Eileen Lonergan

Thinking of starting a blog? Go for one of the WordPress variety and you’ll be in good company. Forbes, Mashable, TechCrunch (and Katy Perry) all host their pretty fabulous sites on the WordPress platform. Ready to join them? Read on for five tips to help you get it right first time round.

1. What are you going to blog about anyway?

It sounds pretty obvious but the first thing you should do is decide what you’re actually going to blog about. If you’re starting a blog for your already established business this one will be pretty easy. On the flip side, if you’re just starting out in the blogosphere (and hope to make money from your endeavors), it makes sense to do some keyword research before you get started. SEOmoz is an excellent resource for understanding the importance of this activity.

2. Understanding the basics

It probably goes without saying that if you’re new to WordPress and/or blogging in general, you’ll likely pick up loads of tips and tricks along the way. There’s a lot to be said for learning on the job, although that school of thought probably best applies if you have at least a basic understanding of the layout of the land. Take some time to get to know the basics before you start out. Monetized offers a back to basics look at how to create your own blog from scratch.

3. Help! I’m not a geek

If changing the cover photo on your Facebook profile is about as technical as you get, opting for a WordPress framework is a good idea. The Genesis framework is one of the most popular and aside from offering a variety of child themes (free and paid), it’s ready to use right out of the box. It’s already optimized for search and is updated automatically which means less work for you. That’s always a good thing, right? For starters, it means that you will have more time to create awesome content.

4. Plugins are the way to go

In keeping with the idea that saving time where time can be saved is a good thing, you’ll be wanting to get to grips with some of the excellent WordPress plugins. With more than 22,000 on offer, the choice can seem a little overwhelming, especially to the novice blogger. Naturally ideas can vary as to which plugins are considered to be worth having, but you can check out a list of five useful WordPress plugins right here on this site. Handy that, huh? As you go along, it’s likely that you’ll want to install more, but these are great for getting started with.

5. Your adventure starts here

If you’ve got this far, congratulations – you’ve mastered the basics (cyber wolf whistles coming your way). Now it’s time to get down to some actual work. You are probably already aware that in order to draw in the crowds, your content is going to have to be something pretty special. Unless you’ve chosen a super small niche, there’s just too much competition for you to throw out anything but (and why would you want to?). Posting content as and when you feel like it just won’t work if you want to be truly successful. Do yourself a favour and nab an editorial calendar from Web Search Social.

Image Credit: The Daily Anchor

Author is guest posting from: Degree Jungle