Starting your own blog doesn’t have to be as intimidating as you think. Like many types of new marketing (email, social media, etc.), it’s easy to feel like you’re the only one not blogging. But with a little help, you’ll soon find yourself up and running and giving some advice to others.
I have had a great experience with WordPress and creating my blog/website. I’ve worked in marketing for years, but had no web programming experience (unless you consider making bold and underlined copy). In the past, I have always relied on my team of experienced web gurus. But when I started poking around and doing some research, I found that it’s not that hard.
Unless you’re a web designer, creating your own blog means you have to do a lot of reading to discover all these new features. Try this forum section on WordPress, there’s a lot of information on how to get started, go to WordPress and it’s under “support”.
I also recommend going to YouTube. I am a visual person so I like to “see” how things are done. They have many tutorial videos that show you how to do different things. Just type WordPress in the search field.
I built my own site/blog on WordPress in a day or two and was able to add plugins that add forms, get traffic stats, help with search engine optimization (SEO) and much more. I had some trouble adding photos, but I’m about to update to the latest version of WordPress (2.7) to see if it helps.
You’ll want your business name in the title and on an “About” page. You can create static pages, so that people know about your company, products, services, etc. Then use blog posts or articles to discuss things that are of interest to people who may buy your product/service.
When it comes to optimizing your site for search engines, you’ll want to look at some of the plugins available to help you optimize and measure traffic. I recommend All-in-One SEO and Google XML Sitemaps. This will make your site easier to find on search engines. Also add plugins like AddThis Social Bookmarks, to encourage visitors to bookmark your site and make it easy for them to come back and visit if they like what they see.
For content, you don’t necessarily want your business name mentioned over and over again to help increase traffic, unless your business name is so well known that thousands of people search for it. You want to make sure you include relevant keywords that your potential customers will search for.
Also try a plugin called WordPress Stats. It will allow you to see how much traffic you are getting. Eventually, you’ll want to set up Google Analytics to see where the traffic is coming from and which keywords are the most popular.