Blogging Content

Decisions Have Been Made

Decision number 1: You want to create a blog. 

Decison number 2:  A topic has been found that you are passionate about (or you wish to monetise, let's be honest here, a lot aof people perceive blogging as their road to fortune!)

Decision number 3: Your target audience has been defined

Decision number 4: HELP!! What do you write about?

This is where your writers block has now decided to kick in I'm sure. When you first get the idea of blogging, it all seems so easy, the ideas are abounding in your head, you can't stop thinking of what you want to tell the world!!  However, when it comes to putting pen to paper, this is when they suddenly stop flowing.

One strategy that I like to follow is to set out a PLAN

By setting out a plan, you are beginning to gather your ideas together.

I've found an article that helps you organise your thoughts by looking at the following topics:

• why are you writing your blog?
• who are your ideal customers?
• which of your competitors have blogs?
• what keywords are you targeting?
• where will you distribute your blog?
• how will you promote your blog content?
• are you solely responsible for your blog, or do you have help?
• how many blog posts can you commit to?
• how are you going to monitor your results (metrics)?

If you're interested in reading more about each of these topics, and getting your content strategy started, check out this article by Will Blunt on HubSpot blogs now.

 

What Platform Do You Write Your Blog On?

Blogging & Journal Writing = The Same Thing

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos net

Blogging is effectively like journal writing used to be back in my youth. 

Daily you'd jot down your day, your thoughts, your ideas, your dreams and your plans. All to be reviewed at a later date, some entries with a wistful smile of good times past, others with surprise that you've achieved what you wrote down all those years ago, and yet others with a good belly laugh at how simplistically you saw the world then!

So, you want to start a blog, where do you start? 

The first step is obviously about

• the niche, 
• the topic, 
• the area of interest you want to talk about, 

that needs to come from you.  When considering the niche, it's useful to check out the predicted trends for 2015 blogging also, Ramsay at BlogTyrant has put together a post on his predictions for 2015

So, you want to know about the blogging platforms?

The platforms that I have used, and am still currently using are:

• wordpress.com (free)
• wordpress.org (free, plus hosting, approx $4/month)
• blogger.com (free)
• wix.com (initially free, charges apply when you want to create your specific url or upgrade)

There are others also such as:

• Tumblr (free)
• Typepad (charges apply)
• Ghost (from $8/month)
• Medium (free)

 There is a great article written about the pros and cons of most of these free, or relatively free, sites that I love using by Melanie Nelson on Blogging Basics 101


If you are looking at using a free site as opposed to a free one on webhosting, it's worthwhile knowing the pros and cons of both of  these too.  Usually the free webhosting means that essentially you don't own the website and therefore the content, whereas with a small fee webhosting, all your content is solely your own, and what you do with it is also your choice.  However, in more detail, check out Ramsay at BlogTyrant for his reasoning, and also his support of BlueHosting as a great provider (yes, I use them too for all my wordpress.org sites and find them supportive and functioning, a definite plus!)