How Do You Get Started With Your First Blog

This is a continuation of my blog series about why, how and what to do with your blog!

It’s going to be a quick post today but hopefully for those of you who have messaged me to ask for guidance and tips it will give you somewhere to start so that you can at least set up your blog this week.

Starting is always the most difficult bit! Continuing can be a challenge as well, but not if you set your blog up so that you get quick results and feel instantly encouraged. We can move onto that in a future post.

Of course a blog takes time to develop into a hot piece of online ‘real estate’ but it is also one of the easiest ways to get yourself on the property ladder!

Selecting a blog platform is the first thing you need to do. I’ll cover some of the most popular options and their pros and cons here to start you off:

There are two main types of blog platforms (at the time of writing!) The first is a stand along platform such as WordPress.org. You are now reading my blog which is a simple example of this kind.

The benefits of this kind of blog platform are that you arrange hosting and you own the blog so you are not dependent on any other source to maintain it. You own your domain name and that is where the blog is parked. It is called ‘open source’ which means that you have an abundant supply of ‘plugins’ which give increased functionality and endless options for blog layout and features. (Which if you’re like me you may not use to their full capabilities!)

The second type of blog is with a hosted platform. WordPress.com and Blogger.com are popular examples of these. They are completely free and you can set them up in a couple of minutes which is very cool. My daughters, aged 10 and 12, both have a blog of this type.

You don’t own this blog, ie; Google hosts Blogger so you don’t get full control over what will be available on it. You can however purchase your own domain name and point it to the sub-domain provided by the platform if you wish. This can work well so if you want to start branding yourself or your business you could purchase your own domain name; i.e.; JohnGalt.com and quickly forward it to point at the blog so you have an easier and more attractive blog name rather than johngalt.blogspot.com You see?

Don’t worry about how to forward domain names as your provider will have step by step instructions on how to do it and it literally takes just a few moments. Get started and you’ll figure it out as you go along – I promise!

So which type should you choose? Well it depends on what you are looking to achieve. I stumbled into the world of blogging unchaperoned and decided that the best option for me was the google blogspot. This is a great option for those of you who think your may want to dabble with blogging. I recommend to would be bloggers to use that type for an initial period at least so they can see if they will become regular bloggers. It is very easy to navigate so if you are a technophobe this is definitely a great option for you to begin with.

WordPress.org is the way to go if you know you are going to be a long term blogger and want to really turn it into a key element of your marketing plan. It can be frustrating as it is much more advanced and you’ll need to set up your own hosting for it. You can always upgrade this type once you have gained some confidence with the simpler version.

On the other hand technology is becoming simplified by the day so all of us techno nimwits can take advantage! For wordpress.org you may want to pay someone to set the blog up for you. Once it’s done the maintaining is fairly straightforward. Here is a great resource that I used to figure out how to turn my blog from a pretty piece of real estate into an asset that brings me quality business leads and commissions.

Atomic Blogging is suitable for any business blog, not just for Home Business and Network Marketing.

If you want to get into blogging specifically for Network Marketing then you can also check out Magnetic Sponsoring where Mike Dillard will take you through all of his amazing marketing resources.

Stay tuned for my next post which will continue the Blog series.