How To Start A Blog In Few Easy Steps

I have always been fascinated with writing. And many times in the past, I had ideas on the topics I wanted to write about but failed tremendously because I felt there was no one giving me an ear. Imagine my excitement when I first heard of blogging, it truly felt like the heavens were blessing me. The issue was, no matter how many blogs I read about how to start a blog, they just all seemed like ideas that were timid and never gave enough detail on how to start a blog in Africa.

These were all guidelines that seemed to work in most areas around the globe but were a bit too much for an African girl. So, after almost 2 years blogging, I wanted to share my acquired knowledge when it comes to blogging. Especially how to start a blog in a few steps in Africa.

Why blog?

Let me start by saying this, if you are a creative in Africa and do not have a blog running, you are losing out on so much of the world’s market. Blogging allows you to reach out to more people from different demographics which has the potential of converting them to customers. Thus growing your customer base.

This is also an opportunity for you to connect more with your customers informally. You are able to reveal just a little bit more of yourself to them which makes them feel apart of your art.

Finding your niche

Now that we have established the reason why blogging is important, let’s work o finding your niche.

This is important, so important that if you do not clarify what niche your blog will center on, it would mean the end before the beginning.

A niche is a unique segment which your content will center on. What exactly are you choosing to share with your readers. Do you like to travel the world and want to share travel tips and destinations? Or do you want to write about lifestyle?

You need to clearly know the niche that you will focus on, because your content development will depend on it.

How to start a blog in Africa in a few steps

Choose your domain and hosting service

At this stage, I will need you to choose your blog’s name. The name should be a clear reflection of your blog, one that would easily tell a story before one clicked on it. I chose my name because I wanted a personal blog, and nothing screams personal as a website with my name as a url.

It is also at this point where you have to decide how much to invest in the blog. This investment is concerning the buying of the domain.

You have two options, to use worpress.com to create a free blog, or to have it self hosted and get a .com or .org as part of your domain.

If you decide on self hosting, then I would recommend Bluehost or Dreamhost.

Choose a blogging platform

I highly recommend WordPress.org as your blogging platform. It is so easy to work will and flexible in many ways. I also recommend it because of how user-friendly it is, more especially to beginners.

Customize your new site

There are so many themes on wordpress that are free to use. But before you are quick to decide which theme to roll with, start by doing a little research.

Visit some of your favorite blogs, and mentally list down what you like about the site. Put close attention to details such as the outlook of the site and the functionality. That will aid you in deciding what theme you want to use and how to customize it.

Create high level pages

I consider the Home and About pages to be high level pages on a blog. The homepage will be your landing page, so you will need to consider what you want people to be welcomed with.

Likewise, the About page gives a little more information on what the blog is about and also about the author of the blog.

You will need to spend time on these two pages greatly.

Publish your first post

As a new blogger, it is important that you publish at least 5 blog posts on the day your bog goes live. And this is an advise I wish I had when I started.

Publishing a couple of post this early will give your first viewer an insight of what they should expect in the future. But, it also helps in the marketing of the blog. You are able to show that you have content figured out and thus can grasp viewers right in the beginning of your journey.

Never comprise on the content quality

ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOUR CONTENT IS OF HIGH QUALITY. Stick to your niche always. Never deviate as this would confuse your readers.

But something you also need to do is decide on your bogging calendar. Make sure you decide how frequent you will publish blog posts. If it is twice a week, then come down to specific days such as Monday and Friday.

So far, these are the few steps you will when creating a blog. In the coming days, I will also share how you can market your blog and ways to monetize it.

I hope you share your blogs url below after you create them. I would like to see them all.

Get blogging babies.