Today publishing content to a blog is undeniably more than a personal diary tool (despite the fact that a lot of such sites actually exist) — for a business, it also tends to be a successful promotional tool.
Aside the option to get the message about your brand's image rapidly and effectively out there, keeping a business blog provides you with a casual approach of connecting with, listening to, answering, and taking part in discussion with your target audience.
“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” ― E. L. Doctorow
Are you trying to create something worthwhile? Why not start a blog? Why not become a blogger? Creating the right kind of blog is perhaps the best choice you will make. Since the right blog can ultimately enable you earn a living. Essentially, it's can increase the value of others' lives.
The barriers to becoming a blogger are low, with platforms such as Blogger and WordPress you can easily set up your first blog. Eventhough, writing great content is dependant on a blog's success, if nobody can find all your carefully crafted posts, your hard work and effort will be wasted.
There are multiple ways you can ensure people find you, including optimizing your blog so you can appear on search engines and join other blogging networks. A lot of bloggers are able to earn money by leveraging on the traffic the site gets.
This traffic is utilized as an offering point to potential advertisers: assuming your blog has a lot of readers, and it falls within a particular niche,advertisers are often willing to pay for exposure of their products and services.
Do you want to start a blog but not certain how to begin? To prevent fundamental blogging mistakes, let's take a look at some core guidelines to help you so that you can start your blog strong.
Identified Your Primary Goal
Always remember that there are key components to every fruitful content-based business. It is therefore essential to understand your plan of action. This should guide your marketing decisions. When you figure out how you'll drive income and win new business, you can coordinate the other core parts — your content, audience and marketing.
Setting up goals ought to be your priority, whether you run your own blog or grow a corporate site. If your company has decided to start a blog, try to make a list of business objectives you desire to achieve.
Here are a few models:
- We are starting an business blog to increase brand visibility and awareness by ranking for high-volume keywords.
- We are launching a blog to increase conversions by sharing product driven content.
If you are building an individual blog, a plan of action must be your number one goal.
So, what do you want your blog to be called? Maybe it’s YourLastName.com. Maybe it’s YourBusinessName.com. Or perhaps it's an innovative brand name you concocted. If you’re struggling to come up with a decent domain name, try Wordoid, a brilliant naming tool. It will give you a lot of great options.
Choose A Domain Name
Before you develop an awesome blog, you have to pick a domain name — and fiqure out where to host it. A domain name is what clients type into the address bar to get to your site. It's the headquarters for your entire brand.
A great domain name is neither funny nor flashy; it is one that people can recall without any problem. Moreover, when you have a good domain name, it helps Google to know what your blog is about.
Selecting the right domain name is vital for your blog's success. To make the process simpler, you can utilize this framework.
- Stay with .com
- Keep your domain name short
- Make it simple to pronounce and spell
- Keep it unique and brandable
- Stay away from hyphens in domain
Your traffic will suffer,even if the name of your blog is unique, but nobody knows how to pronounce it or type it as a URL.
Additionally, if your domain name is confusing, chances are, prospective clients will have grammatical errors and get lost as they attempt to find your blog. Make it simple for them, and avoid harming your traffic numbers, by picking a name that is simple and easy to remember.
Setting Up Your Blog
Now that you have made a decision to start a blog, it is time to decide whether you want your first blog to be hosted or self-hosted. A self-hosted blog implies that you deal with the blog's software yourself and organize the server space which will store your blog's content. For a lot of individuals, this means paying a monthly subscription to have a Web hosting company to take care of it. Aside this cost, the main concern with having a self-hosted blog is that you become responsible for the set up and the managment of the blog's software. This requires some level of technical skill.
If you don't have what it takes, you'll have to consider the additional cost and time to find somebody who does. Despite the fact that having a self-hosted blog cost more money and requires more specialized resources, you're less confined as to how much information you can post to it, and you have great flexibility with its design, look and feel. There are a lot businesses, who want optimal brand experience for their blog readers, if your business prefers a highly customizable blog, opt for a self-hosted service.
The alternative for hosting your blog is by signing up with a third-party.The main benefit with a hosted blog is its cost savings. In most cases, it’s free to sign up for a basic option and you don't need to pay a monthly fee. Simplicity is another benefit of a hosted blog: you don't set up or deal with the software yourself, and setting up and posting your blog content is a simple process. However, unlike with a hosted blog, you're more restricted with your blog's look and design and how much data you can upload to it.
Regardless of these pros and cons, if you're new to the world of blogging, it's best to begin with a hosted one. If you choose a hosted blog, thus where a third party keeps your blog on their domain, the next major decision that you must make is which blogging platform to utilize. You can select from a wide range of platforms, all of which offers a basic level of functionality and quality. They are also easy to use.
