How to Start a Blog in 2018… And Make it a Success

by | Jul 3, 2018 | Technology Featured

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Blogging is an excellent way to take in-depth knowledge on a certain topic and turn it into a platform to make money. Almost no one has overnight success with blogging. It takes time to find your voice and build an interested audience that return again and again for more content.

Here are some tips about how to start a blog in 2018.

How to Get Started with a Blog

The first thing to do is decide what your blog will be about. If it’s a personal blog and you do not care about making any money with it, then you can cover a wide range of topics. However, if you wish to earn money from your blog on a regular basis, then you’d be best advised to pick a narrow subject matter and stick to that.

The reason is, when jumping from one random topic to the next, the audience doesn’t know what to expect when they arrive (or return a second time). They are less certain you’ll offer content that they’ll find interesting or that solves a problem they know they have. As a result, you lose the very audience you wish to build up.

Use the Right Tools

You can use an (initially) free website platform like WiX, but if you’re serious about growing your site and customizing it to your liking, then self-hosted WordPress sites are the better option. You can buy your domain name and pay for affordable shared web hosting, and once WordPress is installed, you’re ready to get started creating your blog. Almost every web host has instructions for how to install WordPress – it’s usually a one-click process –or you can find the information online too.

Learn the Writing Craft

If you’re not a natural writer and don’t write for a living, then you must give yourself time to develop. The more you write, the better you’ll get. If you feel that your English grammar is not up to snuff, then brush-up on the basics to fill any gaps you have.

Pay attention to the writing style for blogs covering the same topics. Many tend to write in short, punchy sentences and 2-3 sentence paragraphs. Sometimes they’ll even have single sentence paragraphs like a novelist may do to get the reader to move faster down the page and create some momentum.

Master Social Media

For a successful blog, it’s often your social media strategy that dictates what your early traffic numbers will look like before Google shows your blog some love. You should look at similar blogs to see where most of their social activity is based. For a pet site, they’re more visual and probably use Pinterest and Instagram more than Twitter. Another blog that’s less visual and wordier will opt for Facebook and perhaps longer comments with photos added to their Instagram account.

With social media, you should find where your likely readers hang out. If you have interesting things to say and share useful comments and images, people will slowly start to pay attention to the new voice. Then they’ll want to click the link to your blog to check out more of the same.

Getting started in blogging is easy. Building up a loyal audience is no overnight success but when nurtured on a weekly basis with blog posts and other high-quality content, it can lead to long-term blog and a reliable stream of regular income too.