The Beginners Guide To Blogging: Where To Start

Image Source

There are many reasons to get into blogging. Whether it’s a fun outlet to share your lifestyle with the world, a way of building up reputation in your field or a method of marketing your business, blogging has all kinds of personal perks. It can be a great service to others – a means providing advice to those in need, promoting and reviewing other people’s work or simply providing entertainment.

You may already have a clear idea of what you want to blog about. But how does one get started as a blogger? The following step-by-step guide may be able to help.

Doing your research

Before writing your first post, it pays to do your research. You may know how to write, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you know how to blog. It’s worth checking out sites such as Blogging.com for tips and tricks, as well as familiarizing yourself with concepts such as analytics, hyperlinking and internet royalties. You should also research your target audience as well as your competition. See what other bloggers in your field have written and what has worked well for them to help inspire your own writing and ensure that you’re not just creating content that already exists.

Creating your own blog
The easiest way to get blogging is to start your own blog. Web platforms such as Blogger.com and WordPress.com are ideal for doing this. Come up with a theme and a memorable blog name and start coming up with content. Write on a regular basis and set yourself a writing schedule to keep yourself motivated.

Becoming a guest writer

Once you have evidence of your own blogging ability, you can start writing guest posts on other people’s blogs. You may even be able to get a regular slot writing for another site. When asking to write for someone else’s blog, provide links to your own work. You can eventually build up a portfolio that will allow you to write for bigger and better platforms.

Building up a following

To help you build up a readership, you’ll need to get on social media. Create a Facebook page for your blog and invite all your friends to follow it. You can then post all your blog posts onto social media (there are automation tools that can do it automatically). Make sure to share guest posts that you write on other people’s blogs too. You can also post links to your blogs on Twitter, as well as using services such as Linked In to network. Keep your content regular and eventually you’ll build up a big audience of readers. Make sure to also use analytics to see which posts are popular and where your audience is coming from – this will enable you to cater your content more to what your audience want and build up more readers.

Getting paid to blog

It’s possible to become such a successful blogger that your posts earn you money. With a big enough audience, you can monetize your blog with ads. Every click on these ads could earn you revenue. There are also other ways of earning money from blogging such as charging money for reviews, writing SEO pieces and getting involved in affiliate marketing, all of which may require you to have proven your blogging success at first