So you want to know what is a blog or what is blogging? And also wants to learn how to start a blog? If yes, then this detailed article/guide is for you. In this article, we will discuss what is blogging, how you can start your blog and some other things.
Here we will try to break down all the aspects related to the terms Blogging or Blog.
This article is completely beginner-friendly. If you have zero ideas what these terms mean or you know the basics but want to learn more, this guide will help you with this.
Read this detailed guide from start to end and get the required knowledge about these terms. You can also use this guide as a reference to start your blog.
Table of Contents
What is a Blog?
The blog was basically a weblog. The term weblog started in the late ’90s, which later become ‘we-blog’ and now just ‘blog’. When it was first started, people use this for keeping their journal or share information. But now a blog has become more than just a journal.
A blog post is basically a journal run by an individual, group, or business. It is a combination of texts, images, videos, Gifs, and few other things.
A blog is a web page of an individual website, where the blogger talks about a sub-topic of his blog.
For example, let’s say you have a website related to Fitness. One of your blog posts might be titled “Reduce Weight in one month”. This post defines the overall topic of your website(Fitness). But it also addresses a particular sub-topic(reduce weight).
Blog posts also help you to rank on search engines, which can bring a lot of visitors to your website. When a person visits your blog post they get complete access to the rest of your website front end. They can also visit your “Product Page” as well as if you have something to sell. This is a great way to increase your sales. Connect all the important pages of your website to your blog posts.
Apart from niche blogging, nowadays, we also have corporate blogs. These blogs write content about informational and thought-leadership.
Note: The information was posted in reverse chronological order, the most recent post would appear first.
Purpose of a Blog Post
There are many reasons to start a blog for personal use or for business. The reasons or benefits for a personal blog are many whereas for corporates the reasons are quite limited.
Some of the reasons to start a blog:
- A blog helps companies to rank their website in the Search engines. You can still rank your website through paid ads but a long term solution is a blog.
- It helps you to become an expert in a particular industry by providing information. For example, if you are a fitness coach, you can share your knowledge with the world with your blog posts.
- Blogs have become an effective lead generation tool for businesses. It helps us to generate visitors to the website and turn those visitors into leads by providing values.
- A blog also helps you engage with an online community or readers with similar interests. For example, you start a food blog, now you can ask your readers to share their own recipe and feedback. You can also ask them to sign-up for your newsletter as well.
These are a few of the reasons why you should start a blog.
A Blog Structure
The structure of a blog generally includes:
- Header with the menu or navigation bar
- The main content area with highlighted or latest blog posts
- Sidebar with social profiles, favorite content, or call-to-action
- Footer with relevant links like a disclaimer, privacy policy, contact page, etc.
This is generally the basic structure of a blog. You can customize your blog structure as per your need.
Blog vs Website
A website is a collection of web pages. Whereas a blog is typically a section of your website. Unlike the rest of your website, you need to frequently update your blogs by adding new posts and updating the old once. Moreover, blogs are great tools to engage with readers. It allows the reader to share their thoughts as a comment and also share it in social. A blog is generally a two-way conversation than the rest of your website.
However, if a blog is for personal use, it can be the entire website as well, for example- a travel blog, or a fitness blog.
What is Blogging?
“Blogging” is the act of writing on a blog.
In the year 1999, the popular blogging website Blogger.com was launched. Later it was acquired by Google in the year 2003.
In that same year (2003), WordPress releases its first version of the blogging platform. And now, it has become the world’s most popular platform for blogging. Today more than 30% of the websites on the internet built on WordPress.
When it first started, in 1994 or 1995, people use this to keep the Journal about their day. They used to write about their daily life, thoughts, facts, events, and many other things.
But with the expansion of the reader base and its popularity, it becomes more than just a Journal. Many entrepreneurs see a great opportunity in this and start using it as a marketing tool. And blogging took off from there. Today it has become one of the major tools for the companies in their inbound marketing strategies. It helps them to build a community with their readers by adding value to them.
Apart from that, blogging has become a business for a lot of bloggers.
Why Blogging is becoming is so popular?
We can’t deny that the popularity of blogging is increasing every passing day. But why?
To find out the answer to this why we need to check the reasons behind it.
Here are a few of the reasons why blogging is becoming so popular:
- We know that the Search Engine loves new content. So, businesses start using blogging as a tool to optimize their website for search engines.
- Blogging is a great tool to keep your clients and customers up to date. It also helps you to build a community and gain credibility for your brand.
- Every time a visitor comes to your post and leave a comment, you can easily interact with them. And it also helps you to create a network of loyal followers.
- Blogging can make you money as well. Apart from selling your own products or services, you can generate income from other options, such as affiliate products or advertising.
What are the Benefits of Blogging?
The benefits of blogging are different from one blogger to another. Personal bloggers use blogging either to keep their journal or to showcase their creativity, talent, and knowledge to a wider audience.
