Blogging Basics – How to start a Successful Blog

Welcome to Part 2 – How to Start a Blog – Blogging Basics

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A round of applause for setting up your website! I told you it was much easier than you thought!
Now that you’ve gotten your website / blog up and available to the world. It’s time to learn the tools and resources to grow your blog and become a successful blogger. What do you really need to be a pro blogger and the steps to get there.
If you missed it – Part 1 – How to Start a Blog – Website Set up

here’s what you’ll learn

In this Part 2 of the “How to Start a Blog for Beginners” series, you’ll learn about blogging basics. Learn everything you need to do once you’ve set up your blog.

What tools and resources you need to sky rocket your blog to the top.

what You’ll learn;

• Blog Design + Branding – How to look like a pro blogger from the beginning!
• Essential Blog pages you need on your blog
• Best Plugins for your blog
• Setting up your social media accounts
• Website Sitemaps
• Site Analytics – Google Analytics
• What posts you should be creating every month
• Blogging tools – What blogging resources you don’t need to spend your money on!

Once you’ve set up your blog

Once you’ve set up your blog it still feels like there is a million more things to to. That’s because there kind of is. Blogging is not a “one and done” kind of thing. There is always something new to learn about in the blogging world. The internet is filled with ways to start a blog and run a blog and all that information can get a little confusing.

That’s why I have created this Blogging Basics – What to do once you’ve set up your blog – Comprehensive Guide. This guide explains all the necessary tasks and to do’s once your website is up and running. What pages and plugins do you seriously need? Because you really don’t need all of them. How do you set up your website sitemaps and Google Analytics to start to monitor your traffic and growth?

This guide is your key to blogging success, just keep reading!

lets get started – Blogging basics

This is going to be a long, thorough, comprehensive guide.

This guide on Blogging Basics – What to do once you’ve set up your blog is full of all the essential tools you need to successfully run your blog . So get comfy, take notes and pin this post for later.

Also, use the “Table of Contents” to get a quick overview of everything, and to be able to skip to a section to get you started right away!

Bookmark this post so you can come back to it later for reference if you ever need help. + you can always ask me for help in the comment section down below & I’ll do my very best to assist you!

Branding and blog design

Choose a theme for you blog that matches your blog / website niche or vision. I light airy theme for a rugged truck blog doesn’t match, you get me? Choose a theme that compliments your blog niche and audience.

After your chosen the most aesthetically pleaseing theme for your blog, it’s important to spend time branding your blog?

What does branding my blog mean?

“Branding includes your mission and values as a business and is conveyed through the way your brand looks visually as well as the tone you take on when speaking to your audience.“

Margaret Bourne

Learn more about why branding your blog in 2023 is so important here.

Essentially brand your blog so that whenever you post content lets say on Pinterest, people know its you.

Don’t have your blog up and running just as yet? & start your blog today.
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essential blog pages

When you’re happy with the overall aesthetic of your blog, the next step is to add essential blog pages.

For a successful blog to run smoothly, there are a number of “Essential Blog Pages” that a website / blog must have. To avoid the possibility of being sued, pages like Disclosure , Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions pages must be created. Also, you cannot monetize your blog without those 3 essential pages. To be accepted into Google AdSense to start earning money from your blog, you need these pages.

For a professional looking blog straight from the beginning, these pages should also be created;

• Welcome / Home page
• About me page
• Contact me / us page
• Blog Post page

Learn more about Essential Blog Pages here.

Best Plugins for your blog

Plugins are useful website tools that can help successfully grow your blog. By using the right plugins, they can help you and your blog be more productive & organized. Plugins assist in securing your website from hackers, enhancing your content shares and so much more!

These are my top 3 recommended Best WordPress Plugins

1 . Yoast SEO

Yoast is one of my favourite and most used plugins! I couldn’t post a great post without it!

The Yoast SEO plugin helps to improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). As a result of improving your overall SEO score, you will gain more organic traffic from search engines like Google.

Once you install the plugin, Yoast SEO gives you specific recommendations on how to improve your SEO score on the post or page.

