Are you thinking of starting a blog?

Then this post is for you.

There’s a lot of noise on the internet. If you type in Google ‘How to Blog’, you will get millions of articles, which is frankly overwhelming.

So I wrote this article to show you the 5 most important things you need to consider before you start blogging.

Here are 5 things to consider:

Your niche (your topic)
Your tribe (your target person/audience)
Blogging platform (WordPress or Blogger?)
Your end goal (what does success mean to you?)
Your networks (your mentor/peers)

Are you thinking of starting a blog? I have designed a short mini-course to talk you through how to start a blog, from the best blogging platform to choose, to how to design your blog. Click here to sign up.

Your Niche (your topic)

The Urban Dictionary (lol) defines your niche as a “position or activity that particularly suits somebody’s talents and personality or that somebody can make his or her own”. For example, she carved out her own niche in the industry”.

I love this definition because your niche is really about you at the end of the day. Why would you want to start a blog about something you don’t care about?

I started a blog about a year ago on “How to grow your hair”. Even though the blog did incredibly well and I was ranking on Google for the term “Hair Growth”. I decided to quit that blog because I wasn’t really interested in blogging about the hair industry. I started that blog because it was a trending topic but eventually I realised I didn’t have the desire to take the blog to the next level.

If Oprah or Forbes were to interview you in the next 3-5 years. What would you like them to interview you on?

For me, it would be on empowerment, passion and motivating others to success, which is my niche “showing people how to profit from their passion”.

To find your niche ask yourself:

Identify the talents and skills you’re good at
Out of the talents and skills, you have listed, what do you enjoy doing the most?
Of those talents and skills you enjoy, what do people need?
From the above needs, what will people pay big money for?

So what are the benefits of blogging about a topic you are interested in?

Makes you more creative
Makes you more fulfilled
You genuinely care about your audience
You want to solve your audiences’ problems, which creates revenue in the long term
You see your audience as people first and not as readers or subscribers
You appeal to your readers’ emotions because you know how they think

Your tribe (research your audience)

So now you know have an idea of the niche you want to pick. So who’s your target person?

A wise woman once said to me. Marketing is not appealing to lots of people, it is appealing to ‘one person many times’.

So who’s your target person?

Where do they hang out?
What problems are they having in their lives?
How can you help them?
How old are they?
Do they have any children?
Are they single or married?
How much do they earn?
What social networks do they use?
Are they on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube or Periscope?

I remember when I launched my hair blog a year ago; I got 1,000 blog hits within the first month of launching it.

I knew my audience spent a lot of time on Instagram so I decided to set up an Instagram page. I made up to $1,000 by selling a popular hair product on Instagram and then I created my own hair product.

To find out where your target person/audience hangs you need to do some research. But to do your research you need to find know who you want to target.

Here’s a detailed post on Social Media Examiner on how to research your audience.

Which blogging platform should you go for?

The blogging platform you choose is incredibly important; it will either hinder the success of your blog or help you to easily build a global brand.

I have started 7 blogs in the past; some were successful whereas some were an epic failure. When I say epic, I mean EPIC lol.

Tumblr – I started my first fashion blog on Tumblr. It was a disaster because I realised I knew nothing about Fashion. Secondly, Tumblr wasn’t the right platform for me because Tumblr followers are more interested in posts that are image driven than written posts.

Blogger – This was a very popular blogging platform 8 years ago but in 2016 we have moved on lol. We’re on to the big guys like WordPress and Square Space. Another reason not to go with Blogger, which is owned by Google, is the platform is massively out of the date. It looks like something that was designed in the 1970’s. And Yes, I am the blog police lol.

SquareSpace is a great platform especially for the creative industry; photographers, models, fashion bloggers and so on.

But… WordPress is a beast and my personal favourite. It is the most flexible platform in the world. Nothing, I repeat, nothing in this present day and age beats WordPress.

In fact, 27% of all websites in the world are powered by WordPress. It can literally do anything you want it to do. From setting up your ecommerce website to setting up a fashion blog or creating a membership site; WordPress can do the trick.

wordpress-powers-27-of-the-internet — Market share of content marketing systems – As seen on Torquemag.io

The most important thing you need to know with regards to WordPress is, there’s WordPress.com and there’s WordPress.org.

You need to start your blog on WordPress.org. To do this you need to first get a hosting provider like Web Hosting Hub or Bluehost, then download WordPress through your hosting platform, choose a theme then start blogging or get a web designer to create your blog for you and let them know you want to use WordPress.

Your end goal! (What does success mean to you?)

You need to know why you want to start your blog and you need to visualise the end goal.

The first thing you need to do is define what success means to you. But you should do this both for yourself and for your audience.

This is what success means to me:

End goal for me

To be a motivational speaker
To be interviewed on the radio about turning my blog into a global brand
To become a full-time blogger and kick the 9-5 hustle to the curb
To have enough income to buy my home without a mortgage
To simply do what I love
To travel around the world and blog at the same time
To do what I was called to do
To make money from my passion

End goal for my audience

To inspire my audience to start a passion led blog
To motivate my audience to make money from their blog
To empower my audience to turn their blogs into global brands
To build a community of women that are world changers and are living purpose-driven lives

Once you decide what success means to you it’s easier to achieve. If you don’t have a strong why or an end goal. You will give up at some point because blogging is a job. It’s something you have to take seriously and commit to in other to be successful.

I really believe that that my blog and my readers will take me further in life than any job, I will ever do.

Don’t believe me?

I worked in Marketing for 6 years and throughout those years all I got to do was push out emails anonymously. I felt empty inside, I felt that I was promoting things I didn’t care about and on top of that I was stressed and was falling into depression, day by day.

Within 6 weeks of launching empowee, I was invited to speak on a panel at Social Media Week – the coolest event ever for Tech and Marketing heads.

Within 1 month of launching another blog (not empowee), I was invited to a radio show to talk about marketing and I also got an opportunity to speak about entrepreneurship on TV.

For this to happen in my career, I would need to be the Head of Marketing or a Marketing Director, which frankly isn’t where I want to be in the next 5 years.

How will you ever be the rockstar you were born to be if you don’t start the blog that you have an interest in and map out your end goal?

5. Your Networks (Mentors/Peers)

If you want to run a successful blog you are going to need to build and leverage on your networks both offline and online.

Your community are your supporters; this could be a mentor or a group of people who are within the same niche as you.

When I started my hair blog, I had a friend who was a hair blogger and was very successful at it. I was so inspired by her success that the first post on my blog was about her. Eventually, I started getting a lot of visitors on by blog because they were searching for her blog on Google and my blog would pop up (that’s SEO in action).

An African Proverb, goes like this “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far together”.

Blogging can be very difficult if you don’t have a support group or a mentor because you will face difficulties.

I suggest you get a mentor
Network with bloggers in the same niche as you
Go to events to network with other bloggers
Look for someone who inspires you and has achieved the level of success you want to achieve

In Summary, here’s a recap of 5 things you need to consider before you start your blog:

Your niche (your topic)
Your tribe (your target person/audience)
Blogging platform (WordPress or Blogger?)
Your end goal (what does success mean to you?)
Your networks (your mentor/peers)

Are you planning to start a blog or do you have currently run a blog? Feel free to comment below if this post has helped you at all or you have something to share.

5 things to think about before you start a blog

Here are 5 things to consider: