Now that you have a pretty good understanding of the power of blogging and how you can use it to grow your business, let’s get into the how-to portion of this report.
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This is by no means to be an all-inclusive, step-by-step guide for setting up your blog but instead designed to give you enough information to get started.
There are plenty of guides and even YouTube videos out there to set up any type of blogging platform. You can of course also outsource the entire process!
Setting Up Hosting And Registering A Domain If Needed
The first thing you’ll need is a domain name and hosting. If you already have both for your business, you can easily add a blog and make it www.YourDomainName.com/blog
New Hosting
If you are setting up new hosting, it helps to find hosting companies that make it easy to install and run blogging software.
Determine what blogging platform you want to use and then check with your potential hosting companies to ensure they have what you need to run the blog.
This will be fairly basic stuff including PHP and MySQL databases. Most hosting companies will be well set up for a blog, but it is good practice to double-check.
New Blog
If you’re starting out with a new blog, a small hosting plan should be all you need. It will give you plenty of space and bandwidth without breaking the bank.
You should be able to find quality website hosting for about 15 dollars per month.
Good hosting companies will give you the option to grow as you go with larger, more expensive hosting plans, and the transition from one to the other is usually pretty quick and easy.
Grab a free content planning guide below, to start creating consistent content to share on your blog!
Free Blog Hosting
Let’s talk about free blog hosting. There are a few different options out there where you can set up a free blog.
The biggest provider out there is WordPress.com (not to be confused with WordPress.org). It’s a great service and if you’re blogging for fun (as a hobby), it’s the way to go.
This guide, however, is about blogging for business and there’s one important reason why you don’t want to go with a free service.
That reason is that you don’t have control and ownership of your blog.
While it may work fine for a while, you never know when the company may choose to close down your account or stop offering this free service.
Stories come up all the time where big bloggers who were making a decent living from their free blogs got their account and with it, their livelihood shut down.
It’s simply not worth the risk. You want full ownership and full control over your business blog, buy some hosting and spend the few dollars per month to get started.
Choosing A Blogging Platform
There are several great options out there. The most popular option out there is free open source software from WordPress.com.
It’s incredibly flexible and you will be able to find themes and plugins that do just about anything you need your blog or website to do.
Another big benefit of WordPress is that it’s so popular that most hosting companies support it well and even offer easy one-click installations.
Look around and see what platform you want to use. Think about any functionality you may like to have.
It’s also helpful to find a few blogs that you like the layout and look of. This will give you an idea of what you would like your own blog to look like.
If possible ask those bloggers what platform they use. You can sometimes even find that information along with a link to indicate what theme they are using in the footer info on the site.
If not, send them a nice email. Most bloggers don’t mind sharing this info and are happy to help.
If you have blogging friends, you may even be able to talk them into letting you take a peek at the backend and getting a feel for how these blogging platforms work.
If you don’t, look around the web. Most paid blogging platform providers have a sample account set up for you to play with.
DIY or Professional Blog Designer?
Once you’ve decided on a blogging platform and made up your mind how you’d like the blog to look and what functionality you may want.
Next, you have to decide if you want to set everything up and customize it as needed yourself or hire a professional designer to do this for you.
If money is tight, you can set up your blog yourself and use a free or paid template that helps you get close to what you’ve envisioned your blog to be.
At the very least it will get you started and up and running.
Once your blog starts to become profitable, you can then invest those funds into a professionally designed template if need be.
If you’re a bit tech-savvy or don’t mind learning the ins and outs of blogging software and templates, you should be able to find a template and plugins that do what you need them to do.
Of course, knowing a bit of coding will come in handy here as well.
The big advantage of using a popular blogging software is that there are tons of tutorials and videos out there to help you do just about anything.
If you have the time and patience to learn something new and play with it until you get it right, DIY will be a good option.
Where are you in the process, leave us a comment.
Here are some more blogging tips to help you get started and grow your business:
- How Blogging Can Help Grow Your Business
- 4 Positive Effects of Blogging
- Tips When Starting a New Blog
- Effective Strategies for Blogging
- Blogging Mistakes to Avoid
Interested in more ways to balance your life and your business? Get a reminder with my HappyBot for my free Facebook Live trainings every Friday! happinessmatters.com/fblive
