Wondering how to start a blog step by step? You’re in the right place. AS you get your blogging muscles under you, you’ll learn the ins and outs of the platform you blog on and the concept of blogging itself. Starting at a blank screen isn’t THAT fun, so we like to start with a step by step plan.
Copy my blog writing workflow for Shopify!
Looks like a dozen steps is as short as I can get my blog writing workflow on Shopify to summarize my system for you.
First, we start with SEO research.
And we end with a follow-up on each blog ten months later.
Follow along, and I’ll give you a high-altitude overview of my blog writing workflow for my e-commerce site on Shopify.
Step 1: Do some SEO Research.
My Shopify Site is all niched out. I choose my blog topics based on what niche members are searching for.
I don’t choose blog topics based on what I’m doing.
That’s a vlog, but not what I need for my Shopify store. I don’t choose blog topics based on what I feel like talking about.
For my e-commerce store, I don’t write blogs about what I’m reading or learning. That stuff I do here, on Dobedo. This is where I let out my inner entrepreneur for whoever is catching the bug.
My Shopify site is driven by what people in my niche are searching for and the products I have available.
It’s like surfing the wave, but I didn’t make the wave. Or the tide or the coastline. I’m just trying to stand up and catch it for a bit.
I think I dunno. I’m taking my first surf lesson next week cause my HS besties nudged me towards trying it. After all, I told them about my writing project: Try Something New Every Month, where I nudge readers towards trying something new for a year. Anyway. I’ll probably write a blog or three about that later.
I write blogs for SEO based on what people in my niche are searching for.
SEO research is how you stand up on your website and ride the wave of traffic.
So I put on my cute ass glasses and search for what the internet needs and so …
today I’m writing blog about tomatoes.
Because it’s tomato season.
Researching tomatoes today means that I can refer to my own tomato blog later when I want to know/teach about tomatos.
Also, I’m spelling tomatoes both ways. Because thousands of people search for tomatos. Also, thousands of people search for tomatoes, but the tomatos people are being left out. And does not knowing how to spell tomatoes make or break your ability to grow and later eat tomatoes?
It does not.
Let’s include the humans today that did not grow up with an upper middle-class education and a grammar bitch as a mom.
Does Australia spell it “tomatos?” (If that’s where my traffic is coming from … “Hello, cunts.”) 🙂
Tomatos // Tomatoes. Who cares.
Step 2: Start Writing.
It’s natural to think that the first direction of how to start a blog step by step would be to start writing. But that’s not true. Blogging is not a diary. You can do better unless you’re just writing “dear diary” entries.
It’s helpful to use a blog template.
Here’s a link to my blog post about how to plan a blog with a blog writing template.
Once you have your blog topic, you’re ready to write.
You’ll need at least 500 words for each blog to rank on Google.
And probably shoot for 1000 or 1200, so just start writing.
If you start writing before choosing an SEO topic, you might write the whole blog twice.
Personally, I write directly in the blogging platform for my first draft. I have a problem with context switching. If I write in google docs, my mind feels open to too many ideas. My mind is in Shopify store mode when I write in my Shopify blog platform. When I write on Dobedo, I’m in dobedo mode.
I’ve heard other advice to get off of the platform and write in a word processor. Get into the writing frame of mind.
Whichever mindset works for you. Just start writing.
Research when you hit a snag.
Link up when you reference something.
I like to link out to .edu websites whenever I can. Colleges don’t make their money the same way I do, so I know I’m not sending my traffic to a competitor to buy an alternative to what I’m offering.
Your blog will need reasons for the case you’re making.
In the case of this blog you’re reading now: how to start a blog step by step, I know what the reader is expecting.
The first thing I did when writing this blog was list all the steps. No fluff, just steps. Then I bolded them. Then I go back for the meat. First off the top of my head, then with research.
After I’ve written little reason under my big reasons, I reread for comprehension. I add in any other parts I need to make the case. Then I move on.
Step 3. Hemingway App // Grammarly
For me, step 3 is Hemingway App. Copy editing. Let’s go.
Hemingway App is a free internet tool you can use today to clean up your writings. Chances are, up until now, you’ve been a little bit rambly in your writing. Just a guess.
How to start a blog step by step brings you pretty quickly to the magic sauce. Hemingway App.
I have Grammarly installed on my desktop, which also works on Hemingway.
So in Hemingway, I’m shortening sentence lengths & removing passive voice.
With Grammarly, I’m also correcting my typestoofast spelling errors and fixing my grammar.
Step 4. WordPress
Now look. I don’t run my Shopify blog on WordPress, but I do run my dobedo blog (this one you’re reading) on WordPress.
WordPress is designed for blogging.
But with Shopify, you can’t run a WordPress blog on your main domain.
Only on a subdomain.
That’s not what I want.
I want my blog on Shopify to be at site.com/blog.
Not at blog.site.com.
Because a subdomain has different SEO than a main domain.
I don’t want to split my traffic on a niche site. I am only blogging to drive traffic to my e-commerce site. Separating the SEO will not fulfill my purpose. I’ll be blogging for blogging’s sake and I came here to build a sustainable business.
So I run my Shopify blog through WordPress.
Just like, one time. I don’t publish it through WordPress. I use WordPress to help me get it right. Same as I do with Hemingway and Grammarly.
