01/10/2020 - BlogPost Tutorial for Online Income

How to Start a WordPress Blog

Starting a WordPress Blog

Establishing Security

One of the most horrible things that could ever happen to a blog or website is to get hacked. There are chances that one in one hundred people who visit your site will try to hijack your site most especially if it’s loaded with valuable content. This is the reason WordPress is constantly updated, if you have a blog you will get a notification from time to time to update to the new version of WordPress.

The updates will mostly include security updates, bug fixes and other improvements to the previous versions. This offers nothing but peace of mind that the team at WordPress are constantly looking for ways to improve the security and performance of this amazing blogging software. On the other hand, you also need to do some research about protecting your site from potential attack even if you decide to settle for WordPress.

Another point is still based on security, there are different forms of password protection not just for your site but also for your content. You can choose to partly protect some part of your content for private viewing. There are plug-ins that can help to protect your content from being copied by someone else, such plugins disable the highlight and copy function. In other cases, you can choose to make part of your content accessible to:

Authors
Contributors
Members
Registered users

Domain Name for your WordPress Blog

The domain name is part of the foundation of the business, if you intend to build a website for your business then you will need a domain name. GoDaddy is a popular website where you could register a domain name for your business. A search through their portal will reveal if the domain name you’re trying to register is available. Your domain name must be a name that talks about what your website represents. The most important thing about domain name for instance is WordPress. WordPress is a blogging platform and if you educate people about WordPress you cannot register WordPress as a domain name because you think it represents what your website is all about.

Hosting Your WordPress Blog

Your blog/website needs a house to live in and this is where the hosting aspect comes in, hosting is not free but are affordable. If you have any problem, you can always contact them through live chat or via email for solutions. A caveat – don’t think that host companies are liable to help solve all your problems, for instance, if your site is infected with malware, your hosting company will not clean up the mess and if at all they do, it will be done for a fee.

Site Configuration for your WordPress Blog

Themes – This represents a store front, the first thing that people see when they land on your page. The type of theme determines the look of your website. If you’re using the WordPress blogging platform for your blogging activities, there are free themes that come with the package. If you’re getting free themes from other sources you need to be careful because such themes might contain malicious codes that could lead to loss of control of your site. Be careful!

Plugins – There are lots of plugins that helps to configure your site. They range from security, SEO performances, content protection, and blog post layout, moving content from pages of posts and vice versa. These plugins can be found in the WordPress dashboard and the main thing about plugins before installations are updates. If a plugin has not been updated in a very long time, then it’s advisable not to use such plugins because of security threats.

The Web Marketing Code to be a Successful Blogger

Web Marketing Code

The creation of great content which helps to build trust.

Using married couples as an example. If a woman claims she trust her husband because she loves him, the claim is baseless. She must give reasons and proofs to back up her claim of trusting her spouse. The same goes for the man and all other forms of relationship, to trust someone there must be an evidence, a series of test must have been conducted and passed to earn trust over a period. You must convince people that you are trustworthy through different proofs and the starting point will be the kind of content you provide. It must be authentic.

Web Marketing Code – Building a brand

The first thing to do is come up with a name. The name must have a value, it should be strongly connected to the reason the business was established in the first place. The second thing is the Logo which will be the reflection of the company’s name. The third thing is the slogan that demonstrates in a few sentences what your company is about – value that will attract people to your business. The following steps will help:

What is your business about?
What is your business trying to achieve?
Who is your target? Age, male/female, demography
How will you reach your target?
How will you arrest their attention? Attention span is short.
How will your products benefit people?
How will people become customers that keep coming back?
Do you already have a mode of operation mapped out for problems and solutions?

Tips on how to build a Brand

Learn from other well-established blogs in your niche.
Visit forums in your niche and study news, interactions and comments.
What makes your business different from others? It must stick out like a sore thumb.

What do you write about?

Write about something of great interest. Do adequate research to create content with authenticity.
Writing about something of great interest means you’re passionate about it? Passion for something comes alive if you face challenges many times over and refuse to quit.
Educate others about their challenges by providing solutions and prevention.
Share personal experiences that many can learn from to avoid mistakes.

How do you research topics?

