It’s 2021 and you want to start a blog and you don’t have any idea of what to do. In this post, I will teach you how to do it.
You’re reading a blog that just got started in 2021 and knows what to do to get you up and run your blog.
If you stay around here, on my website you will learn more tips about blogs, design, earn money, and more relate to design, small businesses, and bloggers.
So, let's get you started, here are 10 tips you have to know to start a blog in 2021:
#1 Choose a Name
Choosing a name for your blog is the most important when you’re starting a blog, it’s the way readers are going to remember to go back and keep reading your posts.
So, to decide which name is great for your blog, you can use your own name or be creative, create one base on your niche, or mix, name, and creative like mine. For example, SP Atelier Design is a combination between my name and my niche area.
#2 Host Website
There are good host websites to start a blog even for free, the worst part is that it's no very free, they will be shown ads and you will have some limitations, and some plugins won’t be available. This means, in the future, you probably want to update to pay plan.
Here are some hosted websites you can use:
✦ Wix
This is the one I am using with a payment plan so I can have my membership offers and other stuff, and of course no ads from the host website, and choose my own.
It's great for a good start, you have three options to start building your page, number one you can answer some questions so they build your website; number two choose a template already create and make some changes to it, but be careful the template can’t change it so in the future you will have to contact the support team to help you with it, and number three you can create your website by yourself from zero, being creative and knowing better what you really want.
Here is the link to the Pricing Plans.
✦ WordPress
It’s also free, but here is something very different. There is Wordpress.org and Wordpress.com, I dig a lot about this to understand how it works, but if you want to learn more about it, you can keep dig on it in other blogs on the Internet. If they explain it better than me it’s because they are using WordPress.
For blogging without making money, you have to use Wordpress.com it's free for use, but if you want to make money as a blogger or have a small business you should use Wordpress.org you have more flexibility to work and grow your blog or business.
#3 Host Domain
You have to put your domain in the main server to run your website through search engines on Google.
✦ Wix
If you’re going to use Wix as a host website you have to know that Wix it’s also a host domain, you can pay for it for $15.00 a year so you can have everything in the same place, the good news is the domain is free the first year, and you also paid for security and privacy for $10.00 if I don’t mistake. All of this is including in pay plans.
✦ Bluehost
This is one of the most famous hosts and works perfectly for WordPress users. It's quick and easy to set a website and running. Another good news is it's also free for the first year, the difference is on the price, you decide it, you can check by yourself link.
#4 A Theme for your blog
✦ From scratch
If you’re a very creative person you can start from scratch in any Web Host to design your blog or Website. You can be as creative you want and put anything where you want to, even chose color, fonts, and other things as you please.
Also, every Web Host has some template you can try by yourself, in the case of Wix you can choose just one, I don’t know how difficult its to change but if you contact the support team, they can help you with it, you just have to be patient.
Also, WordPress has a template that you can work with it, without any concerns.
But, if you don’t like any of the templates, they are offering you, you can buy one in the next following Online Shop.
✦ Shop
You can find incredible designs here for your blog, for WordPress, or Wix. Immediately you download with a tutorial you can set it up and start working on the blog.
Here you will find more theme for WordPress than Wix, probably because Envato it’s more for a graphics designer and IT professional, and WordPress it’s more use it for people in this industry. Not like Creative Market, you can find anything for everything to the non-specific public.
✧ Behance
Same thing here as Envato Elements, but you can get inspired with any designs to drag some ideas to work your blog from scratch if you like to.
#5 Choose a niche and your audience
In blogging, a niche is a specific topic that you write to a specific or particular audience, that is, the topic that you are going to deal with on your blog and the audience you will address related to that topic, very rarely you write to the general public, for example, that would already be a digital newspaper.
But first, before writing a blog you have to identify your audience, whom you will address, as an example, I am addressing entrepreneurs, interior designers, photographers, and people who need to create visual content for social media or their website.
As you can see, you don’t have to be a specific audience, since several categories of niches are related to each other, design is related to photography, and photography is related to visual content, and these people or audiences are usually entrepreneurs, although the information I offer is also helpful even for students.
This will help you capture your ideas more clearly and organize them in different categories, that will be broken down according to the type of niche and the topics related to it.
There are several types of niches to which you can dedicate yourself to write, among the most important or the most common, they are:
✧ Food
✧ Fashion
✧ Lifestyle
✧ Personal Finance
✧ Blog
You can learn more here about how to identify your niche and other things nobody teaches you correctly.
#6 Create a Brand kit for your blog
A Brand kit is a short guide for your brand visuality, it’s to understand the logos, fonts, colors, and the concept that represents your brand. It's important to identify your brand so people can get to identify you and your blog, through your website and social media, with every post you made or changes on the website of the blog.
To create your brand kit, you can use Canva Pro to make your logo, create a palette of colors and fonts to use in every design post.
If you sign up for SP Atelier Design Membership, in every plan you will get premade design brand kits, social media templates, styled photos, and more to help you grow your business.
#7 Make sure to check social media platforms for name availability
The first thing I did before starting my website is if the name is being used on social media or be a host on the Internet, how you can do this? Very easy.
In the search section of any social media, you just have to tag the name you want for your blog in case someone is using it, you do the same thing in Google search in case there is a website using it.
If no one is using it, good for you. But it’s totally the opposite, do it again the first step #1 and this step #7 until it’s free for use, you also can try typing the search tab of every domain host page.
#8 Create a least to 5-10 posts before launch
Before you launch your blog you must have a least already write 5-10 posts, and 4-5 already post it, the rest of them will be post it along the week while you’re writing new ones. This is a good way to start running your blog and get some readers and keep post it on relevant topics around your niche.
#9 Set up email marketing
If you want to have some subscribers send newsletters and notifications about a new post on your blog, you have to set up email marketing.
Mailchimp is an email platform that helps you manage and talk to your clients, customers, employees, and other interested parties by emails, automation, and marketing. You can start free with 2,000 contacts with 10,000 emails sent per month and 2,000 daily.
Convertkit is another email platform to manage regular, automation, and marketing emails. You start for free with up to 1,000 subscribers, thinking about trying someday because they have a good difference relate to subscribers or contact with their pricing plan, you can check by yourself who works better for you.
#10 Set up social media
This is the most important part when it comes to having a blog, you need people to read it, and you will find them on social media:
It’s the most important social media when it comes to run a blog, people are always looking for information that can be very helpful for them, just with a great quality pin and a link in it, you can drag the attention easily.
Another great app for bloggers, with posts, videos, story and now with IGTV and Reels, people get attention with any post with good information, using hashtags to find readers, followers, and engage with them, even with a good caption on the post.
I am not so fond of Facebook, but if you create a business account on Instagram it will create a Facebook immediately, so here happens the same on Instagram but without Reels. But, for me the best part is on Facebook groups you can write a post here and get people to read or create a group so people can join to be updated for every blog post and turn into a good conversation through comments.
Do people still use Twitter these days? Well, yes. Believe it or not, but they are doing. But Twitter doesn’t grow so fast as Instagram and Pinterest do, and you can’t write long caption as you can do it on Instagram. You can write small text and link your post using hashtags, some people see your post without hashtags because of the keywords, this is probably one of the good things Twitter has so people can engage with your content.
✦ YouTube
Do you like to do videos? Well, YouTube is a good option if you want to convert a blog post into a video to teach better something that it’s already written on it in a post of your blog. You can try it if you want to, and if you want to earn money, YouTube is also a good option for it, check out that.
