Blogging is an opportunity to share ideas, learn from others, and improve lives.

Naval Ravikant, founder of AngelList and thought leader, said in an interview that ideas are the new oil. I guess that’s why everyone is digging. There are just over half a billion blogs on the internet as of 2024, expected to reach a billion in 2028.

If you're looking to blog the right way, this guide will help you increase your chances of success. Regardless of your blogging niche or intentions, the seven steps below would set you on the path of your blogging journey.

Here are the seven steps on how to blog in 2024

Blogging Goals
Blog Audience
Naming Your Blog
Your Online Presence
Choose Topics
Research/Study/Practice
Content Management

Now before you write your first article, do you know why you want to blog?

Do you have an idea? Not sure yet? Let's talk about goals.

1. Blogging Goals

You need a solid reason to blog or you will be swept away by the obstacles that lie ahead. Assuming you were a business owner like Sascha Hoffmann of Lifecycle Marketing, blogging could be an opportunity to get cheap warm leads for your business. When I chatted with him about his blogging experience, he said that blogging was a significant strategy for his business.

You see, Sascha Hoffmann helps businesses generate leads and sales on the internet. He's a consultant with nearly a decade’s worth of marketing experience. He is also nurturing clients with his blog. For him, it's all about awareness, consideration, and conversion.

Now that may not be the case for you if you're a content creator curious about some interesting topics. Some other person may see a personal blog as a place to journal about projects they've completed over time. To them, their blog is a living breathing portfolio.

Whether you see your blogging journey as a passion project, professional resume, or study guide, setting a goal and identity for your blog keeps you committed to the process because you have a why.

These three questions will help you make sense of your blogging goals.

Where are you now?
What do you want to be?
Why do you want to blog?

Honest answers to these questions will give your blog an identity. It’s easier to have blogging goals at this point as well.

Now that you have your goals set, let's find your tribe.

2. Blog Audience

Who do you think would love to read your blog?

I hope you're one of them, you know.

Blogging, regardless of your goals, works well when the writer is interested in the topics they write about. So once you’ve understood your blogging goals, find out who else says stuff you find related to your blog.

A quick check on social media platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn could usher you into a world of people related to your blogging goals. Assuming you want to start a blog about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, hundreds of Facebook groups are around similar topics. There are influencers in the space with vibrant comment sections to observe.

Observe?

Yes.

You want to find your tribe so that you know what they look and act like. You're profiling them. You want to know their age, work, and taste in music and movies. What social trends get them going? Speaking to customers on the phone and in person for other bloggers will do the trick. Finding your blog audience answers questions like

Should I write formally or informally on my blog?

While speaking to Conor Ondriska, co-founder of SpanishVIP, he said this.

We dug deep to understand the "why" behind common challenges Spanish-speaking remote workers face. Was it the fear of language barriers on video calls? The lack of culturally nuanced resources on remote work tools? Focusing on specific pain points, we crafted content that felt like a helping hand, not a generic template.
We ditched the formal tone for a conversational approach. Think of a coffee break with a friend rather than a stuffy lecture. - Conor Ondriska

This step in the blogging process never ends. Now, let's find your blog's name. Shall we?

3. Naming Your Blog

Finding a name for your blog can be a simple process or an ongoing discomfort. You'll need to find a free domain name and primary email that hasn't already been taken on social media platforms. Some names can't fit social media handles.

Blog naming can get tricky. But if you've followed the steps in this article, you have a solid foundation to find a name.

You have your blog goals.
You care about your blog, and
You know who you want to write to.

Start to think of words that fit all the three criteria listed above.

You don't necessarily have to have your blog goal in your website name. A blog about rabbits can have the name rabbit.

But as you can see below, rabbit.com is taken.

Let's apply your blog goals, personality and audience to the equation. You could have these as a domain name.

Jennas Cute Rabbits
Jens Fur babies
Rabbits at dawn (relating to how much you think about the rodents)

Before we discuss setting up an online presence, please don't give your blog an unrelated name that could mislead readers. Your rabbit blog shouldn't be called a dog blog or allude to it. You might get punished by the search engines.

Guide Tip: We'll talk about search engines later on in this article

4. Setting Up An Online Presence

So now you have an agenda, who to speak to, and what to call yourself. Your blog is taking shape. Congratulations! Let's get you set up online, shall we?

Now, you must buy your domain name, find a hosting platform, and build your website. I'd suggest A2 hosting to do the work for you. They help you buy the domain and get you hosted on their platform with a wordpress.org site.

Now, set up an email address and use ConvertKit for your email newsletter. Then, open accounts on search engines like YouTube, Spotify For Podcasters and Pinterest. Then, social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Medium exist.

You're trying to have places online to create and distribute content you care about. All these platforms have user-friendly and intuitive designs to set you up. Just follow the steps set out for you on these platforms and ask for support when necessary.

Now's time to talk about topics and content.

5. Choose Topics To Write About

Remember when we said that we'll discuss search engines?

My friend, the time is now.

So, search engines.

What are search engines?

They're like tech librarians helping people find what they search online using keywords. Some search engines include

Google
YouTube
Bing
Pinterest
DuckDuckGo
Spotify
Amazon

So, if you want an audience for your blog, choose topics around your audience's keywords. The hope is that search engines will pick your blog post and display your website on the search engine results page (SERP). The more your articles reach the top of the SERP, the more traffic reaches your blog.

There are a couple of tools you could use to search for keywords. Google search itself is an excellent tool for keyword suggestions and content analysis. Content analysis is when a blogger analyzes the quality of articles ranking on the SERPs.

When you type in a topic and feel you can do better than the write-ups you see, go for it. It's even a better opportunity when you can't find accurate results for your search queries. That means that the competition is low there.

Choosing good topics for your blog takes time, effort, and reflection. And on that note, let's tackle commitment.

6. Commitment: Research, Study, And Practice

Blogging, like anything else substantial, requires commitment for success. Commitment as a blogger means engaging people, studying material, and practicing skills within the industries you're blogging about. For a freelance writer, commitment could look like the following.

Providing content writing services for customers.
Studying books from experts in your niche.
Picking up a skill in the industry you write for.
You are creating your content on your site and social media accounts.
They are contacting industry players and observing their approach to industry activity.
I am practicing and taking courses on writing and content marketing in general.

Blogging like a professional demands commitment to the numbers and drills to improve your writing skills. HubSpot once found a study that said bloggers who published 16 times a month got five times more leads than bloggers who didn't.

And now, to content management.

7. Building A Content Management System

Your content management system consists of all the processes that help you develop a topic, create content on said topic, distribute the content package, and engage productively with your audience. We'll look at some of these content processes below.

Content Strategy For Bloggers

Content strategy is your approach to achieving your blogging goals as a blogger. Remember what we discussed at the beginning of this article concerning blogging goals. A professional blogger would naturally look at the volume of monthly readers as a blogging metric. They may add social media and email marketing to the mix to increase and deepen reader engagement.

Content Schedule For Bloggers

Creating many high-quality blog posts targeting the right keywords is the strategy here. We're talking about hundreds and hundreds of articles. The successful bloggers in the space have as many as 1000 - 2000 blog posts on their sites. It's not uncommon to see new professional bloggers blog daily to get a chance.

Content Creation For Bloggers

As a blogger, the bulk of your work is content creation. Once you've come to step 4 on this guide list, what's important is the number of articles published on your site.

Content. Content. Content.

Prolific bloggers usually get significant results which would be website traffic and conversion.

Finally

These are the seven steps to help you start a blog in 2024. If you have any questions, leave a comment, I'd love to speak with you.

A Complete Guide To Blogging In 2024