Things to do immediately when serious about blogging
You know those little things that are crucial when you start blogging seriously but you keep postponing them?
I did postpone a lot of things and I did this for a long time. Mostly because I thought some of these would be hard or complicated. Most of these, however, I solved with a simple tutorial or a little help.
There are some things that are crucial for having a serious blog like good content and marketing. This list contains all the things I wished I had done earlier because the are so important for blogging.
Self-hosting
I finally have this blog on a great hosting website. It might have been some hustle to get it from WordPress.com to wordpress.org but now that I have it finally moved I feel so much more free.
I already talked about this in my post 5 rookie blogging mistakes I made in my first month. I felt so frustrated when I could not move my blog.
So again, I really recommend going for a good host right away!
I still need to work on how this site looks but, for now, I really want to work on making my content shine!
Read here how I update old content to really make it shine and work for me.
Learn a little HTML for blogging
I knew a little bit about HTML before I started this blog but not nearly enough to make pretty texts. Learning HTML is very easy if you really just learn the basics like tags and some commands.
If you know how the basics work you can basically google the rest of the information you need anytime that you want to make something new.
There are several tutorials online and a lot of blog posts about what part is important to learn.
elleandcompanydesign.com // HTML & CSS
Setting up rich pins
I avoided this one so long because I thought it would be terribly difficult but only one tutorial later and I’m all set up. Now my Pinterest looks a lot more professional and I will be so much easier to find across the web.
I seriously recommend doing this because with a little bit of luck you will do this within 5 minutes and it makes all the difference.
freeborboleta.com // set up richpins for WordPress & Blogger
This tutorial is so great and easy to follow!
Adding plugins
If you are on WordPress then you have this great feature called plugins. These great little applications can make your blog shine.
I used to be so overwhelmed by all the choices. Last week however I just pulled up a post about the main plugins that every blog needs and went over them.
citygirldesign.com // 8 plugins for your blog
The plugins from that list + some I wanted to have for myself now make a great framework for my blog.
For example, Yoast SEO Is one of those plugins I wished I had used sooner. Now I can actually make posts with good SEO without guessing on how to do that.
Hover over pin buttons
Another one that I thought would be incredibly difficult but I really wanted to optimise my site for Pinterest and thus I needed hover over buttons on my images. (At least, that is what most Pinterest professionals say.)
Luckily you can do this very easily as well!
For example, WordPress has a simple plugin for this. All I had to do was instal it and then I had hover buttons on all my images. Why would you miss out on this if it is so easy?
No difficult coding needed.
If you want custom buttons you can always try that later and while you figure how to do that you can easily use the plugin.
Build an email list
On plugins, now that I can use those, I finally started an email list. I feel so stupid for starting this one so late but now I have a mail chimp account I finally started an email list.
When you want to be serious about blogging this is one of the first things people recommend so don’t wait too long. (like I did…)
I do still need to make the sign-up form more visible on my site but I think that having the option is already great.
I’m planning on starting with a monthly newsletter which will be sent on the first of the month. This way you will not get overwhelmed with emails and look out to hearing from me.
Overall I think that blogging is a journey and there is a lot that you will figure out on your own. But sometimes it is just good to get reminders or a little nudge to do certain things.
The best tip I have is to if you feel like things are complicated to just find a tutorial online and follow it. It will turn out so much easier than you might have expected.
When you have all these things set up you will feel already so much better. Not only will it look more professional, most of these also really help you function better
Let me know if I missed any important things and if you did any of these after reading this.
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Hi Sofie,
so happy to hear that you finally made the move to a self-hosted blog. I really believe blogging will be so much more free, like you already mentioned and you can actually promote your art and have so much more control. Congratulations 😀 Should be celebrated. I’m very happy for you and I think it’s awesome that you started your e-mail list building 🙂
Hi, Romica!
Thank you so much for your kind words! It was quite the hassle but indeed, my self-hosted blog is finally here. I’m so happy and excite to keep working on it and making it look even prettier hopefully.
I’m really hoping to include a gallery to promote my art on my blog in the future!
Thank you so much for subscribing to the list! The first newsletter should be with you on the first on February. I would love to hear if you like it 😀
~ Sofie
Thank you so much for sharing my Rich Pins tutorial 🙂
Absolutely no problem. It helped me a lot so I hope it will help others as well!
It was very easy to follow 🙂
~ Sofie
Thanks for this post Sofie. I don’t think I even knew what ‘rich pins’ were before by name :^) Also I just wanted to clarify something. About halfway through you mention plugins for wordpress. Do you mean wordpress.org or .com or both?
I heard years ago it was advantageous to go to .org but always stayed with wordpress.com. I might change that. thanks for the links you included too!
Hi, Kevin!
Thank you for reading and dropping by! Plugins are just for .org at the moment. You can read more about that here if you want https://en.support.wordpress.com/plugins/
It was actually one of the reasons that I switched to the self-hosted (.org) version. It gives you much more options to optimize your blog.
Hope this helps!
~ Sofie
Hello. I just found your blog today and already feel like I’ve learned so much. Thank you for that! I wondered something that I’ve noticed on a few blogs I follow that were wordpress.com and are now .org — there is no longer a “Like” button on the posts. Is that not an option anymore when you switch to .org? Or is it just disabled? I’m not sure how I feel about comments being the only way a reader/follower can show that they’ve read/enjoyed a post. I think I’d miss the “Like” button. Sorry for such a boring question! Your blog and your art are lovely.
Hi, Sandra!
Thank you so much for the lovely words! I think this is a great question. I did some research for you and I do think your like button disappear when you go from WordPress.com or .org. I never noticed it but I can find them anywhere in my settings. Luckily WordPress.org has all kind of plugins that can add features on your site.
I found these https://wordpress.org/plugins/likebtn-like-button/ which allows you to add all kinds and styles of like buttons (and you can turn “dislike”-buttons off) or this one https://wordpress.org/plugins/express-it/ which is simpler.
I hope this helps and if you have any other questions you can always ask me!
~ Sofie
Does it cost to go to wordpress.org? I’m on wordpress.com and I hate how I can’t have an email sign up on there, but I’m not ready to pay to host.
Hi Meagan,
Thank you for reading! My hosting service costs me 16,58 per 3 months but I started out on free hosting. Here you can see the host I am with http://www.hostinger.co.uk/. Their free hosting is great and they have an international network. There are probably other free hosts as well.
I only had to switch when my traffic grew too big for the free server. I hope that helps!
~ Sofie