Amazon.com is one of the best places to search for a topic and look out for:

Number of reviews, for instance, a book might sell 1,000 copies to get one review, while others will sell 100 copies to get a review.
Sales rank – Compare sales rank. This is how it works, if a book ranks number 3 with zero reviews, it might not be a good indication. If a book has 15 reviews, but rank 103 then the niche might be profitable. Reviews are more valuable than rankings.
Read the reviews and compare the positive with the negative.
Forum post – Discussions and study how others interacts.
This formula can be used to search for any products

Google Trends

It shows you the trend about the product you’re searching for when they are popular and not. This is more useful for trending news. Always look out for hot searches on Google Trends. Ensure topic matches the content on your site. Below are other places to search:

Web Marketing Code – Facebook and Twitter

Klout
Twazzup
Twitscoop
TweetBuzzer
Monitter

You Tube

Watch videos that are related to the content on your site and study their recording style. You should also check for the number of views and comments. This will give you an idea of how to create great videos.

Commission Junction and Click bank

If you are interested in creating an informational product or a service, click bank and commission junction are two places to visit for research. An example will be if you want to write a book about blogging, you will have to invest in books about blogging and write one that will be much better than the ones already in the market. The authenticity of your book will be the main thing that will separate your books from others.

More about creating your Brand

Who will read the content on your Blog?
Create an ideal reader’s list
What are they going to get out of your product?
Check similar blogs for great ideas
What personal experience are you bringing to your site?
Engage readers by telling stories
What separates you from your competitors?
Uniqueness – writing style, opinions, type of contents
What do people like about your existing content?
Why would readers come to your site first and not your competitor? If you can answer this question, then you are ready for branding.

Web Marketing Code

Every point listed above will help you to determine your USP, which stand for unique selling proportion.

Looking at Blogging from a Reader’s Perspective.

Blogging from a Reader’s Perspective.

The best way to learn how to blog from a reader’s perspective is to put yourself in the reader’s shoes. The truth is we are all readers since we all live now in an information age. Make a collection of data about the blog you visited and like, a blog you added to your bookmark or reader’s lists. Prepare a list of the things that makes the blog stands out, you should also have a list of the things that you believe needs improvement.

Furthermore, you should also prepare a list of blogs that puts you off, study such blogs and write down what needs to be done on such blogs. Check your blog to see if there are shortcomings like the same as such blogs. You can also hire people at fiver.com to write a review about your blog, such people will prepare a list of what needs to be done and what’s been added that are not necessary.

Blogging – Thinking from a Reader’s perspective:

What they want versus what they see
What they think versus what they see

Questions that run through the minds of a Reader when they landed on your site

Who’s this person?
Why should I trust his opinions?

Answer

Your content in the form of articles, infographic, videos or podcast must all be created with an attractive personality with style and tone.

You need to discover people’s reactions when they read your post. Were they:

Upset
Happy
Satisfied
Encouraged
Annoyed

Blogging – Seven Habits of a Successful Blogger you must not do without:

Consistency
Passionate
Interact with Readers
Link to other blogs
They build a Brand
Good Writers
Read other Successful Blogs

When should you post?

People have different rules for posting, the main thing to do is to test different methods. Location is a key factor, besides what works for one will not work for another.

Should content be long or short?

If you’re writing an article which is about 1,500 to 2,000 it’s better to make most of it bullet points. This makes it quicker to read and grasp, videos should be short because of short attention span. In some cases, they could be long if you’re sure you will be able to hold people’s attention.

Things to do to check results

Check Google analytics
Check Bing, search engines

Blogging – Monitoring the Blogosphere for updates

Google Alerts
Google Analytics
RSS Readers
App Sales – Not games or Photos
Amazon Trends
Google Trends
Twitter Search, Tweet hub
Facebook search insight
Huffington Post

What is the message?

What’s the main message about your blog, in other words, how will people describe your blog? The mission statements.

Message structure

Your message must be cleared. Content must be well written so that it’s easily understood. Ambiguity is a big turn off, your bounce rate will shoot through the roof because of ambiguity.

Staying on Message

Stay on course and avoid distraction, creating a good content comes with beginning, middle and the end.

Spreading Your Message

Use each channel’s unique feature to get the words out. Don’t post the same content on each channel. This can be quite challenging, if you want people on twitter to visit your Facebook page, the posts must be different from your tweets or at least rewritten.