This is a term that has been around for over a decade. Every business knows they need to have a blog in order to be considered ‘helpful’ by Search Engines, it can help with Local SEO, and a lot of individuals like to start a blog so they can start making money online. This is going to be a guide on how to create a blog.

Living a virtual life is all the craze these days so in today’s blog post we are going to show you just how easy it is to start a blog. Before we get into it all we need to go over a few things:

1. You want a blog that is easy to set up – At the end of the day, this is what you prefer and what looks nice to you. You’re the one that has to work with it every day!
2. Website Security – that is an SSL certificate. It says whether your website is secure or not. And Google has released this as one of its ranking factors. Some plans get pricey, but there are a few that include it in their monthly plans
3. Let’s get started

Content Management System

This is the most important step to take out of the whole process. You must weigh the pros and cons of each to find out which will meet your needs. I.e. pricing and functionality. We will go over the top 3 options to let you know a little about each. The importance of a content management system is going to be finding out where your posts are going to be created and seen. You are going to want something that is not only user-friendly for your reader, but also easy for you to use.

WordPress

The top CMS out there. All our websites are set up with WordPress. The customization you can do to your website, and the plugins make the experience of setting up a professional-looking website a breeze, even if you don’t know how to code! It takes 5 minutes to set up a WordPress website – It really is a breeze!

Blogger

Blogger is another popular CMS platform out there. Millions of people use this platform to get started as it is completely free to set up. The con would be that you can’t customize the site to look the way you want it.

Ghost

Ghost was launched in 2013 and is turning out to be a great CMS platform for bloggers. They have dashboard widgets that allow you to view your blog stats in a great way.

With all the great Content Management Systems out there, we still believe WordPress is the way to go. It integrates extremely well with all-out other client’s websites that we manage, so we will be using WordPress for our example today.

Find Your Domain Name

Your domain name is essentially going to be your brand, so think a little bit about it. Once you are ready to take the plunge head on over to one of these websites and see if it is available: GoDaddy, Bluehost, and HostGator, Each one has its pros and cons.

Godaddy

We can personally vouch for GoDaddy – we use GoDaddy pro as we develop and manage many different websites. Having all our domains in one place with the developer tools has been a great experience. You can purchase a WordPress hosting plan for $1/month and your domain name is free if you purchase the annual plan here.

Bluehost 

Bluehost gives you a lot of options at a cheap price. With their CMS hosting a Domain name and SSL certificate are included in their pricing. For what you need to start a simple WordPress site.

Host Gator

 Looking at HostGator their services are very affordable! For what you want for a simple blog site with a CMS provider, you are looking at spending $5.99 a month and that includes your domain name and SSL certificate. You can find their different WordPress hosting plans here.

Instructions For Starting Your Blog

Now that you have picked out your domain name and CMS platform it’s time to really get started!

1. Login to your domain provider – we will be using GoDaddy for this example.
2. Click Hosting/WordPress
3. Click Create Website
4. Add in your details like user login and password
5. Once your website loads it will upload it on a temporary domain
6. Click the 3 dots and then hit WP Admin – this automatically logs you into your website
7. Click through the WordPress Wizard, this allows you to change your blog name and tagline and choose a simple theme.
8. Once you pick out a theme you need to go to the homepage settings – click your latest posts. This allows all of your ‘posts’ to appear on your home page. Then Click Publish. And hit the X.
9. You can then change your theme. By clicking the appearance button and then the theme.
10. At the top of the theme, menu select add new.
11. In the search term, you can add a theme term such as a blog to view them
12. I chose the Voice Lite Blog Theme
13. Click Install once you find a theme that you like
14. Then click Activate once you have a theme installed
15. You can customize your theme from there
16. It’s time to start posting! There are 2 ways to add posts on WordPress. On the Above menu bar and the sidebar.
17. Your title is the title of the blog post
18. Add your information to the description, you can break it into sections using the block editor. *If you use Microsoft Word you can format your blog post the way you want it using H1-H4 tags and anything else except media, copy and paste it into your WordPress post and you’re all set!
19. Don’t forget to set your featured image!

Now you see how easy it is to create a blog post, it’s time to go out there and get started with your content marketing and start posting!  If you have any questions about starting a blog send us an email info@twinningpros.com, we look forward to speaking with you!

Blogging FAQ