Creating my own blog was something I had to sit and think about for a while. It isn’t as easy as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to have followers, it takes a lot of work to write and it is rather important to keep up your writing on a weekly basis if you want constant readers.

Since this was something I had to struggle through, I figured writing a blog for my readers on how to start their own blogs would be something of help for them. I hope you can use some of what I shared for your own blog.

Here are 5 Steps to Creating Your Own Blog

First Step: Choosing the right platform.

Depending on what you want to use your blog for whether it is friends, family, business, pleasure, this will all be important when choosing the right platform. Do you want to find a free platform? Or do you mind paying a little extra to have some exciting features and add ons? These are all things to think about when choosing the right platform.

I started on Tumblr.com, it is a free site that allows you to style your page, add calendars, archives and photos. This site is a great way to organize your messages, thoughts and posts for friends and family. If you already know about all the basic free platforms but are looking for something more personalized and more professional, try WordPress. WordPress allows you to customize every little detail on your page from the size of the header, the background colours, the buttons, everything!

Second Step: Choosing your Topic.

Blog readers like to know what they are getting themselves into before clicking on links. If your blog is about everything and anything under the sun, it will not attract the right customers and when it does, you may lose them rather fast. Try to select a niche that will help you gain followers who have the same interests. For example, my blog is about travel, more specifically I like to focus on budget travel. This allows me to share my stories with friends and family, but also allows me to gain a bigger following and help promote my Granted Apparel business.

Third Step: Start writing!

Quality content is key as I am sure you are well aware of by now. It is important to have a captivating title which will draw readers in and like any good essay, it is also important to explain the bulk of your blog in the first couple sentences. I may not be a good example of this – I write for fun and not for perfection – you can choose to read my blog or not, that is your prerogative.

Fourth Step: Make a Schedule.

You may have already realized this while reading other people’s blogs, some people who post once for three months and then 10 times in a week, are hard people to follow. If you like what you are reading and would like to read more, the better way to build an audience is to make a schedule. For example, while my posts are far and few between right now, I have set a concrete schedule to have 2 posts a week, one on Monday and one on Wednesday. Once you have created a schedule, stick to it!

Fifth Step: SHARE!

As I mentioned in the first section, it isn’t always easy finding followers to your blogs, Tumblr, WordPress and other platforms that aren’t as popular as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. It is important to SHARE the blogs you post or people may never see it. Take advantage of all your social media pages and share it as much as you can. Friends and family are a great place to start!

These are the 5 steps I constantly take every week in order to ensure that my content is worth reading and easily accessible. I hope that you have found some help in this blog. Let me know if you have any questions or comment below, OR feel free to send me an e-mail at giveforgranted@gmail.com with the subject line: QUESTION – Create Your Own Blog.

Looking for a little more inspiration?! Check out my post on: The Best Bucket List Experiences