Whereas, top brands and businesses use blogging to communicate with their customers. Some use it to share the news, etc. Today, for many businesses, blogging has become an essential part of their marketing strategies.
Here are a few of the benefits of blogging:
- For individuals, it helps them to create a personal brand in their industry.
- It helps a blogger to show their creativity, talent, and skills.
- Blogging also helps you to make money as well.
- Businesses can use blogging to drive more potential customers to their websites.
- A non-Profit organization can use blogs to raise awareness.
Blogging Platforms
Here are some of the blogging platforms that you can choose from to start a blog.
- WordPress.org
- WordPress.com
- Blogger
- Medium
- Tumblr
- Wix
- Squarespace
Select one from the list, and start creating your blog
Rad More – Best Blogging sites and platforms in 2020
Who is a Blogger?
A blogger is a person or a group of peoples who write and control blogs. They write on topics that they know about or master those skills. A blog allows them to express their opinion and share your knowledge with a set audience. It also helps them to build their own personal brand as well. Reputed bloggers are also get hired by companies for consulting or for particular projects.
In recent times blogging has become an alternate career option for many people. Today, a lot of people want to start their own blogs, for many reasons. Everyone has their own reason or story.
Do Bloggers make money?
Yes, bloggers do make money, but it’s not a get rich quick formula.
But before you start to monetize your blog, you need to take care of a few things. For example
- You need to write quality content in your blogs.
- Build your ranking in SERP(Search Engine Result Page)
- Build authority in your particular Niche
These things will take some of your time. Money making opportunities won’t come easily unless you make any effort for it. You need to gain your credibility first.
Here are some of the ways how you can make money as blogger:
- You can sell ad space on your blog privately or via Google AdSense.
- You can also become an affiliate partner.
- Sell your own digital products such as eBooks and tutorials.
- Selling memberships for access to exclusive content or advice.
- Use your blog as a content marketing tool and generate leads for your business.
If you are doing blogging for your business, you will probably avoid selling ad space and membership. But you can create and sell your own digital products such as e-books or online courses.
Read More – How to Earn Money by Blogging- A Detailed Guide
How to start a blog or Blogging?
Nowadays starting a blog is become very easy. Anyone who is interested in starting a blog can easily star it. But in earlier days of blogging, users need to have coding skills. But now, coding skill is not necessary anymore(if you have coding skills that’s great). With the advancement of technology, now we have tools that allow us to create a blog without writing any codes. So, choose a good blogging platform and start blogging.
We recommend using WordPress.org. It is the world’s most popular blogging platform and a website builder. More than 30% of the world’s website builds over WordPress. You can also choose this for yourself.
To start a blog, you will need the following things:
- A Domain name(It will be the address of your website and also what users will type on their browser to visit your site)
- A Web Hosting Platform(where all the data of your website stores)
- A website on your selected domain and hosting(if you don’t know how to create a website then you can read our detailed guide on how to create a WordPress website from scratch)
- Install a few plugins(best plugins for your website)
- A blog topic or blogging niche
- Some of your time
Once you are done with all the above mention steps you are ready to go and create your first blog post. You are ready to share your knowledge with a set of audience in your niche.
How to Blog
- Firstly, you need to select a target audience for your blog. It is very important to think about your target audience. For whom you are creating your blogs? And who do you want to read your blog posts? Before you start your blog you need to decide the niche you will be writing about and the topics that you’ll cover in your blogs.
- Create a blogging strategy and an editorial calendar. Your strategy should answer questions like:
- Who are you targeting?
- What type of content will you produce?
- When will you post?
- Where will you promote your content?
Overall you need to have a mission for your blogs. Then, create an editorial calendar to keep you organized. It will help you to keep track of all your posts, deadlines, etc.
- Put a good amount of importance on your article structures. Your headings, sub-headings, paragraphs, images, bullet points everything has to be on point. Additionally, if you are using Call-to-action(CTAs), your blog should guide the readers about what they need to do next.
- Promote your blogs as much as you can. The more you promote more readers you get for your blogs. You can use social media, SEO, search Ads to promote your blogs. Promotion of your blogs through social will also help you with SEO.
- Learn about SEO. If you want to get more visitors to your website, you have to rank your blogs to the 1st page of Search engine result page(SERP). And for that, you need to learn SEO. Learn how to do Keyword Research, On-page optimization, competitor research, backlink building, and a few more things. And also learn how to build an SEO strategy.
- Apart from creating new content, you also need to update your old posts as well. Update your old posts with the latest content and make it accurate and comprehensive for your readers.
- Perform competitive analysis on your top blog competitors. An analysis will help you to understand your target audience. It also helps in identifying trends and gives you ideas for your new blog posts and the ways to promote your blogs.
Promote your Blogs
Promoting a blog is one of the most important things for bloggers. And don’t be shy of telling people about your blogs. You put your time and effort in this, you need to tell people about this. And you also want people to read this.
