The easiest way to share your expertise and ideas with the world is by starting a blog. You can also choose to promote your business through a blog or you can make money directly from it. Fortunately, it is quite easy to make a blog in 2017. There was a time when you had to have coding skills such as HTML, CSS and PHP, but those days are long gone. Now, starting a blog is not very different from creating a Word document as long as you know the steps to follow. What are the steps?
Here is a complete step-by-step guide on how to start a blog that you can use for starting your own:
Step 1: Choose your blogging platform
There are a number of platforms to choose from when you decide to start your own blog such as tumblr, blogger, etc., but the one that stands out of the crowd is WordPress. It is user-friendly, free and ideal for those who are new at setting up a blog. You just need to have your own domain name and web host. WordPress allows you to take advantage of over 5000 paid and free themes that can help you in designing a top-quality blog. Their forum is also super helpful and you will also find more than 45,000 plugins that can come in handy for running your blog efficiently and smoothly.
Step 2: Select a domain name
It is time for you to opt for a domain name as this will form the first impression on your visitors, define your brand and also impact your search engine rankings. Therefore, you need to put some thought into it and find a domain name that’s concise, easy to pronounce and type and most importantly, relevant to your brand.
Step 3: Get a web host and install WordPress
You need web hosting for making your blog accessible to people. All your content, images and files are stored that you post on the blog and is visible to visitors is stored by the web host. Choosing the right host is also important because you want your blog to be visible at all times. Cheap hosts don’t provide quality services and there are issues with storage space and bandwidth. Thus, it is a good idea to go with a reliable and affordable web hosting service. The best hosting services offer one-click installation for WordPress so it is easy for you to get started.
Step 4: Setting up the blog
The last step for you is to start setting up your blog. This means customizing i.e. choosing a proper theme for your blog. If possible, go with one of the premium options because the free ones are widely used and you want to appear different. Start working on your first post and publish it as soon as possible. Install plugins you deem suitable for your blog and any other tools you may find useful. Add images, videos, PDFs etc. to your media library and use them in your posts.
As long as you follow these steps, you will have your own blog in no time at all.