Before you start a blog, you must take a look at yourself and ask, “can I make this commitment?” This is important, because if you wish to take on a role where you have a constant flow of readers, you need to make the commitment to your audience. If you have the ability to stay loyal to your readers, and post constantly, there’s a good chance you’re ratings will go through the roof; this is the first step to having a successful, popular, blog.
I’m here to help you begin your blog, give you little pointers, and take some advertising tricks from my blog to help you publicize and grow popular in a matter of weeks. I can simply push you in the right direction, the rest it all up to you.
Let’s go into some basics first, sign up for an account at WordPress.com, and fill in your personal information. Don’t leave things out, make it sound professional, add your picture, change your domain name to something easy to type, and do most of this under personal settings under the tab labeled “Users.”
The, “My profile,” tab will show up under author information boxes after your posts and on your “Author” widget when its clicked, so make it sound professional, go ahead, talk in the first person!
For design and set up of your site, go to “Appearance” and select your page theme, as well as your featured image, and move up in the world by toggling settings under each tab, they’re somewhat self-explanatory. Theme is a very important setting to consider; you have to analyze what type of content you are to have in your website, and how to best show case it, so go ahead and try a few on for size. (See the image below to understand your dashboard better.)
I found editing my background to be a lot of fun. I went into google and typed in, “black and white pattern,” and found an image of a circular star. There’s an option in backgrounds that lets you upload images and have them repeat behind your blog. If you select something that’s a pattern of sorts, you’re well on your way to make your website look more professional! I chose a small thumbnail like this –> 
When you are through, you end up with a flowing background that looks both intriguing and advanced for a user of WordPress; it’s an easy attention-grabber. Remember, the more professional-looking a blog is, the more inclined readers are to keep reading.
My site looks like this—->
Raven's Blog Site.
Now, there are many aspects to WordPress.com that take a few weeks if not months to understand (I am still learning), but I’ve walked you through set-up at a basic level so now, you need to add content. Content is the most important point of WordPress; the more content, the more readers you are inclined to have. How, you might ask? Through categorization and tags. These options allow your readers to search for you based on your content…so have at it, give your article 3 or more categories and at least 10 tags, and you’ll see the results!
Another “key” to WordPress that will help you publicize and strategize for your audience are your blog stats. Here, you can track hits a day, a week, a month, you can see where your viewers come from, and you can see if you’ve been searched on major search engine sites. This allows you to strategize as if you would in marketing and advertising, and it’s completely addicting, trust me.
How might you strategize? Post a link of your blog on your facebook as your status, then post it on a few friends’ pages…get annoying, because most people only see the news feed, and you may feel like you’re attacking your audience, you’re really just making sure that it hits the news feed as much as possible! After facebook, you can link your wordpress to both facebook and twitter to send updates automatically, and there you have a few extra posts in there. WordPress.com will ask you if you wish to do this, and will link your profiles after they are authorized, so they do half the work for you!
Remember, post, post, post, re-post, as friends to re-post…and keep up with your content. You are well on your way to starting and keeping a popular blog, so have at it…visit wordpress and begin blogging right now! Go to http://WordPress.com, use this article to get you started, and contact me for any tips and pointers you may need along the way…i’m not far! I’m on wordpress.com at http://ravenbrockriede.wordpress.com
I look forward to reading your blogs, new bloggers, and have a BLAST!
Check out other works by this author on her blog: http://bit.ly/9NuIKD
just starting to incorporate some Facebook and Twitter with Wordpres. thank you for the brief to the point information!
no problem
just starting to incorporate some Facebook and Twitter with Wordpres. thank you for the brief to the point information!
+1
Thank you very much my friend, you are very kind in sharing this useful information with? others…. he details were such a blessing, thanks.