We have tons of different ways to promote our blogs. We will discuss a few of them-
Social Media or networks:
Social media can be a great way to promote your blogs. You can do it by both paid and for free. But it good if you can invest some amount in your promotion. A paid promotion will give you more reach and also helps you get quick results. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can be a great platform to promote and also find like-minded people online.
Guest Blogging:
Guest blogging is one of the ways you can promote your blog. Write posts for another website and add your website link in there. There is a chance that people who read that blog may visit your blogs too from those links. Apart from that, you can also ask other bloggers to write a blog for your site as well. And whenever they share the article with there readers, they will visit your site, and it gives you a great opportunity to get some new readers for your blogs too.
Email Marketing List:
This process is for established websites, which already has a subscriber base. For a new website, they can start collecting email ids with there blogs. Email marketing is one of the best ways to promote a blog. Whenever you write a new article or have some new offers for them you can quickly let them know through emails. It also helps you to measure your growth over time.
Answer questions on an online forum like Quora:
Quora can also be a great platform for you to promote your blogs. Find topics or questions related to your blog, answer those questions, and add a link back to your blog. This will help you to get some visitors to your blogs.
Focus on Search Engine Optimization(SEO):
Getting traffic organically to your blogs is the best way to promote your blogs. It can give you the maximum number of visitors. Growing a blog and SEO content goes hand in hand. These contents are basically optimized for ranking on search results for particular queries(keywords). Do proper SEO optimization for your blogs to rank them well in Search engines and get new readers your blogs.
Use Google AdWords:
Google Adwords or Paid-Per-Click(CPC) can be a good way to generate traffic to your blogs if you need instant results. You can pay Google to send traffic to your website for particular keywords related to your topic. When you use PPC Google will put your site at the top of the search results page for particular keywords, and people can visit your blog from there. Unlike SEO, it will give you a quick result.
Post frequently with Evergreen contents:
You have to post regularly with evergreen content to get more readers for your blogs(at least once a weak, but preferably 2 per weak). But what is evergreen content? It is a concept in SEO that means the content of that blog post will stay relevant for years to come. Basically, it will not be a seasonal topic that stays relevant for a limited period of time. This kind of content also helps in your SEO as well.
How to generate ideas for your Blog Posts?
Generating ideas for new posts is one of the toughest things for writers. As a writer, some time you have to deal with a lot of emptiness. An Empty Google doc, editorial calendar, empty WordPress posts. And you start questioning yourself on how can I get ideas for my next post.
Most of the time we get new ideas by reading some other blogs. But only one way of generating ideas is not enough, you have come up with new ideas every week. And for that, you will need multiple streams of generating ideas. Some of the best ways of generating new blog post ideas are:
Aks your Readers:
This is one of the great ways to come up with new ideas for a blog post. Ask them what problem they are facing and what kind of solution they are looking for (related to your blog topic)or what new things they want to learn. Now write excellent content and share it with your readers.
Use Quora:
Quora is another good platform to find new content ideas for your blogs. Just head over to quora, find the topic as per your niche, then go through all the questions and pick the one that best suits your interest.
Use Twitter:
Inside the Twitter, search relevant Hashtags, go through all the tweets. This can give you a lot of new content ideas.
Google Trends:
Head over to your Google trends. Enter a search term or relevant topic, then select your country and hit enter. You will see a graph defining the trend. Now scroll down, and see the Related queries section. Check out both the queries that are on “Top” and those that are “Rising”, you will get some new ideas.
Google Autosuggest:
Go to Google and type a few words related to your topic and see the suggesting results given by Google. Choose the most relevant once to your topic and write a blog on it(do your research first).
AnswerThePublic tool:
use this tool to find out what people are looking for. Go the tool, put your topic and it will give you a bunch of queries that people are making. You can also download them as a CSV five as well.
Use KeywordTool.io:
Head over to the tool, type your keyphrase, or topic. After that, the tool will give you a list of keywords. Go through the keywords, do your SEO research and content on these keywords.
Competitor Research:
It is one of the best ways to come up with new content ideas for your blogs. Select your competitors, go to your keyword research tool, paste it, and find the top pages and the keywords that the website is ranking for. Select the relevant keywords, and if you didn’t write any blog on those keywords quickly come up with your content and share it with your readers.
Read the detail article here: How to generate new blog content ideas?
Note: Once you find your content ideas use them to create an editorial calendar for at least 2 months.
It will save you a lot of time and effort to find out new content ideas every day. And not just that, it will also provide you consistency in your blogging strategy.
Conclusion:
Inside this article, we cover a lot of topics like what is blogging, who is a blogger, how to start a blog, and many more things. And we hope that this article helps you to learn something new about blogging and clear all your doubts about this topic. And you find all your answers about this topic. If this article helps you to start your own blog, then please share it.