Then I copy/paste it back into Shopify. Is this the long way? Yeah. But I want the WordPress oomph.
Give me the double-green smileys from the Yoast plug-in.
I want my H2’s to support my H1 and my H3s to support my H2s.
Tell me to put my keywords in all the right places.
Even though it’s annoying to snag all the greens on WordPress, it’s the right thing to do for SEO’s sake.
So, how do I start a blog step by step so far?
First, I do SEO research.
Secondly, I write.
Then, I copy-edit,
Next, I establish good SEO.
Then I copy/paste it back into Shopify after it has double-green smileys from Yoast.
Is this the long way? Yeah.
It’s called a workaround. It works better in the long run, so we go the long way.
If I don’t focus on SEO, I’ll forever be attached to buying ads or the affiliate method.
All of these work.
Seo is building for the future.
I’m planting a garden.
Step 5. Canva
We live in a visual world. If you’re wondering how to start a blog step by step, you’re waiting for the part about visuals. Here we are. I’m still toying with the branding for my Shopify site, so I don’t have all my visuals perfect.
But we make some on Canva. For every blog. 3, I think, is the minimum. I don’t love a blog with so many photos I can’t read. My niche site is drenched in an aesthetic I love to look at. So even without the full brand guidelines in place, we still have visual parameters to stick within.
Canva is great for the blog graphics themselves. We also use it to create promos for the blog on other social platforms.
One way to make Canva great for your blog is to be particular about your graphic naming conventions.
Once you upload to Shopify, your images are stuck with the name they were uploaded with.
So 3 -5 photos per blog. You can download them from a stock photo site like Pexels, a paid stock site, or you can use Pexels on your Canva Pro account. You
Step 6. Upload to Shopify
Paste from WordPress into Shopify after you’ve done your copy editing and determined your headings.
Spend some time formatting as needed.
Upload your visuals from Canva. That’s all step 6.
I have a 24″ Imac so that I can open Canva on one side and Shopify in a new browser window. Then I can download the slides one by one from Canva, as I prefer, and upload each to Shopify where I want it on the blog.
I like to download my visuals one by one on Canva to make sure I’m naming the image. You can’t change the file name after uploading images to Shopify. You can change the image alt text. That’s also part of this.
Step 6 of how to start a blog step by step is
- Paste text into Shopify
- Create, name, and download your images
- Upload images to your Shopify blog post
- add image alt text.
Step 7. Insert Links
Your personal internet web catches work better with links.
We link both out to other sites and back to ourselves.
We link back to ourselves by referring to another blog, a product, or another of our internal brands.
Sometimes that is between brands and sometimes, it is within the same blog, posting a link to further reading.
Step 8. Scan & Format
Scan over your blog as a human and make sure it’s formatted easily for you to read. Humans are number one. We want humans to be able to read our blog, not just robots. Well, technically, second. Step 1 is to do SEO research because Google is crawling your website first to see who to show it to. But we want humans to get more out of it.
Step 9. Read your blog out loud.
If you have to skip a step, skip this one.
I find it imperative to read and reread my emails in my program Try Something New Every Month. It’s important to me that the reader gets an email that sounds like I wrote it.
Try Something New Every Month is where I pour my heart and soul out. It’s where the coach and storyteller in me combine to create a powerful little nudge off the couch. I write that when I’m in an inspired flow zone, and many of the subjects are stories I’ve wanted to tell for ages.
But my SEO blog?
Well, that is to get people here to the blog. It’s where I tell you about my yearly curiosity program. But the purpose of my blog is not to sound like me. It is to answer questions that people are searching for. I came here to serve you; it’s not really about me.
I didn’t wake up this morning with a burning desire to write about how I write a blog.
But when I do wake up with a burning desire to tell a story, I capture that for later use.
Much of which goes into my favorite email series ever.
I capture my stories in something we copywriters like to call a “story bank”. Mine is in Notion and Workflowy. I use both because Workflowy is a quick capture system. Or at least, I have it set up that way. Notion is where I work with data but not where I flow with creativity.
So read your blog out loud, or read it silently. It doesn’t HAVE to sound exactly like your personality if it has the purpose of solving a specific problem.
When you were typing “how to start a blog step by step” into Google,
you weren’t thinking, “Who is this person?” You were wondering how to start a blog step by step.
You almost made it to the big moment.
Step 10. Publish your blog.
We’re ready to hit publish on Shopify. Then you can go check it out. Happens fast. It’s pretty cool.
One cool thing about posting a blog on Shopify Is that you can choose the visible date. Y
It’s basically scheduling, but they call it “hidden” or “visible”. Y
ou can even make the publish date before you posted it. So if you’re going very hard toward SEO for a couple of weeks, you can spread out your dates.
Here’s another application for changing the blog date to before today.
When the reader will want secondary information after reading a piece of content.
If it’s likely that a reader will want one blog right after another, you can align them with dates in the order you’d like your reader to encounter your blog.
Step 11. Track Blog on Notion
At the end of our step-by-step Shopify blog writing workflow, we track our blog in a Notion database.
Step 12. Follow Up
And in Notion, we schedule to do a 10-month follow-up on blogs.
Update information. Make it a little bit better. Check on links.
Ooof. Looks like I fizzled out there at the end. I follow up on following up later. Do you use Notion?
