Once you’ve started a blog, how do you decide what to write about?
Well, what do you like to do? What do you like to talk about? If money wasn’t involved, what would you love to spend your time doing?
Write about what makes you feel most alive-what makes you excited!
Once you’ve pinpointed your topic, it’s important to establish your personal brand.
What is a personal brand? It is your online persona, your expertise, or what people would likely think of when they hear your name. What do you want to be known for? For example, I am the owner of TechDoneForYou, and I help business owners and authors create WordPress websites. My clients know me as a WordPress wiz.
Let me give you another example. My online marketing instructor, D’vorah Lansky, is known as a Digital Publishing Wizard. She is a best-selling author who helps other authors promote their books with virtual book tours and a variety of online marketing methods. Her website is https://shareyourbrilliance.com.
Now, what if you have more than one subject you are passionate about? Should you write everything all on one blog?
No. Luckily, not only is WordPress free, but it makes it easy for you to have more than one blog. Provided that you have the time, you could have one for every hobby or interest you have. For example, my author website, www.GinaAkao.com, focuses on prayer journal entries. I have also taught classical piano for many years, but if I wanted to blog about the piano, I would create a new blog and direct people to view my piano recordings on YouTube. That way people wouldn’t get confused when they visited my site, expecting to see content about faith but instead finding articles about how to practice before a recital.
If you’re still having trouble deciding what to write about, buy a journal and freewrite for about 30 minutes every day for a week. Don’t worry about publishing the content or sharing your musings with anyone. Don’t even assign an agenda or topic to yourself-just see what comes out. What makes you smile at the end of the day? That’s the personal brand you will want to build.
Once you’ve decided to start a blog or a website, what platform should you use? I recommend WordPress, and here’s why.
First, if you hire a web designer to custom build a website for you, every time you need to make a change, even a minor one, you’ll have to email your web designer. You’re at the mercy of his or her schedule.
Second, with WordPress, now more than ever before, you can control the content that goes on your website or blog, without needing to know any programming code such as HTML.
Third, and best of all, WordPress is free!
But why would you want a WordPress blog instead of a regular website? Well, every time you post to your blog, the latest post appears at the top of the blog page, and previous posts are pushed down below it.
With a regular website, the pages are static, so no new content is added unless your web designer specifically adds a page. WordPress is great because it allows you to have a dynamic blog page as well as static pages with content that doesn’t change often, such as your bio page or contact page. The search engines will love your blog!
Why use WordPress and not Weebly or another type of blog? Other blogging platforms are just not as versatile, easy to use, or search engine-friendly.
The first blog I started was through Google and it’s called a “blogspot” blog. That type is free, and you can post text, pictures, and video. And since blogspot blogs are Google products, the search engines easily locate your content. The downside however is that you can’t create static pages to make your blog more of a website. Also, readers have to have Google accounts to follow your blog posts, a clear disadvantage.
As far as competitors to WordPress go, Weebly will allow you to build a blog with up to six pages for free, but that’s only if you already pay for hosting (more on that later). Weebly offers sleek themes and drag-and-drop features, so it is very easy to use. You can easily set up a page to link directly to an external website, which is great if you have more than one subject you post about.
There is less of a learning curve with Weebly than with WordPress, but WordPress will allow you to create almost an unlimited number of pages, and the search engines will easily find the keywords that you “tag” on your WordPress site. Tags allow you to assign categories, topics, and subjects to your content, much like the labels marking bookshelves in bookstores.
Also, Weebly’s free version does not easily allow you to encourage readers to follow your blog. A follower is someone who goes to your blog and subscribes to it by entering their name and email. Once they have confirmed their subscription, they will get an email every time you post to your blog. It is a great way to keep in touch with your audience.
Weebly will only let you set up an RSS feed. RSS stands for rich site summary, and allows readers to receive summaries of blogs in their browsers without having to type the name of the blog each time they want to see an update. An RSS feed, however, is not as convenient as having an email sent directly to your inbox whenever a new blog post is published.
Once you’ve decided to build a WordPress blog, you’ve reached a fork in the road. Should you go with WordPress.com or WordPress.org?
What’s the difference?
Well, WordPress.com is used mostly by people who have hobbies and don’t necessarily want to market products. For instance, if you are going on a vacation and want an easy way for your friends and family to follow your activities during your trip, you can easily share photos and insights, and it is absolutely free to do so with WordPress.com.
If you are an author and want to link to your book on Amazon.com, you can easily do that with WordPress.com without violating anything in its user agreement.
What if you have something to sell and you want to sell it directly on your website? WordPress.com will allow you to post a PayPal “Buy Now” button and will limit what you can sell. Since WordPress.com is mainly for hobbyists, if your blog is geared for business, you risk the danger of WordPress not liking some of your content and taking it down. Worst case scenario: they could take down your entire site!
WordPress.com also won’t let you post custom code such as Javascript if you want to add a form so that you can collect a list of potential clients in order to email them your newsletter. Therefore, WordPress.com is not a good choice if you think you will be doing any kind of email marketing down the line.
Here’s where WordPress.org comes in. If you have a business and you think you will be building a client list and selling things on your site now or later on, WordPress.org is the way to go. You won’t have to follow restrictive terms and conditions, and your site will stay up as long as you pay for hosting (see below). If you go to WordPress.org, you can download the WordPress software absolutely for free.
There is a catch though, with WordPress.org, you have to pay for hosting. Your host is the company that sells you your digital real estate-they maintain the servers and virtual “land” where your site resides. With WordPress.com, you don’t pay for hosting, but you have to follow their rules. With WordPress.org, you have to pay for hosting, but you can do whatever you want with your digital property. WordPress.com is like renting an apartment, while WordPress.org is like buying a house.
Say you have decided to build your blog with WordPress.org instead of WordPress.com because you want to grow your business and you don’t want any of the restrictions that the free version imposes.
Which host should you choose?
I chose to purchase hosting through Bluehost because they have an excellent reputation, provide great customer support, and are extremely reliable. Bluehost is also the host that WordPress officially endorses.
How much will it cost? You’ll want to set aside at least $4 or $5 per month in your budget for hosting. Prices may vary, but if you are interested, please check out Bluehost by clicking on my Affiliate link: www.techdoneforyou.com/bluehost
What other options are out there? I have a few clients who use GoDaddy for hosting, with mixed results. GoDaddy provides good over-the-phone customer support, but I find that Bluehost’s online chat is fast and efficient, and I can get answers to my questions in less than 30 minutes, as opposed to spending hours on the phone with GoDaddy. Bluehost offers succinct customer support via phone too, and I have never had to spend hours on the phone with them to answer my questions.
Have a great day,
Gina
To see an example of a WordPress.com site vs. a WordPress.org site, please visit www.GinaAkao.com (my free WordPress.com site) and www.techdoneforyou.com (my hosted business site).
Disclosure: I am an online marketer. Some of my e-mails may contain affiliate links for recommended products or services. These are products and services I personally used and reviewed and will receive a commission if you choose to purchase. (It doesn’t cost you any more, and in some cases you pay less). I am committed to providing you with top quality product recommendations.
