Starting a blog is one piece of your marketing arsenal, useful in helping you promote your business. You have the opportunity to educate your customers, share your marketing messages on a channel you control but, you might be thinking that you need to hire an expert to help you set it up. Well, Not so, because it’s pretty easy and here are the steps.
Step 1 Get hosting
The first thing you’ll need is to get hosting for your blog. This is for persons who don’t have a website. There are multiple options out there such as host gator, Bluehost, Namecheap, inmotion and a list of others. Pick one that is within your budget.
Having a self-hosted blog gives you more control and is cheaper to manage than a blog hosted on a platform. You can customize it with ease later on. Like add custom sales pages, change the look and feel of the site with a host of design options.
Once on the hosting site, pick a package that suits your budget, and then pay for it and you’re done. Now you can move on to the next step.
Step 2 Install WordPress
The reason for choosing WordPress is the variety of options available to customize your blog. In addition, you can get help when needed with the abundance of sites dedicated to teaching how to customize WordPress. Plus depending on what you are doing you can find a design or theme to fit your needs. More on that later.
Your hosting package will have a click to install option, to set up WordPress. Follow the instructions and you won’t have any issues setting up your blog. Choose your site name, which will be the name of your business and tag which is what you do. After that pick your username and password and you’re done.
The other key thing you’ll need is a domain name. Most hosting companies will give you a free domain name with your hosting. Otherwise, purchase the domain name for your business.
Step 3: Pick a theme
The theme is like the skin of your blog. This is how it will look for the long them. WordPress has thousands of themes available for you to choose from. Browse through their list of options to choose one for your blog.
Some theme companies give you a basic theme with a drag and drop page builder. This will help you further customise the look of your blog to fit your brand. When choosing a theme, pick one with a style you like that you can customize to your choosing.
Themes are either paid or free. Don’t worry too much about the paid options, you can just work with a free theme and customize it to your preference.
Once you’re finished customizing your blog add basic pages, Set up your site to let people know who you are. like an about me section with your story and how you help your customers, and a contact us page, which will make it easier for people to get in touch with you.
Step 4 Add content to your blog
Now it’s time to add content to your blog. If you’re stuck for ideas don’t worry, start sharing simple. Answer questions customers create a step by step tutorials about teaching them how to do something related to your business.
To do this click create a post and start writing. Once you’re through writing, review and click publish and you are done.