Questions

Should I take on a single social platform - facebook, insta, twitter - should I focus on SEO for google or google PPC - should I post across the blogosphere. I know pretty much nothing, but would love to start writing, sharing, and building an online business for myself. From my research so far, it seems a lot of success has come from simply building a major following on twitter or instagram and then leveraging that for monetizing opportunities.

There are several blogging platforms that may help you out. To decide which one is the best depends on you as everyone is unique.
1. Wix: Wix is the best website builder for blogging. No question. This is the easy route for building a blog. As such, it is a close runner up to WordPress for the best blog platform. Wix offers you beautiful templates for any type of blog. Easily customize any web page with their drag-and-drop editor. The blog manager is also simple and intuitive, with analytics and SEO built right in. It’s simple to add the basic features you might want on your blog too: social tools, likes, comments, hashtags, categories, and subscriber forms. All of the SEO features you need are easy to access too: alt tags for your images, internal links, SEO titles and descriptions (that are different from you post title), and no follow tags for external links. Wix blogs have an automatic email subscription feature and a social media bar beneath each article for sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and more. To build a blog on Wix, you will sign into your account and pick a template. There is a Blog template category, which is a great place to start. Once you have your template selected, I suggest updating the font, colours, and logo to personalize your template and help it stand out from the rest. Writing a post is as simple as clicking Create a Post, writing, and adding images. You can save drafts, or even give other contributors writing privileges for your site. This is all just as easy from a mobile device as from a desktop, no app required. Make sure that you update your SEO settings for every post: this is what is presented in the search results page and is critical for ranking in organic search. The resulting post will have an automatic read-time count, like a Medium post right next to the author’s name, which I also like a lot. I also like the ability to live-chat with your readers in the Wix app. If you build a real community in your blog or are open to answering reader questions in real time say about an online course you’re offering or a webinar that’s coming up, then it’s a cool feature.
2. Medium: Medium is home to more than 60 million users. These bloggers and content creators focus on crafting niche content for readers to settle down and read. The platform was founded by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams as a response to the hyper-short limits of Twitter, hence the name Medium. At one point, there was some distinction between even longer blog platforms, but that is dissipated by now. From personal experience, I know that when I read on Medium, I read with curiosity and intent. I am ready to put in some time reading. It also helps that they give you an estimate of how long it will take to read the article. Posting with Medium is super simple too. There is a clean, white WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. Basically, as you type, you see what the post will look like when it is published. Do not stop at this point though. Instead of just a profile, I recommend creating a Medium Publication. This gives you the option to add other writers and editors to your blog. More importantly, it gives you a lot more options for controlling what is essentially your blog homepage.
3. WordPress with Bluehost Hosting: WordPress is the most popular website builders out there. That is because it is highly flexible and powerful. No matter what you want from your blog, it can be done with WordPress. To build your own site, you will need to buy a domain name, get web hosting, and set up your WordPress account. The quick answer: Go with Bluehost. Not only is Bluehost one of the most popular web hosts, it is also ready-made for WordPress. They even recommend using Bluehost as a hosting option. With just one click, you will be able to get your WordPress site up and running within minutes. Bottom line: If you are making a WordPress website, make it with Bluehost.
4. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is probably the most popular social network for professionals of all stripes.

They boast more than 590 million users, and 154 million of them in the US. And a lot of them are active with 44% are monthly active users. LinkedIn used to be basically a resume hosting platform. In a lot of ways, it was like a job-hunting dating app: you would go on if you were looking to hire or looking to get hired but not much else. In the last few years that has changed dramatically. If you are building a business blog, the audience on LinkedIn is premium: 45% of LinkedIn article readers are in upper-level positions (managers, VPs, Directors, C-level). In an article for Forbes, “Is LinkedIn Poised to Be the Next Big Social Network … For Brands?”, Ryan Holmes nailed what’s great about the platform, “Hardcore LinkedIn users know that there is a certain warm professionalism that underlies many exchanges on the platform. In short, LinkedIn offers a kind of stability, civility, and real value that’s sorely needed on some social platforms.” I completely concur. The platform has a ready-made culture and set of expectations that a business blogger would dream of creating on their own site. LinkedIn is a social network. Your influence grows in proportion to the size of your network. The more posts you publish, the more connection requests and followers you will attract. Writing consistently not only expands your network, but it also reinforces the message about the depth and breadth of your knowledge of the subjects that you write about. Publishing does not make you a LinkedIn Influencer, unfortunately. That is a hand-selected group of people that rotates throughout the year “to include only the most engaged, prolific, and thoughtful contributors and to ensure that their expertise matches our members’ interests,” according to LinkedIn. An article is not a post and vice versa. A post is a smaller update you would share with your feed and connections. Think quick anecdote or pro tip. They are limited to 1,300 characters, which is about 5 lines. Articles are longer and more in-depth. They are something that the broader LinkedIn audience would be interested in reading. A person who reads your article can also follow you from there, so they will be alerted when you publish your next article. Any articles you publish will appear in the Articles section of your LinkedIn profile.
5. Instagram: Instagram is primarily visual — the feed is all the images or videos, and extraordinarily little of the captions. You can use the caption field for your text, and users like a long caption. You will be capped at 2,200 characters or about 300 words. Instagram is perfect if what you are sharing is visual: a lifestyle, art, dance. Or if there is some way to share it visually like in a how-to mini video. Instagram is so good now that it is hard to want to go anywhere else. The downside is that you’re beholden to the algorithm and the feed, and the changes the platform makes. On the flip side, you also do not have to be the product manager, hire a developer, or build an audience from scratch. You will have to weigh the pros and cons yourself. You can also host vlogs on Instagram Live — simply tap the camera icon (top left of the screen, or by swiping right from the Feed) and tap Live at the bottom. When you are ready to go live, it is as simple as tapping Go Live. You will be able to see the number of viewers you have at the top of the screen and comments will pop in at the bottom. When you are done, tap End. From here, I recommend tapping “Save” to save it to your camera roll and tapping “Share” to add it to your story. It will live there for 24 hours to be replayed by anyone who was not around when it was live.
6. Facebook: 1.49 billion daily active users are a number worth noting. How many of those active users will make it to your page or your post, now that is another question. Organic reach on Facebook was once not such a wild aspiration, but in 2016 there was a huge decrease in organic reach. Social Flow found that brands saw a 42% decline in organic reach over Q1 and Q2 2016. The easiest way to build a blog on Facebook is to create a group or a page for your business or brand. From there, your posts will literally be Facebook posts.

To make it easier to post and handle all your interactions in one spot, I recommend using the Facebook Creator Studio. It is an all-in-one dashboard for publishing and analysing your content. If you are new to Facebook and are really using it as a classic blog platform, you will want to create Notes. These are the closest things to blogs: a header image, a title, and text down the middle. From here you can also go live, post videos, gifs, polls, recommendations, any type of Facebook post you have seen you can create from this dashboard. You can even save, schedule, and backdate posts.
Now, before you choose any one of them answer these two questions:
1. Do you plan to make money blogging?
If so, go with Wix. Wix has all the features you will need to make money with your blog. It is also easier to use than other platforms.
2. What is your blog about? Who will read it? What is your blog niche?
My recommendations:
a. If you are in business, blog on LinkedIn.
b. If you are creative, start your “blog” on Instagram.
c. The best classic blogging site is Medium, which can also serve as a syndication platform.
d. The biggest audience, of course, still lives on Facebook.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath


Answered 3 years ago

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