So where and how should I start ? This is probably the question that boggles your mind and hence caused you to land on this page in the first place.
Let's begin by taking a deep breath and maybe grabbing a cup of your favorite beverage and or bite of your favorite treat and lets get started.
We would like to approach this topic with some simple steps that should at least help you get the blogging engine churning towards the right path.
Ask yourself, why a blog !
Are you starting a new business of which you are attempting to gain some audience. Do you already have a business and you simply want to add another marketing tool to give it a new dynamic and more exposure.
You may be interested in simply sharing your skills and thoughts about a specific passion of yours online.
Or maybe the reason is to become a publisher and monetize your passion online. Whatever the reason may be, you'll need to asses accordingly.
Identify your Niche
This is probably one of the most important bullet points to consider when starting a successful blog.
A niche to put in simple terms denotes to an area of interest whether it be services or products that appeal to a specific group of people.
With this been said, you may well be interested in many things, nevertheless in order to keep the wheels churning as time goes by, you need to brainstorm about what it is that really fascinates you and causes you to spend countless hours of devotion.
As you may have already noticed with this particular blog, we talk a little about Everything Home and Garden.
Here we spend time discussing, sharing, and putting together ideas that may be useful to those interested in the same niche. We even take time to put together pages such as this one from time to time that may help those whom are jumpstarting their blogging journey like we once did.
Once you have identified your niche of interest, you are now 2 steps closer to getting that first blog post out into the world wide web community.
Carefully choose a domain name and a hosting platform
You want to think about this step very closely and approach it with a one and done mentality. You do not want to find yourself in the predicament of not liking your domain name months down the road. Pick something catchy, but yet keep it simple enough for your audience to remember.
If you want to change your domain host down the road this can be easily done, therefore I wouldn't worry about this much.
Hosting Platforms are the software or services one uses to publish content over the internet. This platform is required in order to render your domain name, hence a (URL)Uniform Resource Locator.
The common platforms used for hosting are Blogger, WordPress, Wix, which are just a few among many.
Create a Logo
Believe me when I say don't leave the logo for the future. I learned this the hard way. If you take a close look at our blog you will notice that our older post lacked a logo signature. This missed detail caused us to have to repost images in past articles to include our watermark logo. What a tedious task, but well worth it !
As you can see in our above header image, our Jofer Interiors logo will usually sit on the bottom right hand corner of all post images.
Please save yourself the time and hassle and create one. There are quite a few online services such as picmonkey that are cost efficient and provide a wide variety of photo editing tools as well. As your blogging skills become more profound, you'll be thankful you did. Not to mention it will give your page the expert look.
Don't worry about the content
Take it from our experience. At the time we began blogging we had no idea where it was going to take us or where we would get the material to write about.
As an example of this, we had no idea we were going to write this particular post you are reading right this moment.
The truth is once your niche and passion is identified, you will find that the topics needed to create consistency and continually provide helpful information to those visiting your page will flow naturally.
Note: Take this advice with a grain of salt. This does not mean you should not take note of a particular idea that jumps into mind. If it's a great idea, best practice is to write it down (keep a log) and save it as future writing material.
Start with a header image for the post of interest
Now this is a very close and personal tip of mine. Once you have garnered all of your ideas and have selected the perfect name for your blog page(website) and title for your article post, start by posting a great header photo image (like the one above this post) that closely relates to your article.
A photo stimulates the mind in an interesting way by creating an initial sense of engagement and visual interest. I have found that if I'm stuck as to where or how to begin an article, a photo at the top of the post will help spark and inspire that initial paragraph, while helping me take pride in what it could eventually look like once completed.
Once the first few sentences are tipped on the page, the rest just flows. It works all the time (for me at least)! I simply though it may be able to help in the case you found yourself in the same predicament.
Don't be afraid (Publish It...)
Once you have completed that first article post and you have proofread your work, don't think it through, simply publish it. There's such a feeling of euphoria and pleasure in knowing that one has accomplished a task that has been close to one's heart. I'm sure you have felt this sometime before.
Nevertheless, you can also send a link of your post to a friend and or relative and have them give you an honest "no holds bar" critique of your post.This tip really helped me in the first few months of writing and publishing this blog .
Conclusion: No matter what you thoughts are about blogging, always remember that it gets even better with time. As you learn techniques and play around with the countless ideas on making "your" blog space uniquely yours, blogging could become a truly rewarding lifelong experience.
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