If you have an interest in sharing your thoughts and interacting with others on the Internet, setting up your own blog site may be for you. All you need to get started is an email address and a topic to write about.
A blog, also known as a weblog, is a type of website that displays posts in reverse chronological order. The most recently written post appears at the top of the main page. Blogs can function as an online personal diary or even a marketing tool for a business.
Fortunately for you, no technical expertise is needed these days to run your own blog. While you can host your own blogging site on your web server, it is much more cost-effective to host your blog on an established blogging site such as Blogger or WordPress. In fact, they will host your blog for free.
Best of all, you can have your blog site up and running in less than 10 minutes. That is the easy part. The more challenging part of a blog site is to grow your audience and keep them engaged with you. Keeping a blog site active takes a lot of time and commitment.
Decide on a topic
There are a lot of bloggers on the web already. If you want to attract readers, you are going to need to establish your credibility. Don’t just blog about anything. Pick a topic you are passionate about. Something that you have lots of experience with usually helps because you will have unique information and guidance to offer others that need help. Here are some ideas for choosing a topic.
Decide where to host your blog
Deciding whether to host your own blog or host it with a provider should be done before you start blogging. Moving your blog could be an issue, especially if you do not use your own domain name. So, while there are many free blogging services on the internet, you may want to choose one that provides you with the ability to use your own domain name.
Otherwise, if you choose a blog and associate it with myBlog.BlogService1.com, moving it is not going to be an option since you cannot take that name with you. Do not immediately choose the “free” option until you complete your research. Most non-free blogging services cost around $3.00 – $5.00 per month with a hosting company, so this is still affordable.
Also, you have the most flexibility with regard to the domain name and options. Both Blogger and WordPress provide you with this option of using your own domain name and their basic offerings are free so they are really good options for most situations.
Once you get your blog site up and running, you’ll also need to focus on promoting your site. This also takes time and dedication. You can do things such as email marketing, invite guest authors to write on your blog site, promote your site on social networks, and focus on link building.
Link building is one of the most critical components in getting your site ranked on the web. Without lots of backlinks, your great content will go unnoticed. No one will ever see or hear about your blog. You should get involved on forum sites and post links back to your articles. Once you begin to get noticed by others, they will tend to create links for you on sites they visit as well.
The most important thing is to be patient. Setting up a blog site takes time and dedication. Be prepared to set aside time routinely so that you can sit down and create content.
