If you run a nail salon or sell nail products, starting a blog is a great way to build your brand’s online presence and reach a much wider audience. According to various statistics, blogs are excellent at generating web traffic, leads, and sales.
However, starting and running a successful niche blog may seem daunting at first. But as an experienced web developer and blogger myself, I’m here to tell you that blogging is not as hard as it looks.
Let me take you through six easy steps to starting a nail blog to show you how easy it is. Although I’m writing this for aspiring nail bloggers, the tips and steps discussed here can be applied to any kind of blog.
1) Get a blog name
In a competitive blogging niche, you need a name that really stands out. Your blog name becomes a second identity to your business; it should also be memorable and related to your brand. Here are a few easy ways to come up with a catchy and interesting blog name:
- Play around with multiple words to make one name.
- Borrow naming ideas from competitor blogs.
- Use name generator tools.
- Draw a name from your personal or business inspirations.
- Use your own name or business name.
- Mix in abbreviations and styles for sophistication.
2) Get a domain name
Many people confuse domain names for website or blog names. A domain name is an address or URL to a website or blog, something like “www.myblog.com.” Typical domain names consist of two parts: the top-level domain (TLD) represented by extensions .com, .biz, .info, etc., and the second-level domain (SLD), which is everything left of the extension.
Choose a domain name that’s easy to read, short, and, more importantly, derived from the blog’s name. You can buy a domain name from any Internet domain registrar or web hosting company such as Namecheap and Bluehost.
3) Get hosting
A hosting service puts your blog online for a small monthly or annual fee. Choose a hosting package that suits your blog’s requirements and price point. Ensure you have enough data storage if you intend to upload lots of multimedia content, robust security features, and a wide enough bandwidth to support your projected traffic.
Bluehost is one of the major players in the web hosting business. It’s a high-performance hosting platform with many additional perks for beginners, including a free website builder with over 1,000 templates, SSL certificates, and CDN acceleration.
4) Install WordPress
WordPress is by far the most popular web content management system (CMS) available today. According to W3Techs, nearly 40 percent of all websites run on WordPress. WordPress is easy to use, even for beginners and comes with a host of essential web features such as built-in responsiveness, free themes and templates, SEO elements, and extendable functionalities. In short, WordPress is a well-rounded starter kit for creating a blog.
Here is a step-by-step guide to installing WordPress.
5) Write your first blog post
If your domain is live and you’ve already configured WordPress, you can go ahead and write your first blog post. The first blog post should be an introduction or a readers’ welcome post. Tell the readers who you are, what you’ll be blogging about, how they can get involved, and what they should expect in upcoming posts. This is your chance to make a first impression and build a connection with your audience by touching on the relatable human side of your business or blog.
From there, you can start populating your blog with engaging posts about exciting topics on nails and nail products. Remember to enrich your posts with captivating images, gifs, videos, and animations where possible or appropriate. Also, provide means to interact with readers, for instance, through comments, Q&As, forums, or live chat.
6) Share posts on social media
It’s one thing to start a blog, and it’s another to build a following. Every blog obviously needs readers, and the least expensive and easiest way to find them is through social media. Share your posts on social media channels and other online social communities to bring in traffic to your blog. You can even take this a step further by promoting your social media shares to reach more target readers.
There you go. This is how you start a nail blog and indeed any other type of blog. I know I’ve oversimplified the explanations and left out the technical bits, but this guide should give a wholesome idea of what you have to do. It doesn’t take much to start a blog, so why not give it a go?