How to Start a Great Blog

I am the least tech savvy person you will ever meet. What I lack in knowledge though I make up for in effort. I had one awesome mentor early on though who introduced me to Bluehost, a great company that does it all for you. If you get your blog launched with a company like Bluehost, you just have to put your own personality into it and follow the step-by-step instructions!

Five Steps to Starting a Blog:

Choose a domain and host.
Pick a platform.
Pick a theme.
Personalize your theme to match your brand and voice.
Figure out what plugins will help optimize your blog.
Write awesome content that helps people live happier healthier lives in some way!

Please Note: Fitness Post Modern’s blog is hosted by Bluehost and powered by Studiopress themes. For only $3.95 a month, can help you set up and host your blog. FPM will receive a small affiliate fee for all users who sign up using these links. It’s worth mentioning though that FPM only endorses companies whose products we use and wholeheartedly believe in. FPM has been using both Bluehost and Studiopress since 2011 and we are continually impressed by their reliability, ingenuity, customer service, and value.

How to Launch Your Own Blog

Like I mentioned earlier, I had no clue at all how to make a blog before I started this journey. I also felt overwhelmed by the fact that there were so many other fitness and healthy lifestyle websites out there, but my passion is helping others live healthier, happier lives, and I’ve always dreamed of being a writer. Like any other journey though, it’s just one step at a time. Even though it seems like a mountain of tasks to accomplish, just take it one step at a time. Gradually things such as hosts, domains, affiliates, and eventually will all make sense and become easier. It took me years to figure all this out but I’ve tried my best to compile that advice into the following paragraphs in hopes of drastically shortening your learning curve as compared to mine!

Domain and Hosting. I was lucky in the beginning though I did have a fitness client friend who helped me get started. I wrote her workouts and taught her how to lift and she helped me get started with Bluehost, which was a solid push in the right direction. I created a Bluehost login, then used their “domain” search tools to identify a combination of words that were available. A domain is simply the web address, and it can be a tricky process, which is why you definitely want to go with a trustworthy and reliable company. Once you’ve found a domain, then you need a host, which is basically the place you park your domain as well as the anchor in the internet world for linking you to your website. Bluehost is also extremely helpful, with live chat, phone support connected to real live people, and video tutorials and step-by-step instructions to get you going.
Blogging Platforms. Wordpress is the best. I know there are other fish in the sea, but WordPress is the one and only blogging platform I’ve ever loved. It’s incredibly user friendly and interfaces well with pretty much everything. WordPress powers so many amazing websites, everything from major news networks to millions of personal blogs. I highly recommend you use WordPress as your platform. Enough said.
Theme. The theme is the personality of your blog. There are thousands of themes available that suit every function and fashion you can imagine. Themes are relatively inexpensive for all the benefits they provide, including making it hella easier to get you from set up to blogging your heart out. There are two components to the theme – the framework and the child theme.
- Framework provides structure for your blog. It contains all of the features necessary to keep your site safe, help it gain an audience, and keep the back office stuff organized and accessible to you. I use the Genesis theme from Studiopress.
- Child theme on the other hand, is the looks of your website. Layout, colors, picture arrangement. The child theme is the outward appearance of your blog. FPM is powered by the Daily Dish Pro theme, which can be found in the Genesis suite at Studiopress (also an affiliate I know and trust and will make a tiny commission from if you click through and purchase).
Personalize. Once you have installed a Framework and Theme, now you can tinker with all the dashboard to make everything fit the personality of your blog. This includes things like picking fonts, colors, layouts, menus, and widgets. A widget is basically just a function of some sort. For example, the widgets I use on FPM are those sections you see on the right side of my pages. I have a contact widget, a “keyword” widget, and some text widgets into which I copy/paste my affiliate links. You can decide to use all of these or none of these or find completely different widgets that suit your blog, brand, or audience.
Plug-Ins. I use just a few plug-ins so far and the most important ones to me are the Google Analytics for Word Press as well as the Jetpack. Through Jetpack, I’m able to connect with my other social media accounts such as LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, etc. This feature is awesome because with one click to publish a post, it goes automatically onto my other feeds, which saves me a ton of time, but helps me expand my reach. If all of marketing is a numbers game, it’s a no brainer to want to install features in your website that help you reach more people with less time invested!
Write, Post, and Tag! Once you get through steps 1 – 5, it’s just a matter of creating great content to inspire and entertain your audience. There are no “magic numbers” as to how many times you should post per week. Some bloggers, such as Seth Godin, post nearly every day, while others post once per week. It’s up to you! The last step is promoting your posts and website. Read a few articles about SEO and make sure you know the basics of how that works so you help as many people as possible find your content through search engines or social media!

I hope this page helped you figure out some of the most important steps to taking your vision from dream to reality. Setting up a blog can seem daunting at first, but with the right host, platform, and theme, it’s totally doable. Thank you for taking the time to read my page about starting a blog!