Blogs and social media accounts are two complementary ways for influencers to grow audiences and increase revenue. Blog posts can be shared as content across social media channels and social media channels can drive new visitors to your blog. And it’s on your blog’s website where you have the freedom to make more money from merchandising, advertising, affiliate commissions, membership content and so forth. So, if you have something you want to blog about and want to begin your journey as an influencer, here’s how to get started.
1. Identify your niche
Before you begin setting up your blog, you’ll need a clear idea of what it is that you want to blog about. Blogging is all about creating a brand that audiences identify with, by choosing your blog’s subject areas before you get started, you can ensure that the blog’s name and design match the brand you want to establish.
With so many blogs around these days, experts will tell you that success lies in finding the right niche to create content about. You can create content on niche subjects, for niche audiences or even for niche areas, like local towns. By choosing a specific niche, competition will be smaller, giving you greater chance to get a foothold on the scene and develop a loyal following. Of course, if you are going to put your heart and soul into making it a success, you also need to blog about something you are passionate and knowledgeable about.
2. Name your brand
Easier said than done; some brands spend hundreds of thousands of pounds researching brand names. The main things to remember are that the name must reflect what the brand is about, it must be appealing to your audience, easy to remember and have longevity (what’s catchy and on-trend today might be a no-no a few years down the line). The other thing to remember is that you’ll want your website’s domain name, e.g., myblog.co.uk, to be the same as the name of the brand, so you’ll need to check that the domain is available and not registered by someone else before you choose it.
3. Find the right website platform and web host
Used to build 42% of the world’s websites, WordPress is the ultimate website creating software and is ideal for blogging and adding extra functionality, like merchandising stores. It’s free to use, makes website creation simple and there is a mountain of online information available to help you achieve everything you need with your site.
As for web hosting, the important thing here is to find a web host that provides a solution tailored to your needs. Our Content Creator Hosting plans, for example, provide everything a blogger needs to create a WordPress influencer blog. All the software is preinstalled, there is a wide range of tools to help you create and manage your site with ease and the servers are optimised to help your site perform faster and handle more visitors. These plans have been specifically tailored to help bloggers, influencers and content creators set their sites up quickly and take their ambitions further. You even get professional email addresses with your blog’s domain name.
4. Create your influencer blog
Once you’ve chosen your web host and hosting plan and registered your domain name, you can begin the process of creating the ideal website. With our Content Creator plans, this is easier than ever. You’ll find WordPress is installed and ready to go, together with some of the best responsive website themes and most useful plugins.
With thousands of free, professional themes to choose from, many that are easily customisable, finding the right design, layout and colour scheme to match your blog’s brand is easy. You can install a theme with one click and activate it with another and you’re ready to begin. Before adding content, you’ll need to think about any branding you want to display and create content categories and add them to the menus.
5. Start creating content
Once your website design has been completed to just how you want it, you’re ready to start adding your blog content. With WordPress, your blog content can include blog posts, images and video, and it’s easy to share these on your social media channels. Indeed, you can even get plugins that allow anyone who reads your blog to like or share it with their friends and followers on their own social media feeds.
The best advice we can give you when it comes to creating content is to make sure you post new things regularly. If you have a growing audience, they will keep wanting more. Posting once a week on the same day, or once a day at the same time, gives them something to look forward to. What’s more, if you are going away, you can schedule posts in advance and do them before you leave.
Do remember to give yourself time to do all the other things involved in running a blog, such as responding to comments from your followers, tracking your posts to see which subjects people enjoy the most and keeping your site safe by updating WordPress, themes and plugins when new versions are released. The Patchman Tool which comes included with our Content Creator plans makes keeping your site secure even easier, it will even automate some of the tasks if you don’t get round to them.
Conclusion
As you can see, setting up an influencer blog isn’t as difficult as most beginners imagine. Nor is it as expensive. With our Content Creator plans, everything you need is there for you, helping you set up quickly and providing you with a fast, reliable website that looks and performs exactly how you want it. What’s more, with 24/7 technical support included, we’re always there to help with any hosting or website issues you may have.
For more information, visit our Web Hosting page.