How to start a blog for free and write one

By Timothy Allsworth Content Marketing October 27, 2018

How to start a blog and write one.

The first step is to unleash those ideas into writing. Why do you want to write a blog? What is the main topic of the blog? Who is your main audience? What age group are they? Where do they live? This is called writing for an audience or target marketing.

The main purpose of this is to create a plan on how to write. If you talk to the souls of the audience you are writing for, then chances are they will love your content.

Blog writing is not hard, neither is writing. You don’t have to be a novelist or a professor. It’s as simple as writing naturally. Write how you feel, write your emotions onto paper, then fill in the blanks. Write about your passion, give people answers to their questions.

Make them feel like they have accomplished something or learnt something by the time they reach the end of your blog articles.

What are you interested in? Penguin breeding? Knitting at 20 years old? Or are you interested in something that is more common? If you are, then try to pick a topic for the blog that is more specific to what you are interested in.

For eg, if you’re interested in travel or want to start a blog about travel, then start a blog about backpacking or cruise liners, or even about specific parts of the world.

People search for specific things. You could even create blog articles under several different categories related to these specific terms.

What to write about

You can write about industry news, your experiences, answers to questions, you can use business brochures, information booklets, get an employee to write about what they know, recipes, instruction manuals, product reviews, product information, project details, who, when, why, how, write about anything, as long as the blog articles are about what you or your business does.

A great way to get ideas is to search for the topic of the article on Google, then rewrite a similar blog into your own words. (But do not copy the article, this is explained further on)

Creating titles for the individual blog posts on your blog.

For eg, if you are starting a blog about golf clubs, try to come up with a title that is more specific to the area you are writing about. Basically the broader your blog topic, the harder it will be to find on Google. So you have to come up with a blog title that is more defined.

A great tool for finding blog topics or blog titles can be found on this Blog title generator.

Also when thinking of blog titles, and you are writing to answer people’s questions, add a question to the title, such as the title of this blog post “How to start a blog for free”. Many people will type in this exact same keyword phrase when searching “How to create a blog”.

When writing a blog follow these simple rules:

Add at least one keyword that has something to do with the article topic in the title of the blog ( a keyword is simply a word or phrase that you would use to search for what you are writing about in Google, such as the title of this blog, “How to start a blog for free”, this is a keyword phrase.)
Add at least two keywords or phrases into the first paragraph of the blog, the closer to the start of the paragraph, the better. Try to incorporate them naturally, don’t stuff the keywords in there, try to write in a flowing manner, but just keep keywords in mind and add them where it makes sense.
Always add at least one image, the more the better though, this helps to break up the reading, and when you add images, try to name the images with keywords before you upload them. For instance a blog about web design, I would name my images with keywords such as “web-designer-business.jpg” or “how-to-hire-a-web-designer.png” etc. A great royalty-free image search engine can be found on Pixabay if your stuck looking for images.
Try to add your articles to categories, as this makes it easier to find for your viewers and when creating categories use keywords. A great keyword research tool can be found on Ubersuggest. This tool allows you to get keyword ideas and also tells you how many times each keyword is searched for. When using keywords, try to use a mix of popular keywords and phrases and also ones that aren’t searched for that much. Use it to get ideas for keywords.
Add tags, to the tags section, as many as you can, with keywords related to the topic of the article.
Write in a conversational way.
Great on the eyes with plenty of white space.
Use headings to separate sections
Add plenty of bullet points and lists to direct the flow of the article
Always check for spelling and grammatical errors (a great tool for online spell and grammar checking can be found at Grammarly)
Write at least one article a week, and try to write at least 500 words on each article, Google prefers quality over quantity, so writing 1 long quality post a week is much better than 10 short, irrelevant or low-quality blogs a week.
DONT EVER COPY ANOTHER BLOG OR ANY CONTENT straight from anywhere else on the internet. Not only can you be infringing on copyright, but Google can penalise you for it, if you must, search for the particular topic you want to write about and then rewrite the article you have found interesting into your own words. This can also be a great way to find ideas for your blog if you’re struggling to come up with ideas or content.
After you have written each blog, share it as many times as you can on social media such as Facebook, by clicking on a social media share button(most blogs have these at the bottom). The reason you do this is quite simple, Google has an algorithm, and one of its rules is, the more a blog article is shared, then the more popular it is, when Google thinks your blog is popular, it will increase its rankings and more people will be able to view your article or blog. Get friends and other people to share it as well. If you write great, quality content, then people will naturally share your articles.
Write articles that help people. If you answer people’s questions, they return the favour by sharing your article.
Add a link to your website if you have one, somewhere in each article.
Above all write naturally, don’t stuff keywords, and have fun.

