So you heard about blog. Well, this article circles around blog, blogger, and blogging. Let’s get to the first thing, what is a blog? It is more like a personal website where you can write whatever you want. For most people, they define this as an online diary. It is a website where you can share and express what is inside your head and what you are feeling.
http://webdesign.about.com/od/webhosting/f/blfaqwebhosting.htm
Blog is also defined as a website where you can get information from different people. Businesses also use blogs to help inform their consumers about the products and services they do. Let’s get to the next thing, what is a blogger? Well, obviously he/she is the person who writes for the blog. Usually he/she is also called a writer.

Now, what is blogging? Unlike the other two things mentioned, blogging is more complicated than it looks like. For some people, they see blogging as a simple thing that everyone can do. But in fact, there is more to blogging that most people are unaware of.

If you want to start blogging, you need to consider different things and you must have skills and budget on doing it. Before starting a blog, you need two things:

Web Hosting

Web hosting is a server where your website or blog would operate. This is where you store all information and data of the blog. Although it is not free, it’s not that expensive. Usually for companies who offer web hosting, it is paid annually and is usually cheap.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name of the blog or website you want. You can usually see it like this: www.Blogname.com. You can’t have a domain name that already exists. All domain names must be unique. But for some instances, when the domain expires and the owner forgot to renew, you can get this chance to steal the domain name from the owner.

No budget, no problem.

But how about if you want to start blogging but don’t have any budget for the web hosting and domain name?

Well there’s a solution for that. There are websites that offer you free blog sites. Here are some free blog sites that you can use:

Tumblr

To make it quick, look what Tumblr has to say about itself:
“Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything.
Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors to your theme’s HTML.”

Basically, Tumblr is a microblogging site just like Twitter except that Tumblr has no character length restriction. But since it is a microblogging site, it has a culture where users tend to post short updates about their blogs. Yes! Until now, most bloggers who use this site are posting short updates.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is one of the best software that can be used to build a website and a blog. Basically, this is also free software, actually an open-source software. What does that mean?

It means it’s a software that is open for everybody to modify, change, and redistribute the code to anyone. By experience, people pick this software to create their own blog. Perhaps because it is very easy to use and lots of blogger are familiar with this software.

WordPress started as a blogging system, but today it has evolved into a complete content management system and there are lots of plug-ins and themes out there for free. This is why WordPress is one of the best software to use when building your blog.

Blogger

Blogger is also one of the most popular blogging sites that you can use. This is a blog website that is owned by Google, which means you need to register an e-mail using Google before you can use this. Since this is a platform owned by Google, you can assume that this is very safe.

Since you have an idea about what a blog is and the free blog sites that you can use, you are ready for setting up your blog site. But not too fast! You also need to consider different things before setting it up; you don’t want to waste your budget and time, right?

So here are some things you should think and consider before setting up your own blog site:

1. Think About What Your Blog Will Be Talking About

Now, I assume that you will be posting about something since you decided to start blogging. Now, you need to think of precise topics that you should post in your blog. If you decided to post something about yourself then don’t post any random article that talks about anything. It should only be about you.

Having a precise topic for your blog can help your audience identify on what your blog is all about. If it is a personal blog, then people will come to your blog if they want to know about you. Basically, people go to a website to get information; if they don’t find what they are looking for, more likely they will immediately leave your blog, which is bad.

Be precise on what you will post on your blog or it might have some negative effects.

2. Who Is Your Target Audience?

In addition to what topics you will be talking about in your blog, you should also consider your audience. Some bloggers usually want to target a certain audience. Example for some businessmen who have blogs, more likely they want to target entrepreneurs. Your audience can have a difference when it comes to success of your blog.

Think about who you would like to target for your blog, or what kind of audience you would like for your blog.

3. Write for Your Audience

Well, this is kind of obvious. Most bloggers would want a high traffic to their blogs, which means lots of people visiting their website. But some bloggers would write for the purpose of having a post, which is obviously wrong.

If you want to succeed in your blogging, you should always consider your audience and write for them.

4. Do Not Use Black Hat Technique

This is a common mistake that most bloggers are doing. Lately, black hat technique is widely used to make a certain blog or website rank in search engines. But Google has launched so many updates to increase the user experience in terms of searching, which means those who uses spam and illegal strategy are penalized.

Some bloggers would say that, “hey! I know a black hat technique to increase your followers.” Well, for starters it would seem appealing, but if you think about it, those followers are either fake or people who just followed you for no reason.

If you think about it, even you have a lot of followers but have no active engagement in your blog, then they will not help in improving your blog. More likely, Google itself will punish your website because of that and it may lead to losing your search ranks.

5. Have Knowledge About Basic SEO

I will not go far on talking what search engine and optimization (SEO) is all about. But basically, SEO is a process that makes you get traffic the natural way. You need to know first what SEO is and how they do it. SEO has something to do on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

You need to be a friend with those search engines in order for your site to show in their search result. SEO is one of the best ways on doing this. So why is it important to have knowledge about SEO?

Well, in the online world there are lots of competitions. Actually, you can call it war since there are lots of parties involved. Most of them have a deep knowledge about SEO, which is the best weapon for success in the online world. If you don’t have even a slight knowledge about this, you won’t be able to succeed on surviving in the war.

6. Have a Good Design for Your Blog

Here’s a basic but important part that you need to know before you make your blog. Be sure to have a good design for it! Well we know that blog is more on content, but design is really important.

Let us say that people can easily like your blog or hate it on the first look of it. If you have a good content but has poor design, then more likely people will not read your blog post except if they really need it. Unlike when having a good design, people will still stay in your website not just because of your content but because of the design of the blog.

Recommended video: