Article Blogging: What Do I Do First?
I cannot say enough about the power of writing articles for your own blog and other people’s blogs. Making the decision to write some of my best articles for my own blog and even better ones for other people’s blogs was a major reason why my list grew from building at a snail’s pace to growing quickly on a daily basis. Not only were people subscribing but they were verified subscribers (meaning they were completing the double opt-in process).
When you decide to become an article blogger, you will begin attracting traffic in several ways:
1. Organically. People will find articles on your blog by conducting a search for your article’s keywords and/or topic in Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc.
2. Referrals. People will discover your articles when they’ve been referred to it by another person via ezines, forums, other sites, or social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, etc.
3. Combination. When you write articles for other people’s blogs (guest blogging or guest posting) you get the benefit of both organic and referral traffic. New readers may find your articles via search engines, and a blog’s regular readers may read your guest article and visit your site based on the referral link of the blog you were featured on.
Blogs are also easier to start and maintain than they’ve ever been:
1. One of the most popular blogging platforms for both entrepreneurs and hobbyists is the WordPress platform.
2. You can start your own blog for free at WordPress.org
3. You can host your own WordPress blog on your own domain (seodomainhosting.com). I use this option for all of my sites.
4. You can set up a blogger blog which is limited in flexibility but is very easy for beginners to use.
5. You can do all of this for free or very little money, but see a tremendous return for your business. Every business should have a blog in this day and age.
Okay so now that I’ve sold you on starting a blog. What do you do first?
The very first thing you should do when you decide to start a blog is to be clear about WHO you are writing for. In other words, who is your target market? At this point on the web, there are so many websites and blogs out there that you have to be super niche focused and especially clear about who you are talking to and what information they want from you.
Once you are crystal clear about that, the next thing you can decide is what blogging platform you will choose. If you are a hobbyist, say you are going to chronicle your weight loss journey – I’d go with Blogger because it’s super easy to learn and get started with quickly.
If you are creating a blog to support your business, then I strongly recommend you go with a self-hosted WordPress Blog. I set up writer-friendly and Google-loving WordPress blogs for clients all the time, so for them it’s just a matter of learning a bit about how to write and post to the blog. For others there may be a steeper learning curve — but it’s not too steep. Not like setting up the old html websites.
So my opinion is to go with the self-hosted WordPress blog so that you have room to grow, because once you get the hang of consistent article blogging – your business will grow by leaps and bounds.
*I wouldn’t go with the WordPress.org blog because they have too many limitations on what you can write on blogs that they host. It’s not good for businesses. Fine for hobbyists though.
So think about this today…
Who is your ideal customer? What do they want learn? What is their biggest problem? And how will your blog address that? Once you have those answers, you will be well on your way to article blogging success!
Next Up: Ezine Publishing: What Do I Do First?
Last Article: Article Marketing: What Do I Do First?
Lisa Angelettie
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Hello Lisa, I agree, getting started quickly with your article marketing is key. You can set up a landing page for your article at your blog; I’d recommend to use a simple template, so your visitors do not get distracted. Then your visitor counts and optins will tell you if you are on target with your keywords.
Hi Kai,
A lot of people freeze up when it comes to landing pages. Thanks for mentioning that they can use a simple template on their blog. In fact, all you really need is to make sure that you have an opt-in box to capture subscriber names. I encourage everyone to get that set up before you take on any article marketing. The point is to build your list. Thanks for reading today:)