Flavio Copes - How to Start a Blog

Prologue

I tried to write this book a few times. Every time is the same: I write some parts of the thing I want to write about, then I lose myself. Who am I to write about this? Am I good enough? Will someone listen to me? And, should people really listen to me?

Every time I think the idea of writing about blogging is a great thing to do, yet I fail to do so.

This time, however, I made it because the fact you are reading this prologue means I succeeded in getting my thoughts in written form.

I think that a lot of people have the same problem with blogging, and you might be one of those people. I don't have any problem now with my blog and with my content creation, for various reasons I will explain in the book. But starting from scratch requires a huge amount of effort. Mostly mental effort, but still an effort.

This book is focused on how to create a blog, and if you have a blog already, how to make it more successful than it is now. Some things will be technical. Some things will not be technical at all, and those might be the most challenging ones.

The main goal of the book is to focus on the human side of things: you and your future audience.

Framing your blog for success

The internet is how people communicate and share information. We look for help. Maybe we try to find the perfect recipe for dinner or the best book we should read this month.

A blog is a tiny website, made by one or a handful of people, with the goal of creating information that can be beneficial to people.

On this blog, you will write posts. A post is a single page of the website containing some information.

The concept of blog I talk about in this book is not one of a diary, where you write everyday things as they happen. That is something you can definitely make, but it's not the thing I'll be talking about.

By blog, I mean a personal site, or a product/company site, where you regularly write interesting content that can be beneficial to other people.

People that will find the solution to their problem on your blog.

I want to highlight this point because it's central. The blog must be useful to other people. Without this fundamental concept, your blog has no reason to exist.

Why a blog does matter

Blogs are the fundamental building block of today's internet. Think about it. We have huge giant corporations that create walled gardens where people are constantly drawn to, like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter.

Those are places that are engineered to give you addiction and consume, debate, consume, debate, consume. And if you are in the lucky 1, you will be one of the stars of those walled gardens, and you will profit from other people consuming, debating, consuming, debating, consuming.

What are those people consuming? Their time.

With notable exceptions, most of the people create mostly useless content and consume useless content. Have you ever looked at the "Trending" tab on YouTube? It's full of garbage. There are notable exceptions, of course, but a blog is one of those rare places on the Internet where you can create something of value without making a giant corporation benefit from your work, and you are the owner of your little corner of the world.

I'll soon tell you more about the "own your platform" concept, but here's the gist: a blog matters because it's 100% yours.

Is blogging still relevant?

This is a legit question. Is blogging still relevant in today's world, dominated by social media and big platforms?

Can the underdog still find some space on the Internet? Don't we have too many sites already?

First, we'll never have too many sites. There's less than 1 person creating content for every 100 people. This is a rule for all media consumption: there are ~100 TV or radio stations in a country with 100 million people. Same for newspapers.

The same goes for the Internet. If you start creating, and you do your job well, eventually your content will surface and you will have success. Whatever success means to you.

This is possible with videos on YouTube, podcasts, and blogs of course.

So why should you start a blog instead of making videos? It's a choice. We can't all be good at making videos, and we can't all have a voice made for podcasts. We can't all be good at writing.

But if you happen to enjoy writing and you like the idea of having your own little corner on the Internet, then creating a blog might be what you are looking for.

Should I have a p ersonal blog or a
company/product blog?

If you are a freelancer, working solo, or you are a solopreneur, a company of one, you might have a tough decision ahead: should you create a personal blog or a company blog?

There's a big distinction in this. In my opinion, a personal blog is way better because companies and projects come and go. You might sell your company in 3 years.

Your personal brand, however, will stick with you wherever you go. The benefit I give to a personal brand is that you have the ability to experiment and pivot, if necessary. If you create a brand that's too tied to a product or area, you can't switch without changing the name and domain, so it can be very confusing to people and it's very hard to make it work nicely.

And most likely you'll have a hard time finding a good idea, at first, so its always good to have more than one option and not having to start from zero.

Why a blog and not videos or podcasts?

In the last few years, videos and podcasts have grown tremendously.

Videos, in particular, are very popular. Kids want to become YouTubers when they grow up.

Both videos and podcasts are awesome. I watch YouTube every day and I am subscribed to several podcasts too.

There's one thing I noticed about those platforms, however. Podcasts are very hard to discover. I only discover new podcasts if I see one mentioned somewhere. Or by word of mouth.

And in addition to having great content, as a podcast owner, your voice tone is a differentiating factor that makes me like a podcast or not. You are either born a podcaster, or you're not.

With videos, it's the same thing. Your personality is a unique differentiating factor in a great YouTube channel.

Plus, videos, if made well, are a huge effort in time, energy and equipment you need.

A blog, on the other hand, can be made quite anonymously, you don't need to have that uniqueness that makes you liked on YouTube, you have a great channel for organic discovery of your blog posts (Google), and you are not trapped into a platform (YouTube). More on this later on.

You don't have to choose one over the other, of course.

Many times a blog is used alongside a YouTube channel, or a podcast. More than just to cross-post content from one channel to another, but as a complementary tool.

When done well, it's a powerful combination.

Define w ho are your readers

A blog that's successful and useful to other people is a blog that has a readership in mind.

I'm sure you've stumbled upon those blogs or sites that talk about a little bit of everything.

It seems all very random, and you don't find a reason for coming back to that site, so you forget about it.

If you happen to visit a website that talks just about your favorite topic, you might save it for later in your bookmarks, or leave the tab open to go back to it later.

This happens because the owner of the site is not just writing about everything that comes to mind: they have a specific kind of person they are talking to.

And this is what you should do, as well. Carefully define the kind of person you want to talk to, with your blog.