Out of the 1.7 million websites that exist on the world wide web, it’s estimated that there are 600 million blogs.
Remember in the 90s, when blogs were used as personal diaries? Thirty years later, they are commonly used as a platform for monetizing your ideas and gaining influence.
For small businesses, it’s a great idea to start your own blog. Blogging can improve your SEO, develop relationships with potential and existing customers, provide value to your readers, and establish your business’ authority online.
At HIPB2B, we like to write and publish our own blog posts on a biweekly basis. This how-to guide highlights our very own process of blogging and can help you get started on blogging yourself.
1. Choose a topic to write about
While this is an obvious step, it’s also the most crucial. Depending on your field of expertise, it’s important to choose a relevant topic to write about. At HIPB2B, we cover everything from B2B, email, content marketing, and web design, as well as the occasional topical post.
Your blog visitors will read your content and expect similar information from you in the future. Choose wisely and get your visitors to keep coming back for more.
2. Do the research
This is another crucial step in the blogging process. You want to make sure you’re supplying the most accurate and up-to-date information that’s out there to your visitors. Utilize reputable webpages, books, and peers and write that information down. Personally, I like to write down every source and link I use on a separate “References” page so I can recall information easily. This is one of the APA practices most of us used in grade school.
3. Develop an outline
Along with my “References” page, I like to utilize outlines when I’m writing blog posts. This keeps both my information and my thought process written down in an organized manner. Depending on where I am in my outline process, I either start my outline by creating a numbered list or using bullets points.
Just in case you’ve forgotten what an outline consists of, check out the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue.
4. Fill in the outline
As an example, in this blog post, I started my outline with a numbered list, as this is a how-to guide and there is a specific order in which I’d like things to be done. I listed out each step in numeric order, with supporting details under each step in their own bullet points. These supporting details came from my research and reinforce each idea.
It’s very important to fact-check every bit of research you add to your posts. You don’t want to supply false or misleading information to your visitors. You also don’t want one of those visitors to comment and point out your poor research skills.
While you’re writing your post, you can take the opportunity to boost your SEO. The easiest ways to do this are by supplying outbound links (and inbound links if relevant) and appropriate keywords (but try to avoid keyword stuffing). Search engines value these two details because it signals to them that your post is, in fact, about whatever topic you’re writing about.
If your blog is hosted on WordPress, you can use the nifty Yoast tool. Yoast is an SEO plugin for WordPress that help your posts rank higher in search engines.
5. Gather visual content
We’ve talked several times before about how vital visual content is.
Some stats to convince you:
- 65% of us are visual learners
- Colored visuals increase people’s desire to read content by 80%
- 93% of all communication is visual
- Posts with images produce 180% more engagement
Including content such as infographics, charts, or videos are the most informative kinds of visual content to provide. You can also include GIFs or images to grab the attention of your visitors.
6. Put a second set of eyes on your post before publishing
Proofreading is a good practice in order to assess the consistency and accuracy of your work. Find someone that you can trust with such a task. You can also use a program like Grammarly, which is a highly praised AI writing assistant.
7. Find a platform to publish on
There are several options when it comes to finding a platform to publish your work on. The most popular option is and has been WordPress. WordPress alone publishes 70 million posts each month. Tumblr is another option and they’re home to about 450 million blogs. For a quick comparison, check out this in-depth post on BloggingWizard.
8. Share on social media
After you’ve chosen a platform to publish on and have finally hit “Publish”, take the time to share all of your hard yet informative work. If you already have a social media presence, start there. But be sure to hit all of the major social media platforms for better reach.
9. Write more blog posts!
Once you’ve written and published your first blog post, keep going! Build an online presence for yourself and share all of the knowledge and expertise you’ve got. Become your own boss, if you so choose. There are plenty of ways to monetize blogs nowadays, whether it’s with the use of ads, writing your own ebook, or by becoming an affiliate or influencer.
Happy writing!
- Have you written a blog post before?
- What do you find to be the most challenging about blogging?
- Where do you see blogging in 5, 10, 15 years?
