How to Start A Personal Blog (+ grow your personal brand)
Whether you know it or not, you are a brand and you have an authentic story to tell. While content like social media is an awesome way to grow online, there’s one strategy that’s often overlooked.
Personal blogging is a super creative way to build out (or strengthen) your personal brand.
So what is a personal blog? And why am I so hyped on it?
This post covers all that and more.
With that, let’s get into it!
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What Is A Personal Blog?
A personal blog is a blog that’s focused on an individual person and their unique brand (vs. a blog covering a specific niche, business or industry).
A personal blog is attached to a personal brand and may cover one core niche or multiple.
For example, I cover multiple niches, including travel, creativity, creatrepreneurship and music.
These topics — as separate as they may seem — are always overlapping. They’re hyper-relevant in my life and for my brand.
A personal blog lets me get away with this multi-topic approach.
Recommended: How I Grew My Multi-Niche Blog
What Do Personal Bloggers Do?
Running a personal blog is more than just writing.
On any given day, I’m juggling all sorts of things. Here’s a breakdown:
Research
New topics, competitors, your audience, keywords, new trends and products, etc.
Copywriting
Catchy titles, social blurbs and descriptions, social blogs
SEO (search engine optimization)
SEO is how you optimize your blog for traffic and performance
Yea, writing is a core part of personal blogging
General blog management
Responding to comments, using plugins, testing new features, adding pages, making products
Graphic Design
Web design, UX (user experience), creating, editing and sourcing images
Data analytics
Understanding your traffic numbers and which posts perform best
What Do Personal Bloggers Write About?
Personal bloggers write about their personal lives, their creative pursuits, their passions and/or their expertise. Personal blogs can be about anything and everything.
But most topics will come from:
Personal life and experiences
Expertise or knowledge
Personal passion or interest
Personal goals and creative projects
Again, any and all topics can be turned into a personal blog. So it’s totally up to you and your brand goals. My favorite part about personal blogging is I can write about various topics that interest me, but altogether support my care brand image.
Examples of Personal Brand Bloggers
You don’t need to look far to find examples of a personal blog.
But here are some examples of personal brand blogs worth checking out for inspiration:
Chris Guillebeau (the art of non-comformity)
My site here (shameless plug…)
Should I Start A Personal Blog? (12 benefits)
At this point, you may be getting more curious about starting your own blog.
So here are a few of my favorite benefits of blogging (for a little more inspiration):
Build your personal brand
Blog content has a long shelf life + ranks for years (vs. social media)
Income opportunities
Become more creative
Learn valuable new skills
Become more self aware
Improve your writing and communication skills
It’s flexible (write about what you want, when you want)
Meet and network with amazing people
Boost your authority and trust as a personal brand
It’s a strong source of creative pride
It’s a personal asset
How to Start A Personal Blog (5 steps)
Ready to start your epic, brand-building, personal blog? Perfect.
Here’s my approach!
1. Define Your Blog Why
Knowing your motivations is incredibly helpful for reaching goals and staying consistent.
Because after the honeymoon phase fades and motivation wanes, we need something to keep us focused on getting things done.
So before starting a blog, it’s important to clearly define your why.
This will add important intention and purpose to your writing (which supports a more sustainable blogging habit).
Here are some helpful questions and tips for finding your why:
What are your blog goals?
Having checkpoints will give you direction and purpose.
What are your values?
Attaching values to your blog creates more motivation and purpose.
What is your blog mission?
This will give you an overall theme and North Star to follow.
What part of blogging excites you most?
For example, writing, web design, research…
What’s your blogging mindset?
Do you believe you can blog successfully? What limiting beliefs do you need to address?
What’s your unique value proposition?
Knowing what sets you apart can be motivating.
Do you hope to entertain, inspire and/or educate?
This is the type of content you could offer and relates to your mission.
Will you blog under a private pen name or your own?
This provides insights into why you’re blogging and any anxieties or worries you may have.
2. Choose Your Blog Niche(s)
Okay, so you’re excited to start your blog and you’ve identified why you’re doing it. So what’s next?
You need to choose a niche.
But don’t stress too much here! You can always pivot and keep things open for change.
Often, you won’t know your blog’s true purpose until after you write a handful of articles.
So there’s one important takeaway here: choose a brand, domain or blog name that’s not too specific.
