7 Tips for Making a New Blog

If you are looking at starting a new blog, sometimes it can seem like a daunting task – where do you start? We have compiled a simple but effective list in getting your blog off the ground with the basic foundations set.

Do the extra work upfront and I think your new blog will have an edge over others whom skimp or are lazy setting the proper blogging foundations.

1. Be clear about your Blogs topics / niche

This one of the most important aspects to consider when creating and writing on your blog. The world of blogging has exploded and you need to be clear to your audience exactly what is the theme of your blog is.

When a visitors first comes to your site they should have a clear understanding of the topic being discussed. If you choose a topic that is already heavily saturated, eg Celebrity News you may find it very hard to gain traction. Be niche, localise, look through Technorati (blog search engine) and see what is really popular, and what isn’t so popular.

2. Show your own Personality in your posts

People come to your blog to read about your angle of the topic being discussed. They don’t want to just hear plain old facts, they want your opinion – even if it is subjective.

3. Write interesting, quality posts

Due to the easy process of blog creation, thesedays you may come across alot of blog sites with just pictures, videos, links, or even just scrapping other blogs through their RSS feed.

If this is your strategy, I wouldn’t bother. Google has changed their algorithm to drop sites like these out of their index, or severely drop your rank.

With blogging you want to attract a reader to your site, get them spending a few minutes reading your article, then clicking to another one. Time on site and bounce rate are great metrics to see if your audience is engaging or not.

4. Use Multimedia

With point 3, you shouldn’t write posts that just contain and image or video. However if you have wrote a quality article, then adding an image or video as some sort of visual aid can spark further interest from your readers.

5. Distribute your Blog posts to Social Media websites

To maximise traffic to your blog and potential audience, make sure you submit your blog posts to social networking sites.

I would at a minimum post to Facebook and Twitter (and possibly LinkedIn). Tools like Hellotxt.com, Ping.fm, or Dlvr.it can do this automatically by taking your RSS feed and then automatically updating your social networking accounts whenever you post a new article.

In saying this – also make sure your readers can easily share your blog comments to social networks by adding social share buttons to your site.

6. Network

If you want to build your reputation as a blogger in your particular niche, you need to network online as much as possible.

Commenting on similar ‘competing’ blogs is an accepted way of building your name. Also Twitter, LinkedIn Groups, and Facebook Groups present many opportunities for contact with other people in your space.

7. Blog Design / Setup

We all know WordPress is the best blogging platform available today. Mainly for it’s ease of use, customisation potential and massive community/support.

You need to decide if you want to create a free blog on WordPress.com, eg yournewblog.wordpress.com

Alternatively Blogger have a good platform aswell, and you can choose a hosted version like WordPress, eg yournewblog.blogspot.com

Using these free hosted versions of WordPress and Blogger are simply sub-domains on their sites and do work, but in my opinion if you are serious about Blogging you should register your own domain, buy a cheap shared host, install WordPress and use that as a starting base.

I think another important aspect of blogging is building upon your technical skills. You may be a great blogger but if you don’t have the skills to build, maintain and develop a blog – then you are only stunting your blog growth.

So in my opinion you need to learn and do the following when creating a new blog:

– how to install WordPress
– changing themes
– installing plugins
– simple HTML markup
– installing Google Analytics
– resizing pictures
– changing permalinks
– setting up automatic posting of your RSS profile to social networks

If you can do all of the above, you are off to a good start.

Looking for more tips and info? check out our WordPress section, Happy Blogging!