How to Create a Stunning, Professional Blog With the Potential to Become a ‘Top’ Blog
Ever wanted to become a top blogger? In many ways,
this is the perfect job and it will give you a chance to earn a living by
writing about a subject that you love, all at your own pace.
Working as a blogger means that you make passive
income. In other words, you earn money from the people who visit your site –
meaning that the money comes in as long as your site is live. That means you
aren’t exchanging your time for money anymore and taking a day off from work
won’t cost you a day’s wages. You could spend all of tomorrow in bed and you
would still make a ton of money from your blog! Oh, and if you reach the very
top of your game, then the amount of money you can actually earn is gigantic.
At the same time, you’ll be a minor celebrity. It’s an
amazing feeling to be a leader in your niche: to write content that people
can’t wait to read and then to receive fan mail and questions. These days,
becoming a blogger is actually one of the very best ways to become famous in fact!
Then again, if you’d rather stay anonymous then you
can do that too!
Like I said: it’s the perfect way to earn money.
The only problem is that it’s a method that just about everyone wants to get involved with. If you want to be a top blogger, then you’re certainly not the first to try it and you certainly won’t be the last. Unfortunately, countless people have attempted this and failed in the past, so the question is: what can you do to be different?
How can you succeed where others have failed?
There are actually many answers to this question and
if you want a completely blueprint to becoming a top blogger
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| Blogging |
In this report
though, you’re going to learn everything you need to know in order to get off
to the best possible start. In other words, we’re going to look at how to build
that blog in the first place. How to create a blog that has the potential to become a top blog. This
will show you what makes the difference between a truly professional blog with
the chance to become a gigantic household name and a much smaller blog that
will never gain true recognition.
It Starts With the Nicheand the Brand
Before you can even begin thinking about how to create
your blog, you need to choose your niche. The niche is of course the subject
matter – this is what your site is about, whether that is fitness, money,
dating, gardening, weddings or something else entirely.
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A great niche is going to be something that has broad
appeal so that you can gain the maximum number of readers, but it also has to
be something that isn’t too broad. By
carving out your own niche, you will give yourself unique avenues through which
to market yourself and you’ll set yourself apart from the competition.
Often a good way to do this is to choose a big niche
and then to hone in on a smaller aspect of that niche.
So you have your ‘fitness’ niche but within that, you
also have a huge number of smaller subcategories. These include such things as:
·
Bodybuilding
·
Weight loss
·
Crossfit
·
Bodybuilding for students
·
Weight loss for the elderly
·
Fitness for nerds
Another option is to combine niches. The ‘fitness for nerds’ niche is an example of this
and it will give you the opportunity to blog both about fitness and about nerd culture. This is
something that is done very well by the excellent blog ‘Nerd Fitness’.
Either way, make sure you stand out and make sure that
you have something that sets you apart on the basis of niche alone. Don’t be
‘just another fitness site’ because that doesn’t give your visitors any reason
to subscribe to you. There are plenty of fitness sites out there already!
Mission
Statement
In order to build a top blog, you need to begin
thinking about the brand too. Note that ‘brand’ in this case does not just mean
the logo – a brand is actually much more than a logo and instead speaks to the
very ‘mission statement’ and the very objective of your site.
A mission statement is basically a statement of
intent: this is your way of saying what you want your site to accomplish and
why you’re passionate about that. This is what sets your blog apart and if you
have combined multiple different subject matters, then your mission statement
is somehow going to communicate that.
A mission statement has nothing to do with you making
money and nothing to do with ‘what’ you do on a daily basis. This is why you do what you do and it is why people should care and why they
should be excited.
Your mission statement sets you apart because it can
be completely different for two different sites that have apparently the same
niche. For example, one fitness site might have this mission statement:
“A place for iron warriors to gather, exchange war
notes and push themselves to the limit”
Or it might have this one:
“Helping to make readers happier, fitter and more
functional in their daily lives. Healthy life = happy life!”
These two sites have completely different tones and
they have a completely different target audience. But that is what makes them
different from a generic blog that lists exercises and that’s what will make
people excited about the niche.