For example, my first articles were a bit unfocused, covering back-to-back topics ranging from travel to making music and sociopreneurship.
But it helped me discover my true passions (and the best opportunities for me).
So if I would’ve chosen something like “jakeyoutravels.com”, it would’ve been harder for me to transition to mindset, creativity, productivity and creative entrepreneurship (which is mostly what I write about now).
So if you’re feeling unsure (or like you have too many topics you’re interested in), no stress.
You’re definitely not alone and just remember that nothing is set in stone.
Here are some tips for discovering your personal blog niche:
What are your skills, expertise, knowledge or interests?
What problems and questions do you have? Share the journey and the solutions you find.
Use an AI tool like ChatGPT for ideas and inspiration
Keep a tangible list of all your potential niches
What type of content do you like to read or watch? How can you make it better or personal?
Ask your friends and family? (Outside opinions can seriously help)
Step away and forget, then come back (what ideas excite you most?)
Experiment — write a few sample drafts (was it fun? what did you learn?)
Do some self reflection (meditation helps me)
Be patient
3. Choose A Blogging Platform
Things are getting exciting now. At this point, we’re ready to choose our blogging home.
Finding the right platform really comes down to personal preferences and goals. Because the truth is, it’s 2023 and there are numerous options that will all give you great results.
But I want to cut through the noise and keep things narrow. Because too many options leads to analysis paralysis.
Luckily, I like to only recommend things that I personally use (or have used).
So here are my favorite platforms for personal blogging (platforms I use):
Medium
This is the best platform for beginners who just want to dabble.
You can start blogging and reaching readers straight away (without needing a website)
Medium has a strong community element, making it feel more social
It’s completely free to sign up and start writing
WordPress
This has the biggest learning curve but it’s perfect if you prefer the technical side of things.
WordPress is powerful — and a staple in the online blogging world
It offers the most customization, but also has the biggest learning curve
You’ll need to connect with a third-party hosting service (like Bluehost) to launch your site and get a custom domain
Squarespace
This is the best platform if you want to focus on building a creative brand.
I currently use Squarespace for blogging and get thousands of monthly visitors each month
It’s my top pick as a powerful, beginner-friendly website builder
You never need to worry about updates, confusing code or learning advanced web design
Substack
This is good for beginners who want to create a blog newsletter.
Substack is perfect if you’re want to try building a newsletter (without having a website)
It’s also completely free to use
Recommended: Squarespace for Blogging (my 1-year review)
4. Build Out Your Blog
There’s just a little more housekeeping we should do before launching.
We should add some basic design and essential pages to our new blog (unless you’re using Medium or Substack, then you’re good to go and can skip to step five).
Luckily, most blogging platforms have plug-and-play templates you can use (so you just need to add your text and assets).
But I love this stage, because designing your site is fun and creative.
I won’t spend too much time here, but here are some core pages to consider adding:
An about page
A privacy policy
A terms and conditions page
A contact page
A blog page (obviously…)
Of course, you can add more pages depending on your goals and motivations.
(For example, you could add a page to sell products or services, if you have an offer)
But starting minimal is my recommendation, especially if you’re still unsure about the final direction of your blog.
Now is also a good time to dial in on your brand image (choosing a color palette, a font style, etc.).
So grab a cup of coffee (or tea) and play around with your blog’s design.
Again, I love this stage — super fun.
5. Start Writing
At this point, we now know what we want to write about, why we’re writing it and a place to write it.
So what now?
Well, writing…writing is the last step.
You can write directly in your platform or choose somewhere else, like a Google Doc (which is what I do).
This writing stage sounds pretty straightforward – but it can actually be kind of hard.
Which is why I like to use a system to avoid and address those annoying bottlenecks (such as writer’s block or motivation issues).
Here’s an example of my blog writing system (+ my free blog writing template):
Grab my Google Doc blog template for free here (to edit: go to “File” then “Make a copy” and you’ll be all set)
If you’re still feeling a bit overwhelmed about blogging (like doing keyword research and learning how to rank in Google), my best advice is to just focus on starting — taking that first step.
Be different from everyone else and play the long game. Don’t stress about finding the “perfect” plan right out the gate.
You can simply start sharing your journey and develop a system through trial and error.
The most important part is to just have fun.
Focus on the process and improve little by little, day by day.
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