What a brilliant question – “How do I create a blog”

But you’ve given me a massive headache because there are probably another 20 questions or so before I can answer you!

Here are the first few that trip of the tongue…

1. What will you blog about?
2. Is your blog for personal or business use?
3. Do you want a blog as a website substitute?
4. Do you want a blog because it’s less technical than a “traditional” website
5. Are you prepared to pay for the blog?
6. Do you have any technical skills?
7. Are you looking to sell something from your blog?
8. Can you write about your subject?
9. Are you planning on creating the content yourself?
10. Have you got any idea how to generate traffic (visitors) to your blog?
11. How much time do you have to devote to your blog?
12. Could you post to your blog every few days?

OK, that’s enough for now. You can see that the term “how to create a blog” can open up a whole series of issues that really need to be thought about carefully before you head off in the wrong direction.

Personal or Business

If you want to create a blog for your personal use – a place to record what you’ve done today, a place for your friends to see what you’re up to then you have a few options.

You should certainly go down the “no cost” route and set up a free blog somewhere like Blogger or even just resort to a page at say Facebook. You may decide that you really only want to be able to post a few interesting snippets about yourself each day. If you can keep each post below 140 characters then you could try micro-blogging and get yourself a Twitter account.

But, if you’re thinking about creating a blog for business purposes you’ll need to read on…

Be Prepared To Spend

If you were starting a business offline, would you expect to be able to do so totally free of cost?

If so, then I think you should stick to the “personal” route above while you figure out whether being in business is really the right thing for you.

But, assuming you appreciate that no business can possibly function without some investment of cash we need to think very carefully about minimising the risks and not just throwing money at the business and hoping it will work.

If you are looking to use your blog in a business environment, either to promote your business or to make some money from the site itself you must be prepared to allocate some money to your success. Look at it as an investment in your business.

Maintain Control

The main reason why I say you must spend some money is that you have to maintain control over your business. Using a free service such as Blogger leaves you extremely vulnerable. You have no control over your site – if they decide they don’t like what you are doing (there have been instances of sites promoting affiliate products being shut down) they can take your site down without notice. It’s covered in their Terms & Conditions somewhere.

Just like that – your business has gone!!

So the first part of the answer to “How do I create a blog” is to set up your own hosting account (more about Hosting here) and use the widely available and highly acclaimed WordPress platform to build your blog.

You’ll also need to buy your own domain name (about $10 pa) but before you rush headlong into that purchase you need to fully research your business idea and the market you want to work in.

There’s no point having a brilliant idea about a product everyone needs if nobody wants it!

People buy what they want not what they need

So research is vital. Once you know there is a market for your “idea” you need to work out how people are looking for what you have.

Online, people use Search Engines to find what they want and the words they use in those search boxes are known as “keywords”. So keyword research becomes a vital step in identifying what your domain name should be.

If your business is about “door handles” for example and you find out there are a large number of daily searches for say “red plastic door handles” a domain name containing those words will give you a small advantage in the Search Engines.

Anyone looking for that term and finding your site is likely to think you may have what they are looking for. And if that’s what they are searching for there’s a strong possibility it’s because that’s what they want to buy!

Once you have your hosting account and domain name you’ll need to install WordPress, which is a free program that will enable you to build an outstanding blog.

If your hosting company has Fantastico available (I strongly recommend you use a hosting company that offers cPanel in which case you’ll have Fantastico)  then installing WordPress is a breeze.

Wizzer’s Fast Start  Online Business

You can follow along as I show you exactly how to do this in Wizzer’s Fast Start Online Business Guide which you can download for free from the sidebar. Just fill in your details and you can get immediate access.

Once WordPress is installed you’ll want to customise it to your style and the business you are creating.

There are hundreds of themes you can choose from plus plugins that simplify most things you’ll want to do.

For example, you can install plugins that automatically back up the whole site so you don’t run the risk of losing anything. You can install plugins that automatically show a message to every new visitor to your site; add a personalised signature to every post; submit your pages to search engines and RSS readers. The list goes on and on.

Creating your first blog post

If you can use a word processor such as Word it’s as simple as typing in what you have to say and formatting your text in the normal way. In fact possibly easier as much of this is pre-formatted.

Is there anymore to creating a blog?

If you are using it for your business then the answer is definitely YES – it’s a never ending journey.

There is always more to learn, things that can be improved and that’s before someone comes up with a new innovation to make your life easier!

At Blogging Beginners, Randy & I provide detailed video instruction and cover everything you need to know about using a blog for your business and uniquely we provide video answers to any questions that you cannot find answers to.

So are you ready To Create A Blog?