You get only 2 seconds to convince your visitors about your relevance. If you fail, the visitor clicks the back button and leave your site for good. Here’s how you can stop it.
How often it happens that you look at a nice and shiny blog and wish you had a similar platform to express yourself to your audience!
Sure, you are on Facebook and your status updates are getting a lot of likes from your friends and acquaintances. But the scope there is very limited. You want to write longer version of your Facebook status updates and develop an audience base that goes beyond your Facebook friends.
This is why you want to start blogging – to share your thoughts with the world and earn acknowledgement from them, right?
But, the only problem is that you are not sure where to start.
Don’t worry – this post will make sure your worries are fully addressed and resolved by the time you’re done reading this post.
So, let’s take a look what you can do about deciding on a blogging strategy.
Consider Blogging Sustainability
Blogging can look pretty exciting at the outset. You’re tempted to plan your blog in a way that may not be sustainable in future. So hold your horses, there!
Ask yourself some practical questions: Am I really serious about blogging or is this just a passing fad? Will this fad wear off after just a week or month of starting a blog? Am I even familiar with the challenges inherent to long-term blogging strategy?
You may even give yourself a shot at blogging by trying a free blogging service such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com service for a couple of weeks and see if your passion for blogging is sustainable.
Purpose of Blogging
Many people want to start a blog just for fun. Blogging for fun does no harm to you but after a while it can become a meaningless journey if you leave it abandoned at some corner of the Internet.
If you are itching to start a blog, be sure you to define the purpose of your blogging.
Some people start a blog just to share their thoughts with the world. Others have a more concrete and clear objective than that.
For example, if you start a blog for affiliate marketing, your approach to bogging would be much different from the way you approach a personal blog.
Once you define the purpose of your blog, it becomes easier to pursue it.
Free Blogging Software or Self-hosted Blog
When you want to start blogging, you essentially have two options to choose from – free blogging platform such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com, or Self-hosted Blog.
Starting a blog on Blogger.com or WordPress.com is pretty easy and you can get started within minutes. However, if you want to make blogging a long-term career, I strongly suggest you choose a self-hosted blogging strategy.
Self-hosted blogging involves the process of purchasing a domain name for your blog and choosing a hosting option.
A self-hosted blog will give you more freedom and flexibility to setup, design and manage your blog down the road.
If you want a detailed guide on how to start a self-hosted a blog, wait for the next post.
Make a Content Calendar
What is a content calendar, you ask?
A content calendar is similar to the calendar in your personal diary that tells you about your future engagements. It can be anything from a Google Spreadsheet to Word document.
All you need to do is write down as many topics as you can to define the scope of your blogging strategy.
The purpose of using a content calendar is to figure out if you have adequate scope to expand upon your blog.
Assuming you are going to write 3 topics per week, just try to come up with at least 12 headlines for the topics you are going to cover for an entire month.
This will give you some clarity on the direction you want to take with the blogging strategy.
Plan Your Categories Upfront
This is very important. When you start a blog, whether free service or self-hosted, you want the blog to deal with a certain number of topics. For example, if you want to start a fashion blog, your categories can include hairstyle, apparel, grooming, and accessories.
Knowing your categories upfront helps you staying focussed on the topics you want to develop moving forward.
Frequency of Blogging
There are no hard and fast rules or best practices that guide your blogging frequency. It completely depends on your desire to blog. If you have a lot to say, you may want to write one blog post daily. If you don’t get enough topics to cover, there’s no harm in limiting the frequency to three times a week.
The bottom line is you should ensure that each and every post should carry value for your audience. It cannot be repetitive or look uninteresting.
When you start a blog, make it a habit to write at least one small post daily. Don’t worry about the word count or value. Just get yourself into a habit of writing daily – everything else will take care of itself in just about a month if you keep at it.
So I hope these points have helped you deal with some of your questions on how to getting started on a blog. If you have any thoughts, please feel free to share them in the comment box below.
