Small business owners should constantly be on the lookout for new and innovative ways to connect with their marketing audience. Content marketing is one of the best ways to go about this and a blog is a terrific content marketing tool. You can start a blog in a number of ways, but it’s recommended that you use a content management system (CMS) that will make implementing and maintaining your blog incredibly simple. WordPress is a CMS designed for this very reason. If you have an idea for a blog and you’re sure that you have the motivation and high-quality material to sustain that blog over time, this blog will show you how to start a WordPress blog, even if you have zero technical ability.
Purchase Domain and Hosting and Install WordPress
Your first step in setting up a WordPress blog is to purchase your domain name and a hosting account. Your domain will be your address on the web, so to speak. It should be your business name or a good search engine optimized URL, such as BusinessinAnchorage,org. Of course, you’ll want to go with the .com if you can. It gets better visibility and it’s far more trusted than other extensions. Once you have your domain and hosting service established, you’ll want to install the WP platform. This should be completed in your site’s Cpanel. Ask your hosting provider for assistance if you have trouble with any of these steps. This is probably the most technical step when learning how to start a WordPress blog.
Choose Your Theme
The next step is to choose your blog’s theme. When WordPress is first installed, it looks very plain. A theme will help to give your blog the appearance you want. To do this, log into your blog. You’ll merely attach (/wp-admin) to the end of your URL in the address bar. Then use the user name and password you chose during the installation step.
When you log in, you’ll be redirected to your WordPress dashboard. Here is where the magic happens. To choose a theme, go to Appearance>Themes. You can install themes that come straight from the WP dashboard or you can choose themes that you buy or get for free online. Choose your theme and activate it. Now you’re going to learn how to start a WordPress blog by creating your very first post.
Create New Post
To write your first blog post, click on Posts<Add New. Here you’ll notice a space to put your title, the body of your blog and a number of other options and capabilities that we’ll get to in a moment. By now it should dawn on you why you’re learning how to start a WordPress blog. If you were to create your blog from scratch, you would need to know how to code the blog so that it looks the way you want. WordPress makes the process of writing and publishing extremely simple. You just write and hit publish. But before you publish your first post, we’re going to dress it up slightly to make it easier to find in the search engine results.
Tags & Categories
Tags are keywords that are used throughout your piece that can make your posts easier to search for. You can allow WordPress to choose the tags for you based on the keywords you’ve used, or you can choose the tags. Choose wisely so that your audience can always find the posts that appeal to them the most.
Categories will help to separate your blogs in the search engine result pages and they’ll also make your posts easier to find. Make use of these options to make your blog more search engine friendly.
Plug-ins and Widgets
The great thing about WordPress is that it’s so customizable. Plug-ins allow you to tailor your blog to your exact specifications. You can choose plug-ins related to SEO, social media and much more. Search through the list of plug-ins or research the best ones to give your blog the functionality you desire.
Widgets can be used to add functionality to your side bars, header, footer and more. Want to show your hours of operation in your footer? Put it in a widget. Want to list the blogs with the most comments? There’s a widget for that, too. Just drag and drop the widgets you want to use and voila, your blog is customized.
That’s how to start a WordPress blog and you didn’t have to code a thing. Put these steps into action and take your blog and your small business to the next level.
