First Steps for a Rookie Blogger

I had an email from an old friend the other day, who told me that he’s a keen writer and that he wanted to start a blog. He asked me for the basic steps he should go through. I thought I’d share them with you here:

1/ Decide the topic you’re going to write about. Choose something you’re passionate about and enjoy. You don’t have to be an expert, but you have to be prepared to put the work in the become one.

2/ Find at least 6 blogs in the same niche. Plug their feeds into your reader and subscribe to the sites. Read and digest everything they put out.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

3/ Set up some objectives for your blog. Make them measurable. How many subscribers do you want? How many RSS readers? How much (if any) do you want to earn from it?

3/ Choose and register a domain name. Don’t get too hung up on this though – it’s doesn’t have to say what the blog is about. Try to get a .com though and try to avoid hyphens and awkward double letters.

4/ Take a basic shared hosting plan, I recommend Inmotion, and load Wordpress onto the server and take it offline immediately. Play around with it a lot and learn how it all works. Start researching tech blogs to find out what you need to add to the site for great blog functionality.

5/ Sign up for an email management system, I recommend Aweber. Get the sign up forms installed on your new site. It may seem weird to do this before the site is even live, but you want to start building your readers into an easy to manage and professional email and follow up system from day one.

6/ Start writing! Aim to create 25 posts that are ready to go. Five of these should be really, really useful information and top quality.

7/ Load at least 5 posts onto the blog, including one of your top posts.

8/ Brand your blog. Having written some key posts, you should be able to devise a brand and strapline that suits the blog and your writing.

9/ Decide on a posting strategy. Daily? Twice a week? Whatever it is, stick to it through thick and thin. Plan the remaining pre written posts based on the schedule, using your top posts sensibly spread across the time.

10/ Make the blog live, get your head down and start churning out great content.

11/ Start promoting your blog. All you want to do at this stage is drive traffic to it. Use social media (sparingly) use friends, comment on other blogs, offer help and advice through forums. Do as much as you can to give to your new community, whilst letting them know about your blog.

12/ Review your original objectives. Are they sound? Are they achievable? Are they still what you want to achieve? If not revise, and now drill down into the detail. What do you have to do each day to wokr towards each objective?

Congratulations! You now have a blog, it’s up and running and you’re getting some readers. What next? Subscribe to Mike’s Life, read through all the posts on this site, and start to get better and better at what you do. Good luck!

You might also want to take a look at The Beginners Guide to Blogging course I run

What would you add to this list?

Perhaps you’d like to look at:

1/ Useful resources for new bloggers

2/ Never, ever, ever give up

3/ How to get your partner on board with your blogging