How to start a blog

A blog is like an extended resume on steroids and may be the most valuable thing you can do for your career. As long as you do it the right way, getting your ideas exposed publicly can be a powerful way of building knowledge and reputation.

Creating an article forces you to think, research a topic further, and then express your ideas in writing. That doesn’t only increase your knowledge about the subject but also improves your writing, storytelling and teaching skills.

The blog can also serve as a personal reference for future work tasks and discussions. With every topic you research and write about, you become a little more credible in the eyes of others, and that additional credibility can go a long way.

Once you build a rich collection of articles, a blog opens up a world of opportunities. Every post becomes a little magnet that allows prospective customers and employers to discover you and come directly to you instead of you going out and hunting them.

Let’s see the high-level steps you must take to create your blog.

Steps for creating a blog

1. Choose a theme

Meaning what your blog will be about. Think of this as the basis of your personal brand, the central idea around which the articles will revolve. Don’t worry; you can change your mind later and pivot to a different theme, but you must pick one now. The success of your blog will largely depend on how well you do this.

Your scope should be narrow and focused. A random collection of topics won’t have nearly as much impact in comparison. Many people try too hard to be generalists because they can’t conceive the actual value of being a specialist.

For example, imagine that you need to fix your bathroom ventilator. You search online, and you get the following results:

1. Your Loyal Repairman - I can fix almost anything in your house
2. Ventilation All Stars - Your indoor air quality expert

Which one would you choose? I would undoubtedly choose the specialist. Moreover, the next time I need to repair anything, I’ll first ask that person if they can do the job before looking for a new contractor with whom I’ll have no relationship.

2. Set up your blog

There are many tools to help you set up a blog quickly, e.g. WordPress, Jekyll, Gatsby, as well as plenty of hosting options. For example, the DrinkBird blog is created with Jekyll and hosted for free on GitHub Pages.

I highly recommend registering and using a domain name (e.g. mine is drinkbird.com). Not only is it a vital part of your personal branding, but it will also enable you to own your content.

If you choose to publish your posts on platforms like Medium or LinkedIn, be aware that this option has rules and limitations that you won’t have control over. At the very least, publish the same articles in your blog in parallel.

3. Make a list of ideas on what to write about

A good practice to get you started is to sit down and brainstorm. Spend at least half an hour and come up with 40-50 topics you can potentially write about. There are no bad ideas; just populate a list with whatever comes to you naturally. Then, after the brainstorming session, you can use tools like Trello, OneNote or Evernote to organise and prioritise your ideas.

You may think you don’t have much to say, but do yourself a favour and try it out; you will be pleasantly surprised. Here are some ideas on things you can expand upon:

• Tutorials & how-to’s
• Book reviews
• Commentary posts about articles from other blogs
• Interesting stories about your experience on a topic (as long as it’s related to the blog’s theme)
• Interviews with people in your field
• Lists, such as Top 10 ways to…
• Resources and links
• Cheat sheets, etc.

There are so many choices!

4. Start getting traffic

Traffic will not be the easiest thing to generate, at least the meaningful kind of it. By meaningful, I mean organic traffic, visitors discovering you naturally without having to pay for adverts or follow other promotional techniques.

There is nothing wrong with paid promotions; the problem is that if you don’t already have enough material to turn those random visitors into followers, you will probably lose money and not even break even.

A good way of getting some organic traffic is to post comments on other blogs on related themes; just to clarify, I’m referring to meaningful comments that add value, and not shameless self-plugs!

Finally, you can include your blog address in your e-mail signature, business cards and all your profiles across social media and services, e.g. GitHub, LinkedIn, etc.

Remember, keep adding value, and people will notice.

Final Thoughts

You may be worried about lots of different details regarding your blog. It may feel uncomfortable at first; after all, you are going to step out of your comfort zone and do something new in public view! But worry not; you will quickly realise this is how growth feels.

Remember that creating a blog is a marathon, not a sprint. It can certainly take a while before the compound interest of your investment becomes significant enough so that you can start reaping some of the more considerable benefits.

I’ll leave you with this final thought. You can write every day, every week, or every month. Try to be consistent on how often you want to publish. If you ever write more articles, hold onto them and schedule them on a date that accommodates your posting frequency.

All the best and happy blogging! Tasos