In the year 2022, blogging has not lost any of its significance. A total of about 409 million people use the internet, reading roughly 20 billion blog pages every month. Which is why over half of all marketers (53%) consider blogging to be their most important content marketing strategy. Furthermore, blog traffic has increased by 12% over the past 5 years.
The possibilities of blogging are enormous. Prolific bloggers can earn upwards of $30,000 monthly, just like Ryan Robinson, who writes a blog about blogging. Starting his blog as a side project in 2019, Adam Enfroy has already made $1.5 million in that time.
That makes you want to start a blog, right?
What are the first steps for starting a blog?
As for every startup, big or small, you must outline your project with clearly written goals, tasks, financial aspects, and all others. A project is a set of activities with a defined beginning and end that must be carried out to achieve a goal. A project is defined as “any temporary endeavor with a definite beginning and end” by the Project Management Institute (PMI). The number of people needed to oversee it depends on how complicated the task is.
Steps for starting a blog:
- To start a blog, you need to pick a name and register for blog hosting.
- WordPress is a great place to begin your blog.
- To make your blog unique, choose a minimal design.
- The essential blogging plugins are readership tracking and stats collection; some of the great plugins that you will also need are listed below, especially if you’re up for some serious guest posting business
- Create a blog that readers will enjoy by writing engaging content.
Being unique and building a unique brand requires many efforts. One of the steps that many people take when it comes to digital marketing is starting a blog. Very soon, they realize that there are much more things to consider and think about than they initially thought.
Let’s talk WordPress Now…
The most popular platform for running a blog in 2022 is WordPress. The popularity of this CMS comes from its vast library of plugins that you can use to improve your blog. This is why I will give you my must-have plugins list to run a successful blog.
WP Force SSL
Security is one of the top priorities when it comes to digitalization. Your blog shouldn’t be an exception. One of the standards nowadays is to have an SSL certificate. Such a certificate works with a secure protocol and encrypts the data communicated between the server and the user. In other words, it makes your blog less vulnerable.
This is also visible to the users since they will get a warning that your blog might not be safe if something is not set up correctly. To avoid such situations consider WP Force SSL, a plugin that does all of the SSL management for you!
It will regularly scan your content and give you a heads up if any of your pages are misconfigured, so you avoid already described situations. This plugin can control SSL certificates from a centralized dashboard if you run multiple websites. This is useful if you work in an agency or have multiple clients.
Simple Author Box
As we already mentioned being unique is difficult. This is why crediting authors and editors that put their efforts into producing good content is a great idea. Simple Author Box is a plugin that will do precisely that!
You don’t need to mess with any programming or markup languages! Simply activate the plugin, and instantly you will be able to display responsive and nice-looking author boxes with your content. If you like to customize everything to the last detail, this plugin will also serve the purpose since it comes with more than fifty options for customization.
If you often have guest authors, you know how registering them on your blog, explaining how to work in the WordPress environment, and all other necessary steps can be very tiring. With this plugin, you can credit the author in a few clicks without even registering them!
WP Links
Ranking your blog on the first page of the search is not easy. Experts in the field disagree on most things, but when it comes to link management, they all agree it’s crucial. WP Links is an all-in-one plugin with all the necessary tools for efficient link management.
You can control the tags, attributes, and visual aspects of your website’s external and internal links. If you want to warn users that they are leaving your website following an external link, that can be easily achieved with the exit confirmations feature.
If you want to check for broken links, the link checker feature will generate a report for you. The plugin will even offer the quickest way to fix the links, for example, broken pages. You can create general rules that apply to all the links in the same category. Maybe you want to customize links with the word ‘table’. With WP Links, all this is possible and easy!
Conclusion
After some time of running a blog, many owners get disappointed with something. Having so many variables makes getting lost in the always-growing competition easy. Consider some of the plugin recommendations from this list and think about the future and the time you will save.
Instead of checking every month if your links and pages are working correctly or spending time to register every single author who will write a blog post, you can dedicate time to planning, thinking, and bringing your business to another level.
