9 Aspects of Blogging [Week 4: Informational Post]

People often ask me if I conduct blogging workshops. Sure, I do. I then ask them which part of blogging do they want me to teach and they’ll say, “I want to start a blog.”

That’s a loaded statement. Starting a blog can mean setting up a blog, selecting a theme or writing content for the site, depending on where they are in the blogging process.

After explaining this to several people over the years, I wrote this blog post; created a handout; published the Blogging Success for New Bloggers workbook; and produced the Blogging Success for New Bloggers course.

Allow me to explain each aspect of blogging in a little more detail.

9 Aspects of Blogging

Pre-Planning

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What at am I going to blog about?
• Why do I want to blog?
• Who is my audience?
• How much time do I have to commit to blogging?
• Which blogging platform am I going to use?

Set-up / maintenance

This is the stage where you select your domain name; determine if you are going to use a free or paid blogging platform; and consider the applications you want to use to make your site function the way you want.

Design

How do you want your site to look and feel? Pick a design that corresponds with these decisions.

Content

Your content is the meat of your site. What are your topics? How are you going to present them – text, audio, video, presentations? How often are you going to create content?

Promotion

Use both traditional and online methods and tools to promote your blog posts.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization helps people to find your site and blog posts on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

Monetization

Consider the methods you will going to use to generate a cash flow. Google ads, affiliate sales and product reviews are just of the few ways to make money from blogging.

Security

Protect your site from spammers and hackers.

Analytics

Analytics are used to measure the traffic of your blog. Specifically, you will find out who visits your site; how they found your site; how long they stayed on your site; and the most popular posts on your site.

Above are the nine aspects of blogging that you should consider when starting your blog.

What About You?

Do you have questions or need help with any of these? Let us know in the comment box below.

 

Read previous posts:

Week 1 post: How to Manage Multiple Blogs and Maintain Your Sanity

Week 2 post: 4 Quick Tricks for Growing Your Social Media Following Organically

Week 3 post: Rejection Therapy: What It Is and Why You Should Do It

Next week:

Week 5 of Blogger’s Block Challenge: Story Post