3 Things to Do Before You Start Your Blog
Starting a blog is a very exciting time! There is SO much to do but you can’t wait to start because love every minute of it! If your blogging about what your good at and what you love, it won’t seem like work then because you’re passionate about it! However, it is work, alot of work! Start with the 3 steps below to help you get it right the first time.
I’ve started one other blog before, called Her Styled View, with a friend, and now this one on my own. It’s so exciting to envision your path as a blogger and make it happen! It’s your space to have a voice and hopefully, your blog will resonate with people and they will find it brings value to their lives.
1. Find Your Passion & Direction
Finding your passion and subject matter is where you want to start. Tap into a passion that excites you so much you want to talk about all night long. You will know when you have the right topic because ideas will start flowing and you won’t be able to stop thinking about all of the possibilities. You will need that magic feeling in the months (or years) to come with alot of hard and long hours you’ve committed to.
If your not sure what you want to blog about, ask yourself, what do other people ask advice for. Is it beauty, parenting, fashion, travel. The more unique and targeted your focus the better.
Next, you will want to examine what value your topic will bring to your reader. There are a couple of different directions you can go: influencer or educator. An influencer based blog will be grounded with you at the center of everything. You will be building relationships with people that subscribe and read your blog and those who follow you on social media. An educator based blog will educate your audience with the knowledge that you have about a topic.
Both formulas are built by building Like, Know and Trust with people that you reach through your website and social media. You will be building your own tribe. Pretty exciting or scary! Baby step through it. You got this!
2. Choose Your Domain Name
This might come easily or take you weeks. You’ll feel it in your gut though when you hit the mark. You’ll need to search website name availability, through sites that sell domain names like Go-Daddy. You will also want to check ALL social channels. In today’s saturated market, this is not an easy task!
For my name Her Fashioned Life, Twitter was taken but all other channels were free. I went ahead with the name and adjusted the one social acct to Herfashondlife, leaving out the “e”.
3. Branding
Branding is also a huge part of the equation you will want to have down before you start. Start with your logo. Etsy has a ton of graphic designers that will design one until your happy. Make sure you get the correct sizes for your website, business cards, and all social account banners. Next, you want a color scheme. Try to choose 3 at the most. Then choose your fonts, again 3 or 4 at most. There are sites like Fontjoy help you by pairing your font choices together to see how they look. Make sure you choose a Web-Based font or it might slow your site down.
You will want to use these, colors, fonts and logo on everything you do. This is building your brand. It will take time to perfect but nailing the basics will give you a head start to beautiful branding that people will associate with you when they see it.
Be sure to read my post about 5 valuable podcasts and how much they can help you on your journey also.
I would love to hear your thoughts about starting a blog in the comments below! Have a blog already? What do you feel like was important to know at the beginning of your journey?
Thank you for reading!
xx Tammy
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