5-Step Blueprint to Starting A Blog (That Works For Anyone)

byBrendaMZ

6.9K followers

Updated 1 year ago

(cover image; a blueprint drawing)

5-Step Blueprint to Starting A Blog (That Works For Anyone)

Starting a blog is a difficult task for anybody. To start, you must figure out what you're going to write about, how to get your first readers, and then where you're going to put that content.

If you don't know what steps, you need to get started. Or you did try, and you failed, if so then this article is for you. The basic components of starting a blog need a foundation or framework for generating ideas for new website blog posts.

I will walk you through the five steps points on how you can build your first blog post for your website.

Photo: a gray staircase with a red brick background that lists Steps 1- 5 blueprint to start a blog

Step 1: Define Your Purpose for Starting a Blog

The first thing you need to do is define the purpose of your blog, and what and who are your target audience.

You will research what topics the readers are looking for. You are trying to find a solution to their problem.

Just do your research on Google by searching for other blog posts that have similar audiences and topics to what people are searching for online related to your passion or your main interest.

Once you know who your target audience is, it's time to decide how often they will read from your site. Do you want your readers to come to your site every day, once a week, or once a month?

It's helpful to think about how many short-form or long-form blog posts can you write per week to create more content to keep your readers interested and well-informed.

After all the information has been gathered, it will be easier for you to determine if you should write a short-form or long-form post. Suppose you want your visitors to read every day, should you write a long post? No, in this case, it would be better to write a short-form post.

Step 2: Choose a Topic That's Personal, Meaningful & Exciting to You

The second step to starting a blog is choosing a topic that's personal, meaningful, and exciting to you. Choosing the right topic will help ensure your blog has attracted your audience to your site. Your blog options can be something that:

You are passionate about the topic. If you don't love writing about it and learning more about it every day, it will be hard for readers to find value in what you have to say in your post.

Your blog post should be reliable for people who share similar interests as yours. This could mean targeting a specific industry or profession such as landscapers, gardeners, people who love hiking, or backpacking, or professionals that are in the financial or real estate industry.

When you reach out to different generations especially the millennials by sharing tips on how people can save money while traveling or live a minimalist lifestyle.

Your list of topics can go deeper and narrower. The point is to make sure there is a need before jumping into anything else because then no one will care about your post if it's not a topic that is of interest to them.

Step 3: Create an Elevator Pitch for Your Blog

An elevator pitch is a summary of your blog's topic. The purpose is to describe your blog to others. You can use an elevator pitch on social media bios, about my posts, or your author bio at the end of your blog or on the author sidebar of your blog post.

You'll want to create an elevator pitch that is clear and concise. Most bloggers will not write fancy flowery language or use jargon that might confuse people who are new to the topic.

The goal of writing an elevator pitch isn't just to tell people who you are but it's also about figuring out how you want your audience to think about what you do!

For example, I will write: "I'm a writer who helps people learn how to write better by offering writing tutorials to practice writing every day.”

I suggest creating three multiple variations of your elevator pitch and then figuring out which version is best served for your blog post’s intended purpose. By doing this you will know which one is less wordy and not too complicated for people to read.

Step 4: Create A Motivating Publishing Schedule

Once you've decided on the type of content that will be published on your blog, it's time to create a publishing schedule. A lot of new bloggers make the mistake of setting unrealistic publishing goals for themselves. Before you start thinking about how many posts per week or month, think about what is realistic for YOU and your READERS.

If you're trying to stick with a small goal. Let's say that you decided, "I'm going to post once a day," and then end up falling behind because life gets in the way.

You think you have failed. No, you have not just don’t beat yourself up over it! Just do the best you can.

I encourage you to focus on creating a manageable schedule where you can feel positive about what you can accomplish without feeling overwhelmed or stressed out. Just think about your schedule that works best for your needs. Just do not blog post just for the sake of it because someone else says you must do it.

Writing strategically for your audience is important, and it's best not to do shoddy work. Please make sure you are writing with your audience in mind. You want to provide high-quality content that is worth sharing with others.

Step 5: Build a Passionate Community of Followers that Interact with Your Posts

Build a community of followers that are interested in your blog. It's not enough to just have a website by itself. You want to build a community for your readers will want to read, comment, and interact with your posts.

• Email marketing makes it easy for your audience to subscribe by providing email subscription options on every page of the site (including your homepage if it’s not a blog roll)
• Be sure your theme has a comment form already included to acquire comments either from SiteComments or organic comments from the search engine. This way readers can submit questions or comments directly from your article on each post without having to leave the posting page.
• Use SiteComments the WA platform after you have some articles already published. It is in the OEC lessons. The comments are helpful for your organic readers to read as this builds up trust and is best for SEO.
• Encourage sharing of your content by offering social media sharing buttons for all articles making it even easier for people who like what they see here today!

See Map Mapping Technique

Photo: a mind mapping technique from bubbl dot us

Final Thoughts

It's not hard to follow the five-step blueprint to start a blog. You can do it in less than 20 minutes every day. All you need do is research a topic idea based on your passion or a topic that you are dedicated to and find out if your audience is searching for the same thing and you can provide solutions for them. I can attest from experience that the hardest part will be deciding what kind of blog you want to create and finding out how much time it takes each day for weekly and monthly posting maintenance.

-BrendaMZ

PS. Additional Resources

7 Ways to Skyrocket Your Blog with Consistency

Scheduling a Post

Adding Social Media Buttons to Your Website