How To Creating a Successful Blog?
I understand that some people are looking for the quickest way to do things. However, creating a successful blog is a lot more work than that.
When I first decided I wanted to get serious about blogging, I immediately turned to Google to help me find out how to get started. It seemed like everyone wanted to make it sound easy. It’s not. It shouldn’t be.
I was disappointed with all the “Start a Blog in 15 Minutes!” headlines that were just tutorials on how to buy hosting and set up WordPress. While this is important information to a lot of people, this was something I already knew how to do. It wasn’t answering the big question:
How do I create a successful blog?
I wanted to know what comes next. What happens after you have your blog set up? What do you do after you’ve written posts? And most important, how do I promote my blog so people can actually read it?
I started studying every resource I could get my hands on. No one was going to spell it all out for me, so I had to figure it out myself. I couldn’t afford to pay hundreds of dollars for a blogging course and I still wasn’t 100% sure they wouldn’t just be telling me things I already knew.
It took me several months, but I finally figured out a good plan. In my blogger groups on Facebook, I saw a lot of people struggling with the same things I did. I decided to create a blog that I could use to answer these questions and share other knowledge that I had. That’s what Blogging Butterfly really is, after all.
The Blogging for Beginners!
I’m releasing it to you for free. That’s right free.
Okay, so, technically it’s’ not right here. I’m dripping it out over 5 days. But hear me out. There’s a way you can get it RIGHT NOW. Let’s talk a little bit about what you get first, though.
Since it is a free product, it’s mostly going to be telling you what information you need to look up on your own with some guidance as to what you need to learn. The value is in that you now have a structured plan that you can follow to create your own blog. Your own successful blog.
That said, this was originally just an outline for people to follow, but I ended up going into a bit of detail for each section and ended up with over 7 or 8,000 words of content for you. Yay! With that amount of work, I probably should have sold this, but instead, I’m just going to give it away.
Learn what you need to do to get started
FINALLY!! Some sort of plan! Or maybe I just never found one in all my research. Whatever, the case, I’m here to help you out now.
Each section has an explanation with ideas to try or suggested products you can look into. Some things were easy to explain so I went ahead, and others you really should do more research on, so I mentioned that too. I also included any blog posts I already have written up that will help you, too.
I’ll slowly be posting more about all these topics but that takes time and I know you all want to get started with your blogs. I figured a good outline of what to do would be more useful than people waiting around for me to write every single thing up myself. I’ll be adding my posts as references in each section as I complete them.
The Plan
There are 5 parts to this plan: Discovery, Education, Creation, Launch, and Growth. Each section shows you how
Discover
This is when you’ve just decided you want to start a blog. Maybe you have no idea what you want to write about. That’s okay! You can figure it out eventually.
Besides finding the perfect niche, you’re going to research what potential readers want and learn about what tools are available to write your blog and maintain your social media accounts.
In the learning phase, you'll take the time to learn how to use your blogging tools. It's best to try out several different tools and find which one will work best for your needs.
You'll purchase your domain, dig into your chosen blogging platform, and learn about the basics of writing successful blog posts and using social media strategically.
Learning to blog is really a process that you're going to be going through throughout your time as a blogger. Don't feel bad about not being able to learn everything before you want to release your blog. Don't even attempt it.
You're probably going to choose one thing and change your mind about it later. It happens, and it's okay. That's a part of your own personal blogging story.
Learn
In the learning phase, you’ll take the time to learn how to use your blogging tools. It’s best to try out several different tools and find which one will work best for your needs.
You’ll purchase your domain, dig into your chosen blogging platform, and learn about the basics of writing successful blog posts and using social media strategically.
Learning to blog is really a process that you’re going to be going through throughout your time as a blogger. Don’t feel bad about not being able to learn everything before you want to release your blog. Don’t even attempt it.
You’re probably going to choose one thing and change your mind about it later. It happens, and it’s okay. That’s a part of your own personal blogging story.
Create
Here’s the fun part! You’ll finally start creating branding for your blog and start writing your first posts.
You’re also going to need to get your social media profiles set up and create some ethical bribes to increase your readership.
You may find yourself spending a lot of time in the Creation phase depending on how much time you have to work. The important thing to remember is that it’s better to just LAUNCH than to try to launch perfectly. Blogs are dynamic. It’s okay to change things after you’ve launched.
Some people may even skip the launch phase entirely and just start posting from the beginning. That’s okay, too.
Launch
The Launch phase gives you time to finish your posts and polish up your blog while you spend time promoting your coming soon landing page. Set a specific date for when you want your blog to go live and stick to it.
You should spend the time leading up to your release promoting your new blog. Get people to your landing page and get them to subscribe to your email list.
Tell people about your approaching launch date. Find other bloggers to partner with, get interviewed, or do some content marketing with your social media accounts.
Grow
You’ve got your blog launched and you’re ready to grow. From here on out, you’ll be posting and working to promote each one of those posts.
What you do next is up to you! Will you continue to blog as a hobby, or will you turn it into a business?
Whatever you do, you have a project that you created. A project that you should be proud of. It’s time to nurture it and watch it grow.
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You can also grab all this information in course format. I really like the course format because you can track your progress and also everything is organized and squared away so neatly into bite-sized chunks. I think that really helps when there’s this much information available.
