At the same time, most blogs are started without proper thought and hence they do end up as a failure! Let us share 5 basic things you should think about BEFORE you start a blog.
Why are you starting a blog?
It’s the most profound question you will ever ask yourself, but also the most important. Why are you doing this? What do you hope to accomplish? Do you want to make money? Do you want to help people? Do you want to make people laugh? Do you want to vent about something (society, politics, your love life)? There are no wrong answers here, but you do need to have one. You need to know why you are doing it, but more than anything you need to be passionate about doing it, whatever it is. If you love Spam and you want to sing the praises of Spam on your blog, then you will be successful. But if you’re a Vegan and you hate spam and someone offers you a ton of cash to blog about Spam, it’s just not going to work. It’s a job at that point, and you’ll hate doing it, and more importantly, you’ll hate yourself for doing it.What’s your niche?
Everyone needs an angle. Whether you’re a writer blogging about being a stripper, or a stripper blogging being a writer, you need a hook, pure and simple. You can’t be all things to all people and you shouldn’t try. You will fail. You can only succeed if you can identify a portion of the market that is being underserved (ideally, they won’t be getting served at all) and then speaking and marketing to them. This isn’t as hard a question to answer as it might seem. Once you answer the first question, the second question will largely answer itself.What Platform Will You Use?
Myriad content management and blog platforms exist that can make management a cinch. Before you go researching all your options, check to see if the platform used to create your site has an easy blog add on. If not, or if it doesn’t provide the functionality and form you need, WordPress is great choice that provides a great foundation and allows for near endless customization.Who Will Write Your Posts?
If the entire responsibility to populate a blog on a frequent basis falls to one individual, and they have other job responsibilities, it’s likely it will get pushed aside for more seemingly pressing needs. That’s probably the case with so many of those neglected blogs We’ve seen likely. Elect a handful of folks to write for your blog that are enthusiastic and committed subject matter experts. If need be, find copywriters to ghost write for any thought leaders that have the clout just not the time.How Will You Incorporate Social Into the Blog?
Make sure to include sharing buttons at the top of each blog post. Include Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, Pinterest, and email (and LinkedIn if you are a B2B brand), and customize to ensure they pull through the right meta data and tagging.There’s some debate as to whether you should include share count on the buttons. If you have low sharing numbers, it may discourage others from sharing (they don’t want to be the first). But if you have high share numbers, it may motivate others to share. We recommend starting without the share count, then evaluating performance (making sure to tag buttons appropriately for tracking or use AddThis or ShareThis for their analytics). If sharing is high, you may consider adding the count at a later date.
So there you go! Even if you have already started a blog, we strongly suggest you think about these 5 things before you start worrying about stuff you’re stuck on.
Giving these 5 things a little thought will change the way you think and approach stuff with blogging. And yes, we're pretty sure, you’ll start seeing a great improvement.
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