Video: What We Wish Someone Had Told Us About Blogging Before We Started
Eric and Brittany Highland are co-founders of The Austinot, a hyperlocal blog about the city of Austin, TX, which has a social media following of more than 83,000 and earned nearly 1.5 million page views in 2017. The duo actively runs a ridiculous number of other blogs and social media communities related to RV travel and Jeep adventuring.
Beyond The Austinot, they founded a boutique online marketing company in 2011, where they have a special passion for micro-businesses.
All this has been done from a 40-foot diesel motorhome, ever since the Highlands sold everything in 2014 and began to travel full-time.
In this workshop, they share their blogging expertise and everything they wish they knew before they started their first blog. This is a great workshop for anyone who has started a blog, but has gotten caught up in the logistics or is struggling to grow their blog.
What Eric & Brittany Teach in this Workshop
Why start a blog?
- Credibility
- Influence
- Building a Tribe
- Search engine Visibility
- Income
Want to start your first blog? Join our free course: How to Start and Grow Your First Blog
How much does starting a blog cost?
- Hosting: $4/month (this will go up as your traffic increases!)
- Domain: $15
- WordPress: Free
Five Elements of a Good Blog Theme
- Mobile responsive
- Navigation bar structure
- Placement of social media buttons
- Are there free, unlimited updates?
- Does it offer tech support?
Branding matters from the beginning
- What is your identity?
- Go as niche as you can, while considering growth & potential changes
- Choose your blog name carefully
How do I structure my website?
- Long-term vision
- A broad, shallow pyramid is better than a deep pyramid
- Mindmap
- Index card method
How to structure your blog posts
- Title
- Meta description
- Lede (or your first sentence)
- Featured Image
- Visuals will make or break your article
- Make sure you obtain them legally
- Where to source images
- Take your own (watermark)
- With permission from the image owner: Facebook page, website
- Unsplash.com
- Canva.com
- Creative Commons: Flickr, Google, Wikimedia
- Instagram embed
- Twitter embed
- And of course, write great content!