Assuming you have already setup your personal website or blog, your next step would be to focus on creating quality content for your readers. Many newbie bloggers make the mistake of expecting too much too soon. What you have to understand is that blogging should become a habit not a chore. If you make it a chore you will end up setting unrealistic deadlines and then you will be demotivated when you don’t reach them.
Start your Blog keeping in mind that you will be doing this for a long time and don’t feel pressured to monetize your blog too soon. Think of blogging as a fun task that you want to make a routine. Some days you are flooded with ideas and other days you are empty. Whenever you get great ideas, jot it down and make a plan to tackle them one by one. Reward yourself for your achievement. If you start feeling pressured or tense about missing a couple days of writing , don’t sweat it. It happens to everyone and you can take a rest until you feel like writing. Believe it or not , it is during the resting phase that many of us come up with great ideas.
Blogging is your priority but health comes first. So, remember to maintain a healthy habit. Hit the gym, do yoga, go out often for fresh air, and don’t skip on your friend’s special events just to sit in your room and blog. Blogging is a part of your life but it is not your life. If you balance the two, you will have a great blogging experience and won’t miss out on the best things in life.
Here are some useful tips on getting started for newbie bloggers:
Content Research
At the beginning of each week spend some time coming up with interesting topics for your blog or website. List them down and then schedule your writing for the current week. You don’t have to rush to writing 10 articles per day. Start with three per week and once you develop a habit of writing you will automatically start writing more. You can use various task management tools to help you organize and schedule your daily tasks.
Daily Article writing
Don’t be pressured but try to write at least one short article every day. Start with small 300 to 500 word articles if you are the kind of person who easily gets bored. Once the writing becomes a part of your daily routine, you can start writing long posts. Do you have a habit of procrastinating ? Read this post: How to handle Procrastination.
SEO
Learn about SEO. It is a useful skill that will help boost your website traffic. Thousands of new blogs are born everyday but not every blog posts gets to the top of the Google search results. Armed with SEO skills, you will know how to optimize your content so that Google can easily find it, and that gives you a huge advantage over a large number of people who don’t have any knowledge of SEO. If you chose WordPress for your Blog, then you can install Yoast SEO plugin, which will teach you all about on-page SEO. Read – The beginner’s guide to SEO.
Analytics
Install Google Analytics plugin to analyze the progress of your website. Analyze your web traffic and how your recent SEO implementation has improved it. You can also check the demographics of your readers and check important keywords that people are using to come to your website. For the first couple of months do not focus on traffic but focus entirely on content. The initial traffic will be very low and it can discourage you from your writing. Just rest assured that the more interesting contents you push the higher your traffic will be in the upcoming months. You can expect a sharp rise in traffic after six months. Read: Getting Started with Google Analytics.
Themes
At first, it’s not necessary to focus on the looks of your website. Install a simple but nice looking free WordPress theme and then focus on writing contents. Make sure that the theme has a responsive design so that it looks great on mobile devices. Properly categorize your contents so that your readers can easily find what they are looking for. Later as your website grows, you may want to invest on extra features or install a premium theme which supports easy customization.
These are just some basic things you need to follow as a Blogger. As you become more experienced you will learn more and be ready to apply more advanced techniques to get your Blog to the top. Finally, after you gain a decent amount of regular traffic or website visitors you can start focusing on how to monetize your blog.