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April 1, 2015

Before you start your blog

Have you ever see anyone without any experience in the food business say “I want to start a restaurant tomorrow” and by the next day this person rent a place and start putting some tables without any kind of planning.

This person might not know kind of food the restaurant is going to serve, where to find providers, how to market his new business, what kind of food people is looking for in that area and pretty much know nothing about all the situations he is going to face.

Do you think this person will succeed?

Probably not and all the time and money this person invested in the project will be lose!

Well, blogging is just like open a new business you invest time and money and if you don’t know what are you doing your blog will part one more abandoned blog in a few weeks or months.

I have seen this situation many times, and being honest with you I did the same back on my “beginner” days, I am not proud of it but I learned my lesson the hard way. Today I want to share with you some of the most important concepts and things that you need to think about before you start your blog, so you don’t do the same errors.

Work Freedom

Blogging from our hotel room in Seattle

Planning is the key

Plannig-like-a-bossThat been said, before you start your blog is critical to define your blog, identify your target audience and competition. By doing this you will get a better view of the segment of the internet that you will be interacting with.

It doesn’t matter what kind of blog you want to start, in blogging basic concepts apply for all niches, of course you can always get more in detail but it will depend of your niche and how specific it will be.

The internet is always changing and we see new things every day, it is very important to keep that on mind and never trust just in one element or source.The next group of questions and explanations will help you to understand how to set up a plan for you blog:

Defining your blog

1) What your blog is going to be about?

-Finding a answer for this question it might look simple, you can perfectly say “My blog is going to be about traveling” or “food” or any subject you want to choose. But be careful when defining your blog subject, some of these could be very diverse and hard to cover.

I would recommend you to be more specific when you define your blog and choose what you know the best, for example if you are a “senior traveler” you should focus on traveling for senior it will give you a more specific audience and also it will give you more opportunities to become an authority site due to the fact that the competition between “travel” and “travel for seniors” is smaller.

2) Do you have enough knowledge and passion about you are going to blog about?

– Just because you like something it doesn’t mean that you know too much about it, just like I mention on the previous point focus on something that you are passion about it. I can guarantee you that no body knows everything about the subject of their blogs, but the passion and discipline they have with their sites make them to keep researching and keep adding more and more useful information to their blogs.

Perfect now that you know what are you going to blog about and you know you can do it, it’s time to move to next step.

Audience

1) How are you going to write for?

Once you know what you are going to blog about it is time to identity how are you going to write for, making a list of the different audiences you want to reach will give you a very good guide of the direction of the blog.

For example if you want to start a “Caribbean Food” your target audience will be:

-People who like Caribbean Food

-People who wants to learn how to cook Caribbean Food

-People how wants to find out where they can get Caribbean Food.

It doesn’t matter what is your blog subject it is crucial to identify your target audience.

2) Understand your audience and give them what they are looking for.

Here is when blogging start getting interesting, you will need to search where you target audience “live” in the internet, read what they talk about, their questions, the tone of voice the use and what is popular and give them the best you can.

This is why it is very important that you have the passion and the knowledge about what you are blogging, the best way to earn readers is by writing quality content that will cover their needs.

On Mytanfeet my audience are people that are looking to travel mostly to Costa Rica and want to save money while they get the best of every destination. The way how I give them what they want is by writing in detail guides and easy to understand information about the country.

Competition

Now days there are so many new blogs every day on every single niche that I think it will be very hard to a niche that you could be the first to talk about, some people think that the biggest the competition the harder is to succeed. I think that every one has some special to contribute and that creative reaches new limits every day.

In our case I have no idea how many travel bloggers are out there, maybe a million or more honestly I have no clue but without “competition” our learning process would’ve very slow and will never be in the position we are right now.

1) Identify your competition.

You can do a simple Google search and make a list of Blogs that are in the same niche and write for the same kind of audience you are looking for. Take a deeper look of their social media channels and check their stats, you can look for Alexa Rank, Domain Authority, SEM Rush, Google Page Rank etc.

Once you have done this pick up some of them and look how the present the information, the voice the use, the quality of their articles, how much impact his blog have on the niche. This will give you a great idea of what is working and what is not.

2) Actually they are not 100% your competition.

You can do more than learn from your competitors, in the internet is very common that people from the same niche mention each other and sometimes they even work together in some projects. So it is very important to establish a business relationship with your competition, they have been in the internet for more time than you are they might help you in your growing process.

Conclusion

By doing a plan before you start your blog and looking on the internet what are you going to face will give a huge advantage. Many people just start a blog without knowing how they are going to write for and how they are going to find their audience or competition.

This is just a very short introduction of some of the many things that blogging involves but if you feel ready to start a blog and start living the blogging life, I invite you to go visit and read The complete guide step by step to start your blog

Yeison Kim

I am a Costa Rican travel blogger on a journey to create a digital nomad lifestyle through internet marketing and building my online business.

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