So now that you have learnt what WordPress is all about you have to install it and publish your blog. The next thing you need to do is know the different steps to start blogging. Here are 5 steps to start blogging.

5 steps to start blogging

1. Proper blog setup

Before you are able to publish your blog or posting your first post, setting up a blog is the first of 5 steps to start blogging.

You can setup a blog using the automatic installation method which is fast and easy by using an auto install feature on your hosting account. But that is not something that you should do if you want to effectively publish your blog, as it can put you at risk for getting hacked by hackers. So you will have to install WordPress manually.

After that, you will configure your blog and change the theme, change your permalink structure and add SEO plugins like ‘Yoast SEO’ to be able to easily edit your meta data, and add ‘Google XML sitemaps to easily create an xml sitemap, so as to help your chances of being found on search engines when people search for information.

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2. Identify and create great content

To be able to publish your blog, articles and posts should be of high quality so that the people who are going to visit your site will like it.

For this step, you will need to find relevant keywords so that they are not only written for your blog visitors but also for search engines to like and index your blog.

When you choose keywords or words that people use to search for information, things or whatever on search engines, you have to choose long tail keywords. When you are trying to find long tail keywords, you can use this method most people swear by, and that is by finding keywords with no more than 50,000 results when you search using the keywords with quotes (“keyword”). Like for example, if you find this keyword, “how to make money online”, paste it on the search box with the quotation intact. The keywords that you find can then be used in the titles as well as in the bodies of the articles. You can also add the keywords in the meta descriptions and keyword lists on your site or posts.

3. Writing a magnetic headline

This is one of the main steps to start blogging effectively that you should not forget when publishing your blog for the first time. When you are writing an article or a post for your blog, you should think about and make sure that the headline or the title of the articles are eye-catching. You should think about how you can get a lot of visitors by giving the articles and posts on your site a title that is creative or thought-provoking, you should also not forget to add keywords.

Writing a likeable introduction after that is also good if you want readers to finish reading your articles.

4. A call to action

You should close every post with a call to action. If you want to get more comments on your blog then this is a must have tip because its meant to encourage people to comment. For example, you can simply ask them if they found your article useful or telling them to input some of their opinions on the same subject by requesting them to ‘leave a comment in the box below’.

5. Marketing

Marketing is another important step to start blogging that you should take seriously once you have setup your blog. It is usually all about getting a lot of visitors as well as earning more money from your blog. Here are some ways you can use to get more visitors.

• Blog commenting, or by searching other people’s blogs and leaving your comments on them.
• Article marketing, or by writing articles and submitting them to article directories.
• Social media marketing, or by creating an account on top social media sites, then getting fans.
• SEO, or search engine optimization, where you write articles, post it on your blog then build links to your website by using different link building methods to get listed on search engines which will add extra and steady stream of traffic.

There is such a thing called article video marketing that you can use to get a lot of hits on your blog. It is simply a technique of marketing or a way of getting hits which is where people create short videos, usually not longer than 5 minutes, and upload them to YouTube or other video submission sites. The videos will be created easily just like articles showing what things means or how things are done or giving tips on a topic.

There are tools that will convert articles into videos for you automatically, and you can use them to create great videos in no time at all. On top of this there are also tools that let you submit a video to about a hundred video submission sites at once.

Email marketing is one other thing that you shouldn’t forget when you are trying to setup and start blogging. Building a mailing list on your new blog can get you more loyal visitors as well as increase the money that you earn from your blog by promoting your own products or other people’s products as an affiliate.

There are a lot of email marketing companies like GetResponse or Aweber that you can sign up with and setup or run an email marketing campaign.

This, in point of fact, should have been way up on this list, as a lot of people, usually those just getting started in blogging seem to overlook.

Now that you have understood the steps to start blogging, it is time to know how you must promote your blog to drive traffic to it. So lets jump to the next step where I’ll show you what blog promotion is all about.