How to create a blog

Posted by Felix Okoli on Saturday September 13, 2014 at 12:59:59:

The first step to creating a blog is choosing a blogging niche. What to do? Decide what it is you want to blog about. There are so many niches available online. Choose an evergreen niche to ensure you will always be in “business”. For instance (just an example), weight loss is an evergreen niche. People want to lose weight, be healthy and live long. Wondering what to blog about on weightloss? There are so many sub niches within the weightloss niche. There are recipes for weight loss and healthy eating, different types of diets, diet journeys of other people (you could link to other blogs, especially ones with high PR to help your ranking), problems that arise after losing weight, obesity complications, battling with feast mode syndrome after starving, unhealthy weight loss and impact on health etc. There are so many sub niches within niches; you only have to be creative. Once that is done, move on to the next step –your blog name selection.

Select a suitable name for your blog. Your blog name should ideally be a keyword with a good number of searches. Learn how to use the Google Adwords tool in order to know how many searches your chosen keyword gets monthly. The good news is the new Google Adword search tool shows the exact number of searches per inputted keyword as opposed to the former tool which only showed approximates. So, if your inputted keyword only gets 40 searches per month, why would you want to blog for an audience of 40 people? Be smart; keyword research is one of the most important things every webmaster or blogger should take time to do.

Select your blogging platform. There are thousands to choose from. Just ensure your chosen platform is user friendly and has features you want your blog to have (within reason).Select a Theme or a layout. This as stated in another article is the “life and soul” of your blog. You want a theme that is uncluttered yet not empty. What you want is a theme that is attractive, shows your blog is properly managed and that a lot of effort has been put into it.

Create a list of expectations for your blog. What are your goals? For example, what do you expect from it within 6 months? Next, create a work plan; a step by step daily procedure for achieving the goal in a specified number of months or years (if you feel comfortable with that). If you decide to prepare yearly work plans, be sure to include Short-Term Wins that will motivate you further when achieved.

Write good content. If you put in the work and invest in quality content, you will surely reap the rewards. Everybody loves quality writing. Check the internet today and find out what it costs to get a short article from a professional writer. Quality is expensive, but you have to have it if you are going to go anywhere with your blog. Blogging is all about clear and quality writing not big or high sounding words. It’s not only highly educated people that use the internet so put that into consideration. Entertaining writing also never goes wrong where appropriate. If you do not possess these skills or intend to outsource, take the time to build your writing skills before you get started. Stay updated on latest trends and entertaining news related to your niche.

Next, get yourself out there. Use social media, populated forums etc. Reply to related questions on Yahoo Answers (an excellent source of traffic). Also, learn or outsource SEO (be very careful to stay white hat here if you must).
These tips will definitely help any person who wants to learn how to create a blog. So, what are you waiting for? Get to blogging!