Getting Started – Building a Strong Foundation for your Blog

If you are starting to take yourself quite seriously as a blogger, you might want to ensure that you are going to keep that blog running for a long time. That is something that you can work on easily enough, but you do need to first have a good idea of how to actually do that, and it is something that can change over time. However, there are some tried and tested ways in which you can establish a strong and secure future for your blog, and in this post, I am going to look at some of the best of them, things that you might want to consider. 

Define Your Content

In my line of work (marketing) we have the expression “content is king” and what you write about and how you express yourself along with your branding (listed below) is the most critical aspect to blogging. As a blogger, you are providing some kind of value to your readers so it is important for you to figure out what that is and be consistent about it. Have a point a view, your own perspective so that you can differentiate yourself from everyone else out there.

Branding

If you want as many people as possible to read your blog, then you need to make sure that you are branding it effectively. Good branding is the kind of thing that can make all the difference in the world, and yet it can be so hard to make sure that you get it right. To brand your blog effectively, you should make sure that you are going to have a strong sense of what you want it to look like, what kind of audience you think you are going to keep – and to make sure that you keep it consistent. Ultimately, a brand is only as strong as it is consistent, so that is something that is going to prove especially important along the road towards carving out a strong future for your blog.

Keeping The Site Secure

You have to also spend some time and effort on ensuring that the website the blog is hosted on is secure. If there are any real security issues there, it can mean that you struggle to keep your blog up and running at all. This becomes more of an issue the more popular your blog becomes, of course, as you are more likely to become the target of specific attacks. However, it is something to be concerned with at all times, and there are a number of things you need to make sure you are doing in order to keep your blog’s website truly secure. You should also secure yourself and social media accounts attached to your blog with 2-factor authentification.

For one, make sure that you are aware of the basic things you can do at home to keep it secure, such as not giving out any details which might prove useful in the wrong hands. You can then, if you wish, outsource the bulk of the cybersecurity work to someone who knows what they are really doing, such as a cybersecurity engineer. [If I had to do my professional life all over again, I would get into cybersecurity it truly is the future – data breach anyone? It seems like I get a notice every week that something of mine (credit card, utility company, credit score company, you name) has been hacked. I looked into degrees for my niece and have seen really good both in the US and abroad like Norwich University. Seriously, if your child, friend's child, niece or nephew are wondering about a future career, this is it! Okay, off my soapbox!] As long as someone who knows their stuff is dealing with it, you shouldn’t have to worry too much – but this is essential if you want the blog to remain there, and so be successful in the future.

Growing Your Readership

It is obviously a centrally important thing to make sure that you grow your readership along the way, and the good news is that there are plenty of things you can do to make sure of that happening. It is a slow process, even at the best of times, but as long as you are moving in the right direction that is all that really matters. Growing your readership is something that you will find to be a joy, and you will enjoy that you are writing for more and more people all the time.

In particular, you should try to seek out partners in the world of blogging with whom you can share ideas and so on. You can benefit from each other’s readership by writing guest posts for each other and sharing links to each other’s blogs – that is something that is often likely to be particularly useful, and it is worth starting that process as soon as you possibly can. As long as you are growing your readership over time, you are doing what you should be doing to help keep your blog strong and ensure that it has a wonderful future, so this is absolutely essential to think about.

Blogging can be very overwhelming, but if you take the concepts in the post into consideration it will go a long way to allowing you to have a blog that is successful (You define your success!) and secure.

How about you? Have any additional recommendations for building a strong blog from scratch? Do share!

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