Blogging 101: Choosing a Platform & Identity

Blogging 101 is a 10 part series where I share my tips and tricks for creating and growing a blog from scratch. This is the second installment in the series, and you can find more information on the topics of this series here.

Choosing a Platform & Identity

There are many platforms available on the internet for bloggers to choose from when setting up a blog. To be completely honest though, most blogging professionals would tell you that there is really only one solid choice to go with for setting up your site and that is self-hosted WordPress. Self-hosted means that you buy your domain name (for example, my domain is http://www.StrangeCharmed.com) and you purchase a hosting package from a hosting service (Blue Host, Host Gator, etc) and you set your site up via the WordPress.org framework, giving you nearly unlimited control over your site and the way it looks and works. Now, going the self-hosted route is going to cost you money, perhaps about $50-$100 a year depending on the services you choose but it is the only way to have total control over your website. Obviously, for someone starting out, making a decision to spend this sort of money on a site that isn’t making you any money yet may seem a little frivolous but it is the most highly recommended route if you are serious about your blog, growing your audience and earning any sort of income based from your website.

For anyone who is starting a blog in order to supplement an online business, you definitely need to go the self-hosted WordPress route for sure, no questions asked. From a business perspective, a self-hosted WordPress is the ultimate platform and will give your online business that finish and control that you really need!

Now, although I have basically laid out the one single platform that I highly suggest, I know it’s not necessarily the route for everyone.If you are starting your blog purely for fun and just want to test the waters with blogging, there are other free options available. Before I went self-hosted, I used Blogger which gives you the blogspot.com domain you may already be familiar with. I enjoyed my experience with Blogger so I would recommend that platform if you want to go the free route. Also, there is a free platform associated with WordPress, which is WordPress.com where you can set up a free site similar to Blogger. Either of those two platforms will help you get started with your own personal blog and will give you enough choices and customizations to get your blog up and running!

If you are going the self-hosted WordPress route, I highly suggest checking out this book that I have blogged about, which will basically walk you through the process of setting up a site if you don’t feel confident doing it on your own. As for setting up a Blogger or WordPress.com site, both platforms basically walk you through the process so there is no technical know-how that you need to get started!

Okay, now, let’s move on to the second part of this discussion, and that is choosing an identity for your blog. When I say identity, I mean the name, url, and social media account identities you will be using to help support and promote your blog! First and foremost is your blogs title and domain name. Sometimes I think that choosing the right name for a blog is one of the hardest parts to starting one! Your blog’s name needs to be something simple enough for people to understand and clever enough for people to remember. On top of that, it also needs to convey an image about your blog to people so that they understand what your blog is all about, even if they have never read it before. Now, if your blog happens to be about you and your personal style, interests, business or life in general, using your own name for your blog is usually the best way to go! If you are blogging to support an established business, using the business name is the route you should take. However, if your blog isn’t as cut and dry as that, you may need to pull out a dictionary and thesaurus and start playing with words until you come up with something that you feel comfortable with.

There really is no magic formula for coming up with a great blog name, take my site for instance. I wanted my site to be a place where I could share all my quirky lifestyle tips with other women who needed career advice, daily inspiration and a dose of fun! One day, my husband and I were discussing name ideas for my site and we were playing around with the word “quirky” since that was the one word that I always though fit my idea of my perfect blog! Discussions of “quirks” quickly turned into a discussion of “quarks,” (you know those fundamental elements that constitute matter,) and suddenly strange and charm (two of six types of quarks) were a front-runner for my blog name. Strange and Charm, however, seemed to vague and too scientific. So, it was changed to Strange & Charmed, which seemed like a much more logical phrase. For me, it just seemed to work in my mind and in my heart, and so it became the name of my blog. Now, like I said earlier, I wasn’t self-hosted when I started Strange & Charmed so my url of strangeandcharmed.blogspot.com turned into strangecharmed.com out of a lack of options when I moved my blog over to WordPress. StrangeandCharmed.com wasn’t available, so we had to drop the “and” from the name out of necessity.

Luckily for me, I think it works fine without the conjunction, but because of this scenario, I caution others to make sure they secure their domains first before they fall in love with a name for their sites, and that includes Twitter handles, Instagram accounts and all other social media you plan to use for your blog. Secure everything before you start blogging, if you can, so that it makes it easier for you to keep a consistent name and brand everywhere you are online!

 Have you started a blog recently? Which platform did you choose and how did you come up with your blogs name? Feel free to leave a link to your blog in the comments below so we can check it out!