1. Pick a platform to host it.
Quickly.
In an ideal world, your blog would live on a website built on your own domain – a “home” you’ll forever own.
But don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
If you’re not able to easily set up your own website, it’s fine to start blogging on another platform.
Do whatever makes it easiest for you to start publishing – you can always move your writing to a different platform down the road with relative ease.
Aside from your own website powered by something like WordPress or Squarespace, you could choose a social platform like LinkedIn or a newsletter platform like Kit, Substack, or Beehiv as your blog platform.
You’re ultimately going to want to distribute your posts through social and newsletter channels anyway (and vice versa), so don’t agonize too much about where to start it.
Speaking of which…
2. Start an email list.
The days of publishing a blog post on the internet and it being magically discovered through search engines are over.
You need to build a direct connection with your readers so you can alert them to new posts and the best way to do that is through an email list.
This means from Day 1 you need to have a way for someone who reads your blog post to join your email list.
This isn’t optional.
It’s not a nice-to-have.
It’s the single most important element of your blog.
Every reader of every post is an opportunity to grow your audience and you want to capture as many of them as possible by making it easy – and obvious – that they should join your email list/newsletter.
Don’t get bogged down in the technical details here.
Pick an email service provider to manage your list (I use and recommend Kit), put signup forms on your website, incorporate calls to action for people to subscribe within your blog post itself, and make growing your list a main goal of your blog.
Readers…become subscribers…who become clients.
Here’s how James Clear did it when he first started blogging (before he became a bestselling author).
3. Publish a blog post every day for a week.
You don’t have to be a daily blogger.
But…
It’s a great idea to do it for the first week of your blog.
They don’t have to be long posts, they don’t have to be perfect posts, and you don’t even have to share them (though I recommend you do).
You just have to publish something every day for a week – even if it’s only a couple paragraphs.
A bunch of good things will happen when you do this:
• You’ll experience what it feels like to publish your thoughts, get an endorphin rush from doing so, start to overcome any fear or hesitation you have, and start to shift your identity into seeing yourself as a person who blogs – all of which will help you stick with it moving forward.
• Forcing yourself to publish every day also helps you let go of perfectionist tendencies you may have that can hold you back. You’ll start to think more like Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels who famously said, “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready, it goes on because it’s 11:30 pm on Saturday night.”
• You may be surprised by the reaction you get. Even a single person telling you they found something you wrote helpful can give you a huge boost of energy to continue to post consistently.
• Your blog will go from “a thing you want to do” to “a thing you are doing.”
• You’ll discover what happens when you start.
4. Watch my Content Strategy Clarifier skill session.
It’s a one-hour video presentation where I show you how to come up with 9 sentences that can guide every blog post you create.
Join my Clients From Content program here to get immediate access to it along with 20+ other sessions to help you get more clients for just $99.