Tips For Starting A Blog

You might have seen some blogs as you surf the internet and owners might brag about how cool their blogs are. You might be thinking to yourself that you would like to make a blog yourself. No problem, these simply guideline will have your blog up in no time.

Choose a niche for your blog

Choosing the right niche for your blog is perhaps the most important choice you can make BEFORE starting a blog. Choose the wrong niche, and it’s very unlikely you’ll ever succeed.

Find the popular blogs and websites in your niche, study them closely, and visit them regularly.

Get to know the authors and regular contributors. Comment on these blogs regularly so they can get to know you too.

Get a web hosting account for your blog

Many people want to go the free way, save money and use a free hosting for their blog such as blogger.com. I am not saying that blogger.com isn’t good but I have had bad experiences in the past with free hosting (my blog got deleted) :(.

I recommend you use WordPres.org to host your blog.

Your blog host should be reliable, responsive if you have questions, and inexpensive. $7 per month is reasonable for a reliable host; less than that and the service tends to go down a lot.

• HostGator.com – Solid, reliable, and very inexpensive: as low as $5/month. And a unique feature that other low cost web hosts don’t have: you can sign up monthly, no commitments.

Install WordPress to run your blog

After you choose a reliable blog host , you’re ready to install your blog software. The most flexible choice available today is WordPress. It’s also free, and easy to setup and maintain.

Yes, this is a little more involved than setting up a free blog somewhere, but it’ll be well worth the effort when you get more web site traffic in a month then you would have gotten in a year on a Blogger.com blog.

Make your blog look great with a theme

First impressions always matter. On the web, that’s even more important. A web visitor’s first impression about your site determines if he clicks away in the first 5 seconds, if he stays on to read what you have to say, and if he will ever come back again.

So it’s very important to put your best foot forward. Make your site interesting, distinctive, and engaging to your readers by using a great “theme”. WordPress themes are basically website designs that you can just download and enable for your WordPress blog.

If you want a great theme for your blog, Thesis is the way yo go.

• Thesis is the easiest WordPress theme for almost anybody to use. You can customize it to your liking. You don’t even have to be a pro at HTML to customize your WordPress blog with this theme. With a few clicks of a mouse your theme can look like a work of art. You can change your layout in 3 clicks, move from 1 column to 2 columns or even a 3 columns theme in just 1 minute.

Read more about Thesis here…

Configure WordPress and it’s plugins to get the most search engine traffic

What good is a blog if nobody is visiting? One of the great advantages of WordPress is the vast array of options to make your blog very yummy to the search engines. This is all about understanding what Google wants and giving it to them in the way they want it. Simple.

The most powerful SEO trick of all: “work with Google to give them what they want instead of trying to trick them”.

Make your blog welcoming and engaging to every reader

To make your visitors stick around and come back for more – day after day – use the power of WordPress and make your blog fun, engaging, and interactive.

Use polls to get readers involved and ask their opinion. Feature the latest posts and comments. Show off your most popular articles. Get readers truly involved by getting them to comment on your posts.

Set up your RSS feed

Not long ago, RSS was the domain of the super-geeky. But today, millions of mainstream internet users are subscribing to RSS vibes every day.

Get your blog set up with full blown RSS support by setting up a free account with FeedBurner. They’ll pull a feed from your blog, make it pretty so everyone can actually read it, and they’ll even give you accurate stats on your readers. Yes, it is nice to know if anyone is actually subscribed to your feed.

WordPress also has a simple plugin that you can enable to support your shiny new FeedBurner RSS feed service.

Write your first post

OK, at this point you’ve chosen THE best niche for you, you’ve become very familiar with that niche and it’s most popular sites, and you’re basically what could be considered an “authority” on your topic.

So now is the time for that all important first blog post
Off the top of your head, make a quick list of all the issues in your niche that people care about. What problems do they have, what questions do they have? What keeps them up at night?

Now pick ANY one of these and write a quick article on it. This “article” can be just a simple Top 10 list, with a supporting sentence of two for each bullet. That’s it!

Get feedback
Get this first article out there and see what people think. Email it to your family and friends, and ask them to help you make it better.

All the planning in the world is no substitute for Action. It’s time to go forth and do those good and powerful things.

Promote your blog

If you don’t tell people about your new site, they’ll never know about it! Stop hoping someone will accidentally stumble upon your site. Take matters into your own hands and get the word out there!

It’s never been this easy to promote a brand new site, and to explosively grow your traffic and readership.
Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Google Buzz, and more

Did you just publish a great article on your site? Let people know! Social media provides a great way to share your stories with others who WANT to know about it.

Share your great article on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. But tread with caution. Don’t “spam” these sites with everything you write.

In Conclusion

This article was written for new bloggers or people who want to start a blog. Hope these tips were helpful to you. Thanks for reading.

Are you now ready to set up your blog and start blogging?