7 Tips For Starting The Blog You’ve Dreamed About

If you’d asked me several years ago if I was interested in starting a blog I would have laughed at you and said nope. I hated writing assignments throughout my school career. Writing papers felt like a punishment to me. Especially when there was no writing prompt. So there was no way I could see myself writing for fun or even for a living.

I also always thought that I could never understand website coding and all that went into creating and maintaining a website. But here I am today. Writing weekly blog posts for a site that I built and maintained myself.

Related read: The Best Advice And Tips On Starting A Successful Blog

I’ve found that blogging is a great creative outlet for me. It allows me to learn new skills and do creative things that I don’t get the chance to experience anywhere else. It also allows me to inspire and help people who I wouldn’t have had a chance to otherwise.

(This post includes affiliate links. Should you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

Without the helpful tips and learnings that other bloggers share I probably wouldn’t be doing any of this. So as a fellow blogger, I feel that I should give back like others have and share things that I’ve learned through trial and error, and success with my fellow readers and blog owners.

One of those things I like to share is tips for starting your own blog. I shared a five-part series on starting a blog a few years ago but I felt it might be helpful to pull tips from both sources and combine them into one easy-to-digest blog post with 7 key tips for starting your dream blog.

1. Decide what you want to blog about

Once you’ve decided that you want to blog, the next step is honing in on what you’d like to blog about.

There are many bloggers out there who say you need to narrow down your topics to one and stick to that. I’m of the mind that you can have multiple ones up to a certain extent and still be successful as long as the topics work together. For example, blogging about science fiction and home decor wouldn’t make sense (unless it’s science fiction home decor) but blogging about saving money and home decor could.

Additionally, knowing what you want to blog about will help you decide on your blog name and branding.

Related read: Starting A Blog Part 2: Creating Your Blog Name & Brand

2. Pick a blog platform and host

Once you know what you want to blog about you need to decide where your blog will live. There are many places to choose from but the most popular and better blogging platforms available are

• WordPress.org + Siteground hosting
• Blogger
• Squarespace

There are pros and cons to each many of which I outlined in my post about choosing a blog platform. So if you don’t already know which platform you’d like to use I recommend doing research on all three to find out which one best suits you and the needs of your blog.

3. Pick a blog theme

After picking a blog platform you need to pick out a blog theme. A blog theme is essentially the layout, functionality, and design of your blog, Most, if not all, blog themes are coded to work on specific blog platforms, so knowing which platform you’re going to use is an important prerequisite to selecting a theme.

Some things to keep in mind when looking for your blog’s theme is that it should be

• User-friendly
• SEO optimized
• Mobile optimized
• Works with your blog content and focus
• Customizable so you can add your branding 

There are several free and paid resources out there for blog themes. You can see more about selecting a blog theme in How You Know It's Time To Change Your Blog Theme and Where To Find Beautiful Blog Templates.

4. Start growing an audience

To help set your blog on the road to success from day one have a built-in audience. You can generate that audience by growing a social following before launching your blog.

Other ways to start growing your audience before your blog launch is to connect with other bloggers with similar niches by following them on social media, following their blogs, and even reaching out to them to gain more insights on what they’ve learned as bloggers

• Comment on the posts and social accounts of other bloggers. And not just comment, but leave meaningful comments. This helps get your name out there with these blog owners and their follower base. The key here is to make sure these are bloggers who have content similar to yours.
• Share the content of other bloggers on your social channels. Create your blog's social channels and start sharing content similar to what you’ll be creating on your blog. Doing this allows you to start building awareness as an authority on those topics.

5. Gather your tools

Running a blog takes a lot of tools. So it can be helpful to decide which tools you need and sign up for them before launching.

The tools that I use are for

• Automatic social posting - Tailwind, SmarterQueue, Planoly
• Taking pictures and/or video - iPhone
• Image and video editing - Snapseed, ColorStory, iMovie
• Analytics tracking - Google Analytics
• Budget tracking - Google Sheet budget tracker I made

The great thing is you don't always have to pay a lot of money or any money at all to use tools. Check out my list of 30 Free Resources For Blogging On A Budget too.

6. Plan your content

For your launch, you’ll want to have a blog post or two live and a couple waiting in the wings. This gives your readers a reason to stick around and takes the pressure off of creating content for a brand new blog.

Before writing your first post you should determine your posting schedule - every day, once a week, twice a week, etc. Whatever works for you is the best schedule and the great thing is you can change your schedule whenever you want. In addition to your blog post schedule, you should also create a schedule for your social posts.

Next, you should create a content calendar outlining what you’ll be posting when, and where. This is extremely helpful because a content calendar helps you plan out your posts and where how to promote them.

And if you’re starting a YouTube channel this is a good time to start writing your scripts and recording your first few videos.

7. Launch

Once you have your blog all set up and testing the functionality. Once you’ve written your first couple of blog posts it’s time to set your blog live.

Don’t worry if you don’t think your blog is perfect. Believe me, it will never be absolutely perfect and if you wait for it to be, you’ll never launch. It’s not like you’re printing a book where it’s a big production to change anything. With a blog, you can easily and most of the time quickly make tweaks and improvements even after you launch.

If you have any tips for launching a blog share in the comments below. I’d love to read them.