Aim for green lights on Yoast SEO

2. WP FORMS

Easy, simple to use plugin to create contact forms for your audience to connect with you. You want to make sure that your contact me page is displayed and easily accessible. Remember that list of Essential Blogging Pages? A contact form is one of them!

3. WordFence Security

WordFence security is a FREE security plugin to protect your blog. By using firewalls, and malware scans, you can rest easy knowing that your blog is protected.

setting up your social media accounts

Setting up your social media accounts is a great way to grow your blog audience and connect with them.

Create social media accounts for all platforms and try to use the same user handle for all of them, to really brand your blog.
Social Media Accounts to set up:

• Pinterest! (#1!)
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter

• Pinterest
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter

Having your social media handles displayed on your blog gives simple access to your viewers to quickly share a blog post or page. Share your social medias on social media. Promote your different accounts.

Website sitemap

A website site map tells Google about your website or blog. Once you’ve set it up, Google then takes some time to learn your site to rank your blog posts using SEO.

Creating a sitemap will help Google and other search engines start to bring organic traffic to your blog.

In addition, once you’ve downloaded the Yoast SEO Plugin, it also creates a website Sitemap for you.

If you don’t want to use Yoast, you can download the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.

After you’ve gotten your website Sitemap, take some time to upload it to Google Webmaster Tools.

Learn more about Website Sitemaps here.

Google analytics

Google analytics is the website genius. It tracks so many things relating to your blog / website.

Google Analytics is perfect for tracking your pageviews and visitors. How many people have visited your blog this month and what county they are from.

Perfect for monitoring your blog growth and traffic. They provide you with traffic insights and goals as well!

First, you’ll need to create a Google Account, then register your website. Once you have verified your website, you are able to start tracking and watch your blog grow!

Don’t forget to set monthly blog goals to really skyrocket your blog to success.

Posts to create each month

A great website is nothing without it’s content. You need engaging content to not only draw your readers in, but also make them stay.

Your content needs to make readers want to read more, learn more.

Stuck with blog post writing? Check out these:

You should aim to publish at least 1 post per week. I recommend 2-3, but its really how many post can you write in a week. Publish as many posts as you are able to create.

List of posts to create each month.

• A how-to post
• A sponsored post
• A personal post or success story – people was to listen to your voice and what you have to say
• A detailed informative post
• A fun post

Aim to create at least one of these posts types per week.

Blogging tools and resources

There are a million blogging tools and resources out there available to bloggers. From free courses to expensive coaching sessions. All promising to make you a million dollars in 3 months. Skip those.

Blogging is fairly easy, & honestly, you don’t really need all that jazz to run a blog. Just time, tons of effort, and dedication. There’s only a couple real tools needed to run a successful money making blog.

Here’s a list of the blogging tools that you REALLY need:

A Reliable Webhost – Siteground – You cannot have a website without a hosting company.
Siteground makes setup easy. Great for beginner bloggers learning how to start a blog – You can purchase a domain name and pick a hosting plan all within Siteground’s options.
Simply just create a username & password + fill out all your important info.
With Siteground’s Hosting + Domain name program you can completely set up your blog for less than $20!

Tailwind – Schedule your pins. [ Available in Free and Pro versions ] Tailwind is great for sharing your posts on social media. Manually posting on social media can take up precious time. In minutes you can schedule pins and graphics for Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram!

You can also join Tailwind Groups. In these groups you can share your pins and have other group members share them as well to increase your traffic and engagement.

Grammarly – Spellcheck and grammar. [ Available in Free and Pro versions ] Grammarly is a great tool that checks your blog posts and pages for spelling and grammatical errors. They have an easy to use plugin to check your posts on the fly!

With the free version you are able to check your spelling and grammar. With the pro version, you have the added ability to reword sentences for better content.

blog your way to success – blogging basics

There you have it ! Blogging Basics – What to do after you’ve set up your blog. To grow a successful blog you need to want to. Blogging take dedication and perseverance. Not everything happens in a day.

Now that you have your beautiful, fully functioning blog, you can now start to monetize your blog to make money from your blog.

Grow your blog with these step by step instructions and watch your blog skyrocket. You now have the tools to have your blog running like a professional blogger.

Remember, Stay consistent.

It’s a marathon, not a race.

– TONY ROBBINS

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Cheers,