How to Start and Run a Successful Blog for Your Business
Starting a new blog is a great, but an intimidating experience. Although you are thrilled at the thought of people reading and sharing your blog post while converting them to customers, you can’t help but wonder where you are going to start, how much work you need to put in, and whether your content will reach your goals.
Creating a successful blog could be easy if you are looking to create a simple, personal blog. But, to be honest, it’s not easy if you are looking to create a successful blog for search engines to increase traffic and conversion rate, you really need to put the work in.
To help you create a successful business blog, here are 5 steps that you should follow to create and design your blog, and five tips you can use to make it successful and help you in your blogging journey and achieve your business goals.
Steps for Starting a Successful Blog for Your Business
1. Choose your blog name
Your blog name should be well thought-out because it creates the first impression on your regular readers. It appears as part or as the address of your blog.
You can name it anything. It could be “yourbusiness.com”, “yourname.com” or any creative combination of letters you can come up with. Just don’t let it be too vague or misdirecting. Let the potential readers know what to expect when clicking on your website. Although you are not restricted on the number of characters, you should keep it short and catchy, so your readers can easily type it from memory.
After selecting a relevant blog title, you should register it with custom domain registration services to prevent it from being used for another website. If you cannot come up with a name as you start, some blog hosting services such as Bluehost allow you to choose one later.
2. Choose a Web Hosting Service
For your blog to be successful, you need a reliable web hosting service provider that offers an ideal hosting package. This is a very important decision as the speed and performance of the site are determined by the web hosting service provider. The hosting plan you choose should have a track record of running all the time every day, and should also keep backups of your files and content in case of anything.
The most popular choice among bloggers is Bluehost. Some of the reasons why it is so popular are:
- Your domain name is free
- You get a money-back guarantee
- It is reliable
- Great customer service
- Great pricing
- It positively reviewed
To get started with Bluehost, just visit their homepage, select a basic plan or any other plan of your choice, get a free domain name, register, select whether you want any package extras, and create your account.
3. Add WordPress
You cannot create a blog without blogging software. A popular choice among bloggers is WordPress. If you are using Bluehost, you only need to click on the “Install WordPress” icon after logging in.
WordPress is preferred for it is user friendly, powerful, and almost completely free. It allows bloggers to save money as it offers a number of free plugins that you can use to modify your blog in any way you would like.
4. Pick a Theme And Design It
The colors and blog layouts should be carefully considered as these are the first things that meet the eyes of your readers after they click on your address. As such, the colors should blend well with each other and all the buttons easy to reach to navigate around your website. It should also be appropriate to your blog content. For example, a website that sells kids’ clothing can’t have an all-dark theme with a red accent.
In the WordPress dashboard, you will find more than 3000 elegant themes under the “Appearance” tab. You can easily search and filter to find one with the specifications you want. You have two options here: either you go for the free themes or the paid themes.
Although free items are commonly associated with low quality, it is not the case in this instance. There are lots of high-quality free themes that you can use. If you need more features in the future as your blog picks up momentum, you can switch to premium themes. Keep in mind that some of these free themes may come with viruses so yours should come from a reputable source.
The advantage of premium themes to free themes is the ongoing customer support, regular updates, easy to customize thanks to their documentation, and not many people use them so you will stand out from most of the business blogs out there.
To make sure that the theme you purchase delivers exactly what you expect it to, you need to do the following.
- Most of them come with a short description of their functionality and features so you should go through it
- Preview the theme to get the feel of the layout, look, and customizability.
- Check the ratings by other users. The higher the rating, the better the theme and vice versa.
4. Write and Publish Blog Content
Congratulations! You now have a blog. It is time to start creating content. But before you start actually creating the main content, all the important static pages are filled first. These pages include “About us”, homepage, and “Contact us” among others.
To create blog articles on WordPress, just click on “Posts” on the left menu. If this is your first time using WordPress, you will find a default post there. Just click on “trash” under the post to delete it as you do not need it.
To begin writing, click on the “Add New” link that will direct you to the post editor screen. You can now start creating your content. Once you finish, click on “Publish” at the bottom of the page.
How To Make Your Blog Successful
Now you have a blog, what next? What do you need to do to make it successful and start making you money? Here are 5 tips to making your blog a success.
1. Post Consistently
There are no rules to how much you are supposed to post your written or video content on your blog. However, whichever interval you decide is best for you, you should stick with it. It is important that your audience knows when to expect new content.
2. Provide Useful And Valuable Information
Readers are attracted to highly relevant and helpful information. As such, you should write one blog post after another while providing new blog topics on a regular basis. In this way, you will create a loyal following.
But if you don't know where the nitty gritties of writing a blog that captivates, engages, and converts, check out this cheatsheet!
3. Engage With Your Audience
You should professionally engage with your readers in terms of comments on your post. Even if they have an opinion that differs from yours, you should always acknowledge them. By doing so, the number of loyal readers increases, and they become more likely to talk to others about you.
4. Make It Easy To Answer The Call To Action
Your call to action should be conveniently placed such that the readers can easily see and reach it. Any extra steps involved in reaching the call to action could lead to losing a potential lead.
5. Promote And Share What You Write
Even if they are very loyal, not all content will reach them. As such, you should always promote your valuable content every time you publish it. You can do so by sharing affiliate links to your blog’s social media channels, in newsletters, and also in emails. They may be willing to read your content but as long as they don’t know when you have something new, they will never read it.
Promoting and sharing is the one thing that all businesses and blogs must do if they want to reach new customers.
6. Hire a Professional Blog Copywriter
You may find this unbelievable, but the real secret to starting a successful business blog is not what you write. Rather, it’s who is writing for you.
With many steps and actions to take to make a blog successful, it’s obvious that the process is daunting for avid business owners who have a lot on their plate. If inadequate skills or lack of time are preventing you from starting a successful business blog and other types of content, it’s prudent that you hire a professional blog copywriter to handle this intricate and time-consuming task.
The obvious question here is – what can a professional blog copywriter do for me? Well, here are the things that a copywriter can do that prove that hiring one is the best investment you can make for your business:
- Tell a richer story
People are programmed to love stories. So, your target audience wants to hear about how your business overcame challenges and how you intend to help them do the same. Great stories make your audience like your business. They build trust. A professional blog copywriter has experience in helping brands tell richer stories to attract more customers through their blog and other digital marketing channels.
- Build a stronger brand
If your blog tells richer stories, provides valuable information, and portrays your brand as a likable force, it can strengthen your business. If you’re focused on building trust with your audience, and genuinely caring about their well-being, you’ll ultimately build a stronger brand. A professional blog copywriter has valuable blog post ideas and can apply tactics when creating a successful blog for your business that will help you strengthen your brand.
- Save you money
If you hire an in-house copywriter, you will incur recurring expenses every month in salary and other perks. The good thing about hiring a freelance copywriter is that you won’t have to pay a monthly wage to a permanent employee. You can only hire the copywriter when the need arises, thus save money on payroll and marketing expenses.
And that's not all, there are many more benefits of hiring a professional blog writer to do the heavylifting for you.
Hire a Professional Blog Copywriter Today
The secret to starting a success blog for your business is to create superior blog content, and the key to creating superior content is to hire a professional blog copywriter. By doing so, you will be setting up your company blog and content strategy for success.
If you are ready to hire an experienced blog copywriter who can help you start a successful business blog from scratch, check out our blog writing services and Zoey Writers will be here to help. We are a copywriting agency that goes an extra mile to deliver high-quality blog content for businesses.
Contact us today to get your blog in motion.
Photo by by Breaking Pic from Pexels: Thanks @Breaking Pic : )
