I am sure there are some aspiring writers and bloggers out there who are itching to share their thoughts and lines with the world, but are still sitting on the sidelines, peering at the blogosphere and wondering if they could make it there. For those of you who are still indecisive, we created a flowchart! See if you have what it takes to be a blogger and if you do, keep a tab on our series of post sin which we tell you how to start a successful blog from scratch!
So, our flow chart tells you you were born to blog? Congrats! Now, lets get straight to business. The very first thing you need to do is:
1. Choose your topic
Think about things you love and know stuff about: hobbies, topics you like to talk or debate about, subjects you love researching, your special talents. Whether you are a gadget-freak, have a unique perspective on Middle Eastern politics, research the variation of dot patterns on local butterfly species, want a place to exhibit your literary or maybe cooking skills- everything goes. You can even write about your self- this blog is about .ME, so why not make one about you?
If you want to gather a wast audience, however, choose your topic wisely. The more general your blog topic is („Politics of everything, everywhere!“), the harder time you’ll have getting a large audience because there are big mainstream media already doing that. Also, it shouldn’t be too specific („Waste management in my street, from street number 7 to number 13“) because not a lot of people will stumble upon it or look for that particular information. Focus your blog on a unique angle, find your niche, and make sure it is something you love and can write TONS of posts about. Can you come up with 50+ ideas off the top of your had? That’s how much you need for a whole year for one post a week.
2. Register a domain!
Picking a domain name can be more complicated than picking a baby name! When you choose a name for your newborn child, you try to find something that „clicks“, maybe has emotional value and doesn’t rhyme with too many household items (I got „Tena, where is your antenna?“ a lot, but that’s not that bad). When you pick a domain name, you are creating an online identity for your blog and it needs to speak volumes- about you as the author, about the content and the nature of your blog. It needs to bepersonal, appealing and call to action (the action of reading!). If you have a pretty good idea about a domain name, you can check if it is available right here. Got the perfect domain? Well done, now lets’s move on!
3. Choose a platform!
We, for one, warmly recommend WordPress. Just in case you are new to the blogging scene, this is a free and open source blogging tool and a content-management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL, which runs on a web hosting service. This is some technical mumbo-jumbo, but what you need to know is that it is really simple to use, it has cool plug-ins, which help you manage your content and create the blog that suits your needs and purposes, and it comes with thousands of templates and themes you can use to make your blog unique. You can also register a custom domain (like Tenaisaweso.me) and here is how you do it!
4. Start posting!
Now is the time to pic kup your proverbial pen or to very literally place yourself in front of a keyboard and start typing away! Remember, be yourself, write about what you know and love, and just keep on writing. If you need some help publishing your first blog post, check out this tutorial for absolute beginners!
And here is a pinch of tips and tricks of blogging:
• break up your posts into more paragraphs- a long, endless stream of thought is great if you are James Joyce, but not many blog readers have Ulysses marked down as their favorite book
• on that note, also use subheads on longer posts and bullets for lists
• use images to break the text up and re-capture your readers’ attention
• you can italicize or bold keywords so people can find relevant information when they skim through the text
Are you ready to get started? During the next few weeks, we will bring you all kinds of tips, tricks andtutorials to help you on your blogging adventure- we will tell you how to customize your blog, which plug-ins are cool and handy, how to do SEO and more!
Now go off and blog!
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