How to become a blogger

Domain
The domain is the URL of your website. For example, Google’s domain name is Google.com; Facebook’s is Facebook.com.

Host
Your blog host is the company that puts your website up on the internet so that everyone else can see it. Think of it as a computer hard-drive on the internet where your blog will be saved. Most hosting companies have a ‘one-click’ WordPress install solution on their admin panel.

Choosing where you want to build your blog is, of course, essential. WordPress is one of the biggest blogging platforms in the world, with countless plugins and add-ons and endless ways to design your blog. There are 82 million active users of WordPress.

Your blog can look exactly how you want it to. It should reflect you, your personality, and what the blog is about. It also needs to be easy to navigate if you want to cultivate a loyal audience. If it is cumbersome and difficult to move around, people won’t stay. Make it easy for them.

To choose a theme, head to the WordPress Theme Directory. Choose a theme that looks professional and is easy to customize. If you get tired of your blog template, WordPress allows you to change themes with just a few clicks and without losing any content or images.

As a blogger, it is vital to develop and grow your e-mail list. It will help you get visitors to your blog and turn them into regular members of your audience. It will help you connect with your audience, create a consistent flow of traffic, and generate buzz when you are ready to launch a product related to your blog.

Learning to become a blogger means asking yourself what you are passionate about. The key is not to create a blog about something unless you have a unique perspective on it.

Once you have identified your passion and know your niche, you need to know who makes up your audience, so that you can create content that interests, helps, and impacts them. Use your e-mail list to ask your subscribers what they would like to see on your blog. Or post a link to a survey on your site.

Now, the real work begins: creating content that is relevant and that catches people’s attention.

Here are some pointers to get you started:

Make the daily news your friend
What is in the headlines? What is on the minds of people? Tap into trends of the moment. Hang out at the proverbial water cooler, where your audience is. Be relevant. Find new ways to connect with your topic.

Turn content creation into a habit
Know when you are the most creative and most motivated. If that’s at 10:00 every night, then make that your blogging time.

’Done’ is better than ‘Perfect’
Bloggers can fall into the trap of constant revising, refining, and refurbishing. Sometimes, it’s just time to release the content and publish.

Repurpose your content
If you can repurpose your content and put it on content hubs (sites that collect specific kinds of content), you will start to bring in readers from different sources. For example, SlideShare hosts professional content in the form of presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. Youtube is a well-known video-sharing website. Podcasting is another great way of repurposing blog content for iTunes listeners.

Make yourself accountable to your audience
If you tell your audience that you will be increasing the size or frequency of content, for example, you will be more likely to stick with it.

Remember that blogging is not just text
Blogging is the platform. It does not have to be written. Consider making video and audio blogs.

Start promoting your blog once you have a minimum of 15 posts. If you promote it earlier, people may view it as lacking content.

To promote your blog:

• Use different social media platforms
• Add tags to your post, to ensure that they appear in search engines like Google
• Add a link to your site on a forum signature
• Exchange links with other sites; make a blogroll