So you want to know how to write a blog? Well, you’ve come to the right place. We work with thousands of bloggers and are bloggers ourselves. Not only that, we’ve studied what it takes to make a blog successful and have gained a lot of insight over the years; insight that we’d like to share with you in this post.
Let’s get the basics out of the way. Blog is short for web log. The act of writing and publishing a blog is called blogging. And someone who blogs is called a blogger.
A good way to think about a blog is as a public journal. Instead of writing in a paper notebook for only your own enjoyment and memory keeping, you write to a public website so that you can share your thoughts, ideas and experiences with others.
Of course, if you want to write in a journal, you need to have a journal of some sort to write in. Similarly, in order to blog, you need to have a blog. A blog is made up of these basic components:
- A Name (For example, “Jane’s Kitchen”)
- One or more authors (this could just be you or you could start a blog with your friends or family)
- A Subject/Topic (For example, Cooking). However, you can have your blog be simply about your life or just random musings, etc.
- A blogging platform
- A domain name (For example, “www.janeskitchen.com”)
Numbers 1 through 3 above are totally up to you. Numbers 4 and 5 take a bit of technical know-how.
A blogging platform is basically the journal that you write in. While there are a number of great blogging platforms out there, I unfortunately don’t have time to discuss them all in this post. I’ll save you the time of researching them and tell you that WordPress runs more blogs than all of the other blogging platforms combined. So unless you have special requirements, WordPress is probably the best way to go.
So what is WordPress? WordPress is simply a computer program that allows you to create, manage and publish blog posts…and it happens to be free. But you will need to host it (generally not free) in order to have it available on the internet.
Luckily, the same companies that can help you get a domain name (number 5 above) can host your WordPress site. A couple of good hosts/domain name registrars include: Bluehost, HostGator and GoDaddy.
Any stumbling blocks that you run into with setting up your site can be handled by your chosen hosting company’s support team.
Once your site is up and running, it’s time to start blogging. This is your time to shine. Here are some tips:
- Try to pick blog topics that are interesting to both you and your readers.
- Try to give each blog post a catchy headline.
- Try to write at least one blog post a month (once a week is even better).
- Try to add at least one picture to every blog post.
- Make your blog personal. Even when reading about technical things, it’s more enjoyable to read content that has personality. Don’t worry about your grammer so much and instead make your blog fun and personal.
Have any questions or comments, please post them to the comment section below.