Plugin or Yoast SEO Plugin is the best for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There is a process inside and outside of those plugins you should take after if you want your site to rank effectively on search engines like Google and Bing.
Step #9. Set Up Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a tool here that is an integral part of starting your blog’s online journey.
Setting up Google Analytics is the most exciting and essential part of your blog’s development, which can be utilized for tracking your traffic, traffic sources, goals, best posts, and audience demographics. However, it can do a lot more than this.
The point here is to understand that the only way you can know which content is producing results and which isn’t is by tracking with the assistance of Google Analytics.
Step #10. Set Up Social Media Accounts
Social media can be an incredible communication tool between you and your audience. This is the most powerful platform to build and maintain healthy relationships with prospects. This platform allows you to spread the word efficiently to a large audience.
This, along with a host of other reasons, is why you need to create social media accounts that are particular to your blog. I personally recommend creating a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, and an Instagram account.
Once you have set up social media accounts for your blog, add links to each post so your readers can read the full content by visiting the blog.
Step #11. Set Up Email Marketing
Proceeding on the audience-building trend, one of the most important parts of starting a successful blog is building a unified system for collecting email subscribers. Simply put, it is about creating a system for building a mailing list of devoted blog subscribers.
Building an integrated email marketing strategy is an integral part of your blog. This is an absolute necessity for a perfect marketing strategy. So many great tools and services are out there to help you develop an effective email marketing plan.
Step #12. Develop A Content Marketing Strategy
Once everything discussed above has been accomplished, it’s time to start the content creation process. You don’t have to post on a daily basis. In fact, I myself post once every two weeks. Instead, focus on quality, not quantity. That’s what will take your blog to new heights.
I would recommend mapping out an arrangement of action for what content you need to create and when you need to post it. I suggest using an Editorial Calendar to ensure that you release content at times and dates that expand its effectiveness.
Plus, this likewise helps you keep a consistent posting plan.
Step #13. Launch Your Blog
Finally, it’s the time!
It is time to show the world that you, too, are here!
I genuinely appreciate that you have followed all the above steps. The final step here is to launch your blog “OFFICIALLY.” Your blog is ready to go. Let everyone know about your existence.
Now it’s your time to inspire and change the outlook of those around you by dancing your fingers on the beat.
There You Have It!
Many Congratulations… on starting a successful blog!
This complete guide on ‘How to start a blog’ may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but don’t get disheartened. Even I had no clue when I started blogging. Finally, I made it. I am so happy and thankful for the decision I made that night.
If you still need assistance while signing up for your self-hosted WordPress, feel free to comment below. I will surely help you with the best.