You would also be surprised how many people would be interested in what you do, even if you consider it to be uncommon.

The more specific you are about the topic of your blog, the more chances people will find it in search results. For eg, search for penguin breeding, in my search results 8,560,000 results were found!

You would be surprised how many people appreciate having their questions answered, or achieving something they couldn’t do beforehand, a typical example of this is this very article. You have obviously found this article because you searched on Google for how to start a blog.

Well, I’m here to tell you that there a number of different ways to achieve this. Excited? Then read on.

Reasons for creating a blog

Draw in an audience – Blogging allows you to reach billions of people who are searching for the information you are writing about. Blogging can help you promote your business or help you to connect with your niche audience, so you can share your passion in life. People love free information, if you can give people something for nothing, it will attract their attention and can lead to customers and clients, as well as friends.
Create yourself as an authoritative figure – Writing relevant and engaging content can establish you as the go-to person for a niche. If people read your content, and it helps them to achieve their goal, or answer their question or gives them free information, then they will see you as the “go-to” person, this creates trust and trust is one of the biggest factors in business to client/customer relationship. Also if they trust you, they will tell their friends about you, and word of mouth is still the biggest marketing strategy out there today.
Build engagement with your audience – Building strong customer/reader/client relationships are built on interaction. Most blogs come with some sort of commenting system. If people like your blogs you can talk to them and increase potential leads and sales or just say thank you for their comment.
Create business opportunities – Creating a helpful or a great article can be used in business conferences, or in seminars. People who engage in these seminars can see who the blog is written by, and can contact you through the blog, this can lead to a sale, or a potential client, or even just to say hi.
Let others know about you and your interests – Becoming a blogger enables you to let the whole world who you are. It allows you to reach like-minded people who have the same passions and beliefs that you do.
Meet new people – Blogging allows you to talk and meet new people, your viewers can eventually become your friends, colleagues, partners or even lovers. It’s a great way to get into the world that you love.
Blogging for marketing – Blogging is one of the best ways for a business to market their business on the internet. It only costs your time. A blog built over time with a lot of relevant content will create an invaluable marketing tool for a business. Think of the potential it creates using everything that is talked about on this blog. Client interaction, increase in viewers to your website over a period of time, client trust, you become the “go-to” person for all things in your niche, making friends. Another word for blogging is called content marketing. Content marketing is the biggest marketing opportunity on the web. It can make or break a business. Read my article on content marketing here, as well as other helpful information on blog writing.
Blogging for fun – this needs no explanation, as it kind of explains itself.

Step1. Creating a blog name or title

Now that you have all those inspirational ideas for your blog, you have to think of a great title or name for your blog. This is can be fun! When considering the name or title, try to add at least one word that has something to do with the topic of your blog.

Step 2. Sign up to a blogging platform

Most of these blogging platforms are easy to use and have a huge audience base. They are all free and come with a host of features to get you started. Remember, blogging is an ongoing process, it can take time for people to start seeing your posts, or commenting.

Don’t expect things to happen overnight, because it won’t.

Steadily build your blog and share it as much as you can on social media and other websites. If your content is great, helpful, insightful, relevant and original, people will naturally share your articles, and Google will reward you for it by bringing your articles up in search results more often.

Google is basically an information index and it displays only the most relevant content for the search term used to find the content.