• Blogging Part Two: 5 Steps to Start Blogging

    Date: 2010.03.24 | Category: Content Marketing, Marketing Tips | Tags: ,,

    Further to my previous blog on Start Blogging to your MLM success, which discussed why you should get started with blogging for your home business, here is a more in-depth discussion on how you can go about to start your blog.
    If you are convinced that blogging will help in your business, which I am 100% certain that it will, then this article is for you. If not, you might want to read Blogging Part 1 for the five reasons why you should get started.

    How to start blogging?

    There are two types of Blog: Free hosted Blog or Self Hosted Blog.
    Let’s discussed briefly which is more suitable for you.

    Free Hosted Blog

    • Free, no fees for domain and web hosting.
    • Easy to setup.
    • No ownership of domains and hosting.
    • Examples are Blogger.com, Wordpress.com

    Self Hosted Blog

    • Ownership of domains and hosting, not reliant on the Service Provider.
    • Provide free Blog application setup, eg. Wordpress, Joomla.
    • Flexibility of installing free Plugins and Themes

    My view is that if you are running a business, then you should definitely choose the Self hosted Blog. If you are just started out and not sure if you are comfortable with blogging and just wanted to have a little blog tasting, you can start with a Free hosted blog and then later progress to a Self Hosted once you are up and running.

    Setting up a Free Hosting Blog is pretty straightforward, you sign up with wordpress.com or Blogger.com, choose the theme and settings of your blog and start writing entries and promote your blog.

    I will touch more on the Self-hosting as there are more steps to set this up.

    Step 1
    Purchase a Domain name and subscribe to a hosting account with Hostgator or GoDaddy, which are the two popular web-hosting sites. A dot com(.com) domain name generally cost a low annual fee of $10 or lower. The basic monthly Web hosting fee starts from as low as $5.

    Step 2
    Once you are setup, you should install Wordpress application and configure according to the instructions within the hosting site. It is recommended to use Wordpress because it is an open source software which allows it to be used free of charge. It is easy to install and use on most hosting companies. There are extensive number of Themes and Plugins which you can use in wordpress. It is Search Engine Optimized(SEO) to allow your site to get a higher ranking on search engines.

    Step 3
    After installing Wordpress successfully, you can now login to Wordpress.
    Go to your blog settings such as General settings, Writing settings, Reading settings, Discussion Settings, Permalink settings, etc. Set up this according to your preference. If you are not sure what setting you will need, be sure to watch

    Step 4
    Next you would want to find a theme for your Site, the theme is the preset packaging of the blog site containing graphical appearance details, this would set the look and feel of your blog to reflect your personality or the nature of your business.
    Wordpress has more than one thousand themes for free downloads. There is definitely one that suits you or your business. Alternatively if you are more advance and you can also customize your own theme.

    Step 5
    Final Step before you start blogging, you should find the plugins to your site where you can enhance the capability of your website. Plugins are applications created by third party developers to extend the Wordpress application.
    Here are some of the useful plugins as a start:

    • Google XML Sitemaps
    • Dagon Design Sitemaps Generator
    • All-in-One SEO
    • WP Greet Box
    • Thank Me Later
    • Dashboard Post-it
    • wordTube
    • StatPress

    Watch the Step by Step Video to Set up your Blog now