And here is the thing that really matters: in order to
make a top blog, you need to have something that sets you apart and you need to
make sure your passion is coming across. This is coincidentally why it is also so important that you only ever choose a
subject matter for your blog that you are truly passionate about. If you are
not passionate about the blog subject you have chosen, then people are not
going to want to read what you have written because it won’t be different from
anything else out there. Even if you hire a top writer, unless they are passionate
experts in the niche you chose, then
the content is just going to sound generic and plain – because all they can
have done is top research it from other sources online and then regurgitate it
in their own words.
Choose a niche you really believe in and let your
personality come across. Bring something completely new to the subject matter
and make sure that you are challenging the status quo with genuinely remarkable
ideas.
And one more reason that your blog needs to be in a
niche that you’re passionate about? Because it is the only way that you can
keep writing about it every single day without getting bored. Even the best
blog in the world will not be a massive hit overnight and that means you’re
going to need to find the will to keep going even when you feel a little
disheartened. The only way you’ll be able to do that is if you really love the
subject matter.
Creating
Your Logo
Once you’ve done this, you can then begin to create
your logo.
It is very important
that you create a logo that you are proud of and that really sums up your site.
What’s even more important is that it should look professional.
The logo is the most important part of your marketing
because every single piece of marketing or advertising you create is going to
feature it. Likewise, your logo is going to be featured on the website itself
and it is going to be have an influence on the way that you design your
website!
If your logo looks poorly designed, then it will make
your site appear amateurish and it will instantly
prevent people from getting behind your movement or putting trust in what
you have to say.
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| Laura Maya |
To make your logo, you first need to come up with an
idea.
To come up with your idea, one strategy you can use is
to create a ‘mood board’. A mood board is essentially a collage that includes a
range of different images and other sources of inspiration. This will include
logos from other sites, as well as various different words and various
different images that speak to the topic of your site.
Think about your mission statement: what words come to
mind based on that? What images? Draw them, find them online and collect them
all in one place. As you do this, turn off your ‘filter’ and accept that there
are no ‘bad’ ideas.
Once you’ve done this, you can then start trying to
combine these ideas in different ways. Put different images together and try
working them into the text that makes your site’s name. Eventually, you should
find a few ideas you like.
Try to avoid generic or cliched ideas. Images like
globes, ticks or lightbulbs are badly overused and will come across as cliched.
At the same time, try to keep your design as simple as
you can. Simple doesn’t mean childish – it means subtle and understated. Think
of the Nike tick – it is incredibly simple
and this is part of what makes it so successful. A simple logo is something
that can easily be recreated and that will also be inherently more versatile,
allowing you to incorporate it into more different situations whether those are
banner ads or even products that you are going to sell.
To actually bring your idea to life, you need to use a
tool called Adobe Illustrator. This is important, because it can be used to
create ‘vector files’. Vector files are files that don’t use pixels in a map
(which is what a regular ‘raster file’ uses) but instead use instructions that
tell the computer how to draw the image. Those instructions might include
things like: line this length and in this angle, move 30 degrees, line this
length…
The reason this is important, is that it means that
image can be blow up indefinitely without any loss in image quality or
resolution. The ratios of the distances and angles are simply increased and the
image is drawn again, only larger.
If you don’t know how to use Adobe Illustrator, then
this is the point at which you consider hiring someone who can. You can find
someone cheap on Fiverr.com, or you can try 99Designs, where you will be able
to get multiple different designers to submit ideas and then choose your very
favorite.
Now you have the logo and the direction for your site,
it’s time to get down to actually building
the site in order to come up with something that will look the part and
function as it should.
The place to start is by finding a hosting account. There
are lots of places that will host your website but one of the best and most
reliable is BlueHost.com. BlueHost offers hosting packages for good prices and
also includes all the additional features you could want, such as the one-click
installation for WordPress through CPanel.
You’re going to want to use WordPress for building
your site because it is absolutely unrivalled when it comes to building a site
that is professional looking and fully capable.
WordPress is completely free and yet it powers over a
quarter of all the content on the net. It is used by some of the biggest brands
in the world and it has a massive community that is actively developing new
themes and plugins all the time. In other words, WordPress is a tried and
tested commodity so that when you use WordPress, you will know without a doubt
that your site is going be capable of
becoming a top blog. If you build it yourself from scratch, there will always
be the concern that perhaps the code is somehow limiting that potential.
