Shownotes: How to start a successful blog in 10 days or less is the focus of this episode from concept to go-live and everything in between. Listen to learn more.

00:09 Hello ladies out here are you guys doing today.

00:16 OK.

00:17 So today we’re going to be looking at how to start a successful blog in one week or less. Let’s get right into it. OK, I have a lot to cover today and I don’t want to have it running for a long time. So what I’m going to do is I’m also going to put or set up a course or starting a blog course video course that is and I’m going to invite you to pre-register for a course when it’s ready I’ll let you know when it’s done. How does that sound? OK. Right. So how to create a successful blog in one week or less, let’s get right into it.

1. Mindset

01:08 So you know I always see this but having the right mindset about getting into blogging is so very important because sometimes it can take you 12 months to 36 months before you realize the gains of the effort that you put in.

So, in other words, this blogging thing is a long-term project it’s not something that you sort of do it for five weeks and then that’s it. It’s a long-term project. Just like podcasting, I guess.

So having the right mindset and the ability to do it on a frequent basis is so very important especially for your audience.

2. Passion

01:57 In order to start a successful blog you first need to know what you’re passionate about because you would need a big reason why you would continue to do day after day or even week after week or month after month generate or start a successful blog for your audience.

And if you were doing that or writing a blog on something that you’re not passionate about you’re going to run out of speed in a matter of days or weeks because it’s just not something that is has a building fire in your soul that would want you to write passionately about it for a very long time to come.

02:41 I myself have been blogging for probably about seven years and different blogs I can start a successful blog and in no time at all with my eyes close so to speak. But it takes commitment. You would have the odd time when you probably wouldn’t be able to produce the content.

So what I would advise is that you do well to avoid that is to create a few blog posts in draft mode so you can actually schedule several posts just in case you come up to a busy time. Or you have an emergency in the family or whatever it is. You can actually rely on those. All right. I don’t want to spend too much more time yakking unnecessarily. So here we go.

03:36 Also you need to decide what or how much time do you have to commit to blogging so you don’t have to do it every day. But you know once a week is nice once every two weeks is nice as well. It all depends on you and the audience. All right so mindset and passion. That’s the first topic we’ve covered that now.

3. Niche Research

03:57 Next topic is research that sorry niche research. So although you may be passionate about the subject depending on what you want to blog about. For example, I’ll give you a good one. Social media say for example you decide you want to blog about something like social media.

And as you probably know or maybe you don’t know this so many things change in the social media. In the last seven years, lots of things on Facebook has changed in LinkedIn and in all the different platforms that people use for social media.

04:36 Things change in a matter of months or weeks. They’ve got a new version or they’ve changed the type of videos they change the size of the post, they change everything. Ever. Ever so often.

04:49 The only thing that’s consistent probably is the name. All right. So I covered niche research already in one of my previous podcasts I would invite you to go and listen to that one because it goes into a lot of depth about how to go about doing your niche research.

I think it covered three different episodes on niche research because it’s such a wide-ranging topic. You just need to make sure to be sure that you want to blog or write or create content around your specific niche.

05:31 Make sure that there’s enough interest to begin with enough content to write about it enough, what’s the word I’m looking for long-term, long-term interest generally speaking. So isn’t that sort of a passing fad.

05:50 One of the things about we forgot to include in my niche research is having to look at a tool called Google trends that would show you how a specific niche has been trending over time and you can even do it by Keyword. So something I probably cover in the video, of course, don’t forget to subscribe or preregister.

So when that course is released I can invite you or send you an email to it. Next thing you want to decide. Once you’ve done that, once you want to get it into the niche research itself decide if it is a product or service you want to write about.

06:31 If it’s a product or a product you might want to blog about how to use this particular product and effective uses of this particular product.

Obviously if it’s a service you want to talk about the advantages and benefits of using this specific service how it improves the lives of your customers of your audience what kind of value-add they can expect from it. And then you know we really narrow down and focus on who is your audience.

07:09 So for example when I decided I wanted to do this podcast my whole idea just in case you haven’t noticed up at this point because this is my 20th episode.

07:19 My whole idea was to help women like myself who probably have been employed for a while and they’re looking to create a side hustle for themselves or do sort of in that stage where they probably went off on maternity leave and they’re just looking to you know start their own blog or something they can do from home basically.

07:52 So yeah that’s I really really focus in and see OK. Normally if they’ve got no sort of tech experience they wouldn’t even know where to start. They obviously can go and look online but then you’re sort of very apprehensive.

08:07 And I just want to show all of you women out there that it’s really possible, it’s really easy I’ve been doing it for many years. Of course when I first started I don’t think I was apprehensive I just love technology a lot. I just wanted to get it done basically I’m veering off course I don’t want to make this thing this podcast run over.

08:29 All right so once you know who your audience is and what value you’re adding to their lives you’ll have a much better idea as to when you do your niche research how you can pull those ideas for content over 12, 24, 36 months what are you going to focus on the first month, the second month and so on.

So that’s niche research when you’ve completed that niche research. If you need a more comprehensive article on how to go about doing niche research or even getting niche blog ideas I covered it on a different episode called niche market ideas for your business here.

4. Keywords

09:01 Say for example you decide you want to do a blog on dog training or karate classes or yoga or vegan cooking you know depending on what you want to write about you take the sort of what we call keywords on that specific niche and you stick them into something like the Google Keyword Planner or Word tracker or.

09:36 I mentioned I think I mentioned this in my previous podcast. Get a FREE account at Spyfu.com so S P Y FU.com and stick in those keywords. It will then show you all the related keywords words for that specific niche and you’ll have to do this over time you wouldn’t actually know all the keywords for the next 36 months

10:06 It will give you a start for the for sort of 10 weeks. So you’ll know what you need is what the topic needs to be focused on. So in your in your in the blog post that you writing you need to include those keywords. See. So once you’ve you’ve got those keywords those are sort of what we call the building blocks as the how lay out the hierarchy of your site if it is you have an existing website and all you need to do is start a successful blog that goes along with the existing website.

10:43 You can also do that. But if you’re just starting from scratch you do have website you want to start a successful blog. Then what I’m talking about here would also give you the opportunity to have a website with a blog attached to it as well.

5. Domain Name

10:56 All right. Next up is a domain name so this is so very important that you get this right. You can buy a domain name either by your brand name or by the major keyword for your site. So say for example go back to the vegan cooking for example. So you can get a domain name that say just vegan cooking with me will be with Alvern or savvy vegan cooking or anything like that.

11:38 As you say a domain name or you can do like a brand. So for example this podcast is not necessarily success for woman or helping woman become successful. That’s not my domain name if you notice my domain name is success unscrambled. So that’s my brand name and that’s what I decided to go by as opposed to putting the actual keyword in my domain name.

12:06 So you have both choices and my preference is it just depends on what I’m blogging about but really it’s up to yourself. So I guess at this point what you probably should decide is the name of your business or company or blog. I would try and include, because I know there is a resource that I saw a long time ago about choosing a name for your company or blog or choosing a company.

12:41 It was really helpful especially if it is well it’s especially good for you if you are an app dev