5 Favorite Tools for Starting a Successful Blog
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After over 8 million views, we want to share our 5 favorite tools for starting a blog! When we first started, we had no clue about how to get started or grow our audience.
Fast forward to now, and I am so amazed by how powerful a blog can be in connecting with your ideal client and growing your business, brand, and income online.
I wanted to provide you with my 5 favorite tools for starting a blog to help you avoid any pot holes I may have hit along the way.
5 Things You Need When Starting a Blog
1. Domain – (www.yourname.com)
Your domain will be the beginning of your brand. We suggest using your name because it’s easy to remember and allows you to talk about what you are passionate about. It also builds your creditability versus something fun and cutesy as the domain name. If your name is common consider adding an adjective before or a noun after your name. If your name is hard to spell, could you use your first or last name? You can look at GoDaddy.com for name possibilities or check out Bluehost below because they give you one for free if they are your host.
2. A Great Host
Your host is where your beautiful blog will sit online. Think about your domain as your car’s name like BMW and your host as it’s parking spot. Your host is your parking spot online. We love Bluehost for starting a blog. It’s simple to use, has great tutorial videos, and is more reliable that other smaller hosts like FatCow.com.
Bluehost also gives you a domain for free when you use them as your host!
3. Wordpress.org
We go into a lot of detail why Wordpress.org is the best for an online business in Blogger vs Wordpress, but to summarize Wordpress allows for the max customization when starting a blog. You also own all of your content unlike Blogger which is a necessity when you’re starting a blog.
4. A StudioPress Theme
Your blog’s theme is it’s layout or what it looks like. This is where you can get creative and you can showcase your brand in a professional way. We love StudioPress because their layouts are customizable, made by creditable programmers, and so simple to use. When buying a theme, you always want to choose someone or a company that has great reviews and is a secure site. StudioPress has both and so many mobile-responsive themes to choose from!
You will want to chose a theme you think will showcase your personality, brand and content well. Another thing to consider is the growing numbers of tablet and mobile traffic – choosing a mobile responsive theme will help you readers navigate your site and also help your site rank higher on Google!
5. Our Start a Blog Free Series
We can tell you our favorite products all day long, but starting a blog takes time and effort. Our Start a Blog Guide walks you through each and every step of blogging.
We walk you through choosing a domain name and Bluehost, picking a free or paid theme, and how to organize your blog to help you lay a solid foundation when starting your blog.
Then, we dig in deep to how to create killer content that shows up on Google and how to attract your ideal client to you even while you sleep.
