A blog is an incredibly creative thing to invest your time in, and the greatest thing about it is that it can also be profitable.

You don’t have to have a definitive reason to create one, but there are numerous concrete reasons – sharing your love of a book or a movie, tips and tricks about being a single parent, traveling, dancing, or simply having strong opinions which you’d like to share with the world.

Whichever it is, you should definitely do it – perhaps being a writer is something you can become very good at. However, first thing’s first – you should create a blog and you need to make sure that it is creative and engaging, so that your target audience develops an interest for it. The next five steps will do the trick here.

Be Thorough with the Steps

Creating a blog on WordPress is quite simple – you can’t really make a mistake, because the platform will lead you through it step by step. However, my suggestion is to take your time and avoid making a silly mistake.

Naturally, you should start by selecting your domain name, which is the longest step as far as I’m concerned, because you need to come up with something catchy and original that draws attention. When that’s done, you need to select a host appropriate for your needs – a package for beginners will do here, because you won’t need stronger support until your blog starts getting more visits.

The next thing to do is to select a theme for your blog which, obviously, needs to be in accordance with your topic. Themes add a nice layer of color to your blog, and I sincerely suggest you get one, purely for aesthetic reasons, to make it more amusing to readers.

Select a Topic

Getting your very first post out there may be the most challenging thing about starting a blog, especially if you’re an introvert by nature. However, if you pass this milestone, I promise it gets easier with the second one and the one after that. And the topic and the title around it actually plug the initial bridge between you and your readers.

So, now is the time to select your general topic and start working on your very first title. The secret to writing a successful blog post is in finding a fresh approach – you don’t have to invent something that has never been seen before in order to get some attention.

However, you do need to be creative and innovative with your writing, considering the fact that there’s probably a ton of blogs similar to yours. With that in mind, you need to develop a style that’s interesting and you can do so by expressing your sense of humor, giving a new perspective and a new point of view on a problem, or even being controversial.

In this age where everyone gives themselves the right to get offended because someone made a joke, controversy may be the most successful tool here and you should use it to your advantage. Although you need to be careful when talking about taboos and things others won’t like to hear, you can make a real difference if you approach them from a clever angle and use criticism and satire to make a real difference in the world.

Check and Double Check Your Data

When starting a blog, you need to have your reputation in mind. Once you complete your post and you think it’s ready for publishing, you should take just a couple of minutes to check your data because accuracy is one of the most powerful tools if you want your blog to become popular.

Just look at things from your own perspective – when you’re reading someone’s blog post that’s actually maintaining your attention and you encounter a piece of information that you know to be inaccurate, I’m sure your enthusiasm won’t be on such an enviable level and chances are you won’t be returning to that page.

You don’t want something as small as an incorrect claim to stop you from leading a successful blog before you even started. Therefore, my advice here is not to be lazy and do some proofreading and fact checking before you click the “publish” button.

Don’t Use Big Words

If people called you pretentious and pompous in the past, this is a thing you’d like to pay some attention to. If you plan on writing a blog that’s snobby, you will have a target audience but it would neither be clever nor wide – people don’t like to feel bad because of their lack of education or intelligence.

So, when you’re trying to make your point in your posts, make sure that you don’t exaggerate with words that no one really understands (ok, perhaps just a small percentage of world’s population will, but that’s it). This is one certain way to doom your blog to failure.

Therefore, instead of trying to look smart in front of people you don’t even know, tend to be concise and make sure that your posts have some kind of value so that your readers actually find them useful.

There’s an exception here – if you plan on creating a blog the purpose of which is to educate, using terms that are technical or which require a certain degree of education to understand is quite necessary. However, you can make it reader-friendly if you leave helpful further reading links or if you explain a meaning of a certain word before you start using it.

To SEO or Not to SEO

The fact is that your blog will be more successful if it’s launching is followed by an advertising campaign. Now, you don’t have to be a marketing expert in order to promote your work – my suggestion is to be active on your social platforms and share it with your friends and followers, for starters.

When it comes to the textual content, burdening yourself by trying to make your posts SEO friendly can drain the fun of this hobby right out. Nevertheless, you should be smart about it and treat this like if it were an investment into your future, which it kind of is, because it can become profitable for you.

So, a sort of balance needs to be made here – there are free SEO tools you can use to learn about the most popular keywords in the particular topic area you’d like to write about. Doing your research and including those keywords into your post will only take a couple of minutes and it’s worth it because it can bring new visitors who can decide to stick around.

Text Formatting as a Must

People who go online to read blog posts can be quite spoiled. I know this sounds a bit cruel, but it’s the truth – they are so used to reading various types of content that they don’t actually read a post until they determine that it’s worth their time.

Your job is to make every second they spend on your blog count and you should do so not only by releasing quality content, but also by making it easy to read. I’m sure that you yourself won’t spend a lot of time on a blog that shares dry content that consists out of long paragraphs – most people, myself included, get easily lost in those lines and that is when your interest drops down.

The sad truth is that no matter how great and informative a blog post is no one will read it unless you simplify it – and this isn’t difficult at all, actually. In order to make the text readable you need to emphasize certain parts that deserve to be accented by increasing their font size, and making them stand out by using a different color, for example.

Also, make sure that you use bulletins and numbering when necessary – it will make your posts transparent and easy to follow through. Naturally, if you’re writing a post that consists out of more than three hundred words or so, you should divide it into different sections by introducing subheadings.

Stick to Your Schedule

Publishing your very first post is always exciting and I’m sure you’ll do that quickly after you create a blog, but you need to be consistent with your posts. My sincere suggestion is to create a schedule and stick to it because it’s easy to get sidetracked. You can pick a day during the weak and create a post every Monday, for example.

Create Discussions

Readers visit blogs to discover something new, learn from others or enjoy a type of entertainment, but that’s not all they like doing – they also like to comment, share and participate in your work. Other than posting your usual posts, you should also communicate with your readers by creating discussions, asking for advice or opinions and thus enabling them to get in touch with you and engage.

Get Yourself Out There

The world has a craving for honesty and you shouldn’t hesitate from trying something new and getting yourself out there. The fact is that blogging isn’t for everyone – people can be mean and rude with their comments – but that happens when you start getting attention.

As your blog expands, you should develop a plan to keep it functional. When you become popular, it will be difficult for you to take care of your readers properly so that no one feels neglected, which is when you should consider outsourcing a part of your work.

Make Your Content Diverse

Another way to make your posts more interesting is to fill them with various types of content. Obviously, you can spice things up by uploading photos, but you should take your time when selecting them – make sure to pick out those photos that will additionally explain a certain part of your textual content and embellish its overall appearance.

Also, you shouldn’t hesitate from introducing animations, some music and videos to your posts and thus make the experience your readers go through when reading your blog even more exciting. Now, you should be careful not to exaggerate by throwing everything we mentioned to one post because the textual part, that’s actually your work won’t be visible, so tend to find a balance that works for you.

Creating posts which are creative and engaging takes time and effort. If you actually go through with the steps we mentioned, you’ll be able to write and publish a post that will grasp the attention of your readers because they will be able to recognize its quality.

There you have it – it’s quite simple to create a blog, but creating posts can be challenging and you need to stay determined. The only difficulty here is whether or not you’ll keep your focus and stay consistent with your posts. Good luck!