You have heard about blogging and how it is a great way of building trust between you and your customers.
Now, you want to start your own blog but you don’t really know where to start? Well, the good news is it’s much easier than you think. A blog is a website that will let you, not only showcase your products, but much more importantly it lets you provide information, comments and opinions so that readers get to know you.
The first and most critical lesson is you should not be selling – you should be giving your readers lots of value so they come to see your blog as the place to go to get valuable information about your niche.
Think of a Great Name for Your Blog.
There are 2 ways of creating a blog – one is to create it in something like WordPress.com where your blog is a subdomain of WordPress itself.
The other approach is to host WordPress on your own domain. In either case, you want to have a creative name for your blog. For example, if you were writing a blog about being an instructor you want to see if you can obtain a name for your blog that has teacher “style” keywords for the title. The other approach and the one I prefer is to use your own name as the title. This makes you the brand and as the objective of a blog is to get people to know, like, and trust you then using your name makes more sense.
In my opinion, you want to host WordPress for yourself – this means you can get the domain name to closely match the blog name. This is much better for getting your blog found by search engines as they tend to ignore those that are subdomains.
Never Delete Your Blog Post
Your blog is part of your presence on the web – this is commonly known as real estate on the internet. So, when you have started your blog, even if you then grow to dislike it, it is important to remember it is part of your online real estate and should not be got rid of. As you got more recognized in your niche then it is important that you keep growing your real estate.
Blogging & Comments
You will find that once you get started you will come to enjoy blogging and as you build your blog readership you will find that people will hopefully comment on what you write.
When you start to get comments it shows that you have a readership that is interested in what you have to say and wants to engage in a conversation with you. So, when you get a comment it is worth spending the time to respond and keep the conversation going.
Comments & Spam
There are of course those people on the internet who do not understand that the best way to build relationships is to give freely and not to keep trying to sell. You will be familiar with Spam emails, well the blogging world has its equivalent. This is where the commenter (or even the blogger) only posts to promote what they are selling or in worse cases, they lead readers to “unsafe” web pages.
But, you don’t need to worry too much as WordPress contains filtering features that will allow you to review and then approve/reject comments before they appear on your blog.
Blogging can be great fun but you need to recognize that and not treat your blog as a chore – if you find it fun then that will come across in your writing and will be recognized by your readers who will want to see more posts from you.
It is very easy to start a blog so if you have been thinking about starting a blog then all I can say – is just get started. If you have an interest or passion, then tell the world about it – you never know where it will lead you. Share your knowledge as there are millions of people looking for all sorts of information.
I hope you enjoy blogging and make a great success of it. If you have any questions or anything you would like to add then please leave a comment below.
