So you want to start a blog but you have no idea how to start. You’ve narrowed down to a specific topic (maybe it’s video games, cooking, or travel) and you’ve signed up for an account at a blogging host or started your own WordPress but now what?
[If you haven’t created your blog yet, check out this post for help]
Here are five quick non-technical tips on how to get starting with your blog:
Brainstorming Session
First things first: you need to figure out what you’re actually going to write about. Take a few minutes and make a list of possible blog topics. Try to come up with at least five or six different possibilities.
Example: If you are creating a travel blog try and come up with a few posts like these:
1. The Best East Coast Summer Road Trip
2. Planning Your Tesla Cross Country Road Trip
3. Planning Your First International Vacation
4. Five Reasons You Should Backpack Across Europe
Once you have a few different titles/topics just pick one so you can start writing.
Writing
Now that you have a list of possible topics and you’ve picked one, it is time to WRITE. I would recommend just sitting down, thinking about your topic, and then just “word vomiting” out whatever comes to mind. This is a great way to get a lot of words out as quickly as possible. Once you’ve written down your initial thoughts and ideas about your first post, you can go back and edit.
Writer’s blog? No problem. Just move on the the second topic from your brainstorming session and save the first idea for next time!
Editing
This is a pretty simple step. Read through your initial word vomit session and rewrite/fix/spruce those words into intelligent and comprehensible ideas. Go through the blog post a few times until you feel great about what you’ve created.
Another idea is to have a friend read your post to look for mistakes or provide advice on what could make the post even better. I love asking my friends to read through my posts before a publish or share them with the world. It helps give me a good idea on whether or not what I’ve written is actually relevant or interesting. If not, I’ll go back and either rewrite what was confusing, omit what what wasn’t necessary, or even add more to clarify.
Publish
Okay, this step is actual even more simple than editing. Now, just add some pictures (if desired) to your post, make sure the formatting is okay, and hit that publish button. I’d also recommend reading through your post at least once after you’ve published it to look for any mistakes that you didn’t catch during the editing step.
Promote
This is possibly the most important step. What is the point of all your hard work if no one actually reads your post? Exactly. So share a link to your new post on your social media accounts: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
[Don’t have any social media accounts? Click here for help starting a twitter account]
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So there are five quick tips to help you kickstart your new blog. Starting a blog is an exciting step to sharing your ideas with the world, and with these simple steps you’ll never have to feel any stress with getting started with the writing process.