There are certain notable differences between them, in any case, which platform is ideal for your business will depend on how you would like to manage your blog. For instance, assuming that you want your blog to be simple and fuss-free, while generating income at the same, Blogger is your most ideal choice. If you are looking for optimal flexibility but don't have any desire to make money, WordPress is a better option.
Add Key Blogging Plugins
Plugins are third-party add-ons that provides extra functionality to your blog. It's ideal to keep the number of blog plugins minimal and install only the best ones. Because, a lot of plugins — and problematic plugins — can slow down your site.
Now, let's look at how to install and activate one of the plugins that will help with your search engine optimization.
Yoast SEO is the defacto standard website optimization plugin for WordPress. Read Yoast’s Definitive SEO Guide for all details and everything you’d ever want to know about WordPress SEO.
Created by MonsterInsights, this Google Analytics for WordPress permits you to follow your blog's traffic effectively and with lots of interesting data:automatic tracking of outbound clicks and pageviews,views per author & category, traffic sources and overall traffic. Go to Plugins > Add New, after searching for Yoast SEO in your WordPress dashboard.
To immediately improved your SEO, click Install Now followed by Activate.
After searching for MonsterInsights, then click Install Now followed by Activate.
Next, click Launch the Wizard! and follow the steps to finish the MonsterInsights setup.
Finally, individuals can get your blog posts in their email, so established a free Feedburner account.
Setting Up A RSS Feed
Contingent upon who's talking, RSS stands for rich site syndication, or RDF site summary or real simple syndication. Eventhough, its meaning remains the same: an RSS feed is a created file utilizing a programming language called XML that contains and aggregate all your blog’s content in one spot. As more content is added to your blog, the file is updated so that all records on your blog will remain accurate and up-to-date. The following are the two main reasons why it is helpful to have an RSS feed for your blog:
The format is standardized, and that implies various software platforms as well as websites and other devices can get your blog's post, regardless of what platform you're on.
It allows subscriptions. The real intension is that as your content is updated, individuals or programs that have subscribed to your feed will be alerted of the update.
These two features make an RSS feed a simple way for individuals and programs to get to the most recent content on your blog without expecting to visit the blog each time. Through this basic "push" syndication of your blog's content, an RSS feed is an awesome approach to remaining connected with your blog audience, and promoting your post is a decent way to draw in new readers.
Writing Compelling Content
Writing compelling content is extremely important when starting a blog. This is where the fun starts. Now that you have your own blog, you have to make it yours; you have to transform your vision into a reality.
It is time to start writing and publishing the content for your core pages: Make an About Page, Contact Page and some other pages you need in the header of your new blog.
Write Useful content. What is the point in publishing your content? Unless your it is useful to your audience and it is life transforming in one way or the other. You don't need to change your audience lives in a huge way with each and every post, however, you must to be useful in some way: make your readers smile if they were feeling unhappy; educate them on something they weren't aware of previously; update them on the most recent news; offer them a sense of belonging. All in all valuable information is what will keep them engaged for a long period of time.
Try not to discuss things that aren't vital to your content, concentrate on the real issues at hand and go straight to the point.
“Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you have omitted every word that he can spare.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Try not to overwhelm your audience with a thick block of text that is difficult to read. While writing content, use headlines, bullet points and different formatting to attract your audience attention to various components of your blog and help them understand the article. You can easily make them curious and let them see that it is beneficial reading your content by grabbing their attention.
Write with passion. If you are not enthusiatic about the way in which you write and present your content, your readers will pick up on this and they will not be passionate about it or have any good feeling about reading your content any further.
Share Your Content With Micro Blogging
Microblogging is a short blog post intended to provide quick interaction with readers. These simple content are shared using online media, like Twitter, or Instagram.They're additionally a productive method to build up a community without massive investment of time. When it comes to microblogging tools,Twitter is currently the darling. Basically, Twitter is a tool which helps you to share “tweets,” thus, text-message-length updates with others who are following your account and also read updates of individuals you are following.
As an entrepreneur, you'll find Twitter a helpful tool with which to promote your brand's image by sharing short info with your audience, clients, partners, vendors, or other like-minded individuals in your industry.
Microblogging can help you reach people on various platforms. It is a powerful blogging method to assist your brand to stay on top. When you use it as a tool to redirect followers to your website, it’s even more beneficial for your brand and overall marketing efforts. As part of a Twitter thread or in your Instagram caption, add a CTA (call-to-action) directing people to go to your blog for even more resourceful content.
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