Not only that, but by using WordPress you will ensure
that you have access to all the most powerful plugins (featured in the full
ebook) which will help you to extend your reach and grow even faster. Choose
another tool to build your site and you make life immensely more difficult for
yourself for no good reason!
And as I said, there is a one-click installation
available through BlueHost to let you install this. The good news is that most
hosting providers actually include cPanel and the one-click installation and
even if you don’t have this, you can install it by downloading the files from
WordPress.com easily enough.
Customization
Now add your logo to the top of your website. This is
the first change you’re going to make to start customizing your site and making
it yours and it’s also going to help you to begin to define the look of your
site. Whatever color scheme you have chosen for your logo, this is going to
instantly impact the look of your site and the best option is to choose a
similar color scheme for the rest of your site.
To do this, you will first want to install a custom
theme. A theme is basically a particular design for a WordPress site which once
again can be installed with a single click. You can find free themes through
WordPress itself in the control panel but the best themes are paid. And one of
the best sites for finding these paid themes is ThemeForest. Go to
themeforest.net and you’ll find a huge selection of different looks for
WordPress.
There are a few things to consider for your site when
choosing these. A good WordPress theme/blog design should be:
·
Responsive – This means that the site will change shape and
size in relation to the screen that is viewing it. In other words, it will be
mobile compatible and won’t look too big or too small on different screen
sizes.
·
Fast – Google will penalize sites that take too long to load
and a lot of users will also simply just leave
sites that do.
·
Customizable – You want your site to be customizable meaning
that you can change lots of aspects of it. This will not only give you the
freedom to make it really beautiful and just the way you want it but it will
also make sure that there aren’t too many other sites on the web that look just
the same as your site.
·
Image-Rich – These days, the best website will have lots of
large, high definition images. A great feature for example is to have a slider
that will go along the top of the site and showcase your latest content. Of
course this means you will also need to focus on obtaining lots of high quality
images or taking photographs to go with your site.
Most sites will let you look at a live preview before
you select them. When looking at these, try to imagine them with your own logo
and everything else in place and then ask yourself: is this as good as the top
blogs in your niche?
Because that’s what you’re competing with. A lot of
people will make blogs and think it’s ‘good enough’ for a blog made by one
person. Sure, you’re at a disadvantage. But you know what? Your audience
doesn’t care. Your audience just wants to see an amazing website and they’ll
leave instantly if yours is anything less than 100% professional.
And here’s another thing: if your site doesn’t look
100% professional, then you’ll never get a link from another top site and
you’ll never get sponsorships or paid advertising. Think about it: why would a
top blog want to recommend your site if it looks like it was made by a 10 year
old?
With this installed, you can then go about tweaking it
to your heart’s content. This should normally mean that you will change things
like the font (very important for good readability), the color scheme, the
layout of widgets and number of sidebars etc.
Plugins and
the Rest of Your Presence
Once you have finished tweaking your site to perfectly
match your mission statement and to look every bit as professional as your top
competition, the next thing you need to do is to do the same for your social
media accounts.
Set up accounts with Twitter, with Facebook and with
Instagram. Consider others too such as Google+ and YouTube. Make sure that on
each of these channels, you are using the precise same logo and name and
keeping your brand completely consistent. You want to make your brand everywhere and communicate a very clear
and singular message.
You can then start to install plugins. We’ve listed
lots of these in the main ebook but they will essentially fall into some basic
categories. Some plugins will help to improve the function of your site and its
marketability – things like SEO plugins and speed optimization plugins. Of
course these are very important for building a site with the potential to go
massive.
But the others will be things that help improve the
experience for your visitors and change the look of your site. Many of these
will be widgets – small ‘apps’ that run in the sidebars of your site and do
things like showing off your social media accounts. That can be a very powerful
tool because it ensures that people see the rest of your online presence the
minute they land on your site, giving them more ways to contact you and to stay
in touch.
Once all this is done, then you have a site that is
ready and waiting to be taken to the next level. All that’s left is to start
filling it with meaningful content and marketing it. Which, to be fair, is the
hard part!
