Blogging can be very fun, and I am very lucky to have a regular slot on For Working Ladies. Some Girl Bosses have made blogging into a career and their blogs follow their adventures around the world; it’s a perfect world we all want to be a part of. But for every loved and followed blog there is one left abandoned with the doomed time-stamp on the last post circa 2011. There are a few things you will need to consider before starting to blog, either on your own site or a contributor on another.
1.What do you want from it?
Is the idea of your blog to share your life, your passion or something else entirely? Is it just for fun or do you eventually want to make a living from it? Blogs need a great amount of good content to show up any higher than 10th place on broad Google Search due to its analytics – so bear that in mind. You will have to think about whether your blog will feed into social media channels to spread the word or to remain something for you and your friends.
2.Do you have the time?
Blogging is time consuming, there is no doubt about that. For every blog post you write you will have to research, draft and then revise your blog post before it even gets posted. Some blogs are a brain dump, which is fine if that’s your objective, but before posting it should still be given a revise for spelling and grammar errors. What I’m trying to say is that you will have to be really gifted to just sit down and create an amazing blog without all the ground work; for a successful blog you should be looking at one hour per blog post and blogging at least four times a week minimum.
3.Which platform will you use?
There are a few options with this one, either create your own blogging website from scratch or rent space on an existing blog. Both may cost you money, obviously creating your own website will cost you more. You should work out if you can afford it and also research the best platform to deliver your objectives.
4.Where will your ideas come from?
It doesn’t matter how creative you are, at one point you will have an idea freeze and wonder what topic or heading to blog about next. You need to know where you can get a steady source of inspiration for your blogs. This could be other blogs, current affairs or just a quick Google – but you need to do your research on this.
5.Have you done your business research?
Owning your own blog comes with lots of decisions to make and these are best decided before you start out so that you hit the ground running and don’t have to double back on yourself. Do you want to capture email subscribers? How will you set up competitor analysis? Do you want to be attractive for advertisers? You will need to do some serious research and also get your business head on, if only for a little while, before you can start putting your ideas and thoughts onto paper.
What have your experiences of blogging been? Have you found it easy to set up or a bit of a slog? Let me know.
