MBA1052 Starting a Blog From Scratch P2 + Free Ride Friday!

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new Tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more.

PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do.

More faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Hey there. Today is Free Ride Friday so make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to hear who won this week's Free ride. Every Friday we do a weekly random.

Draw with anyone who's left us a reading in review.

Every Friday somebody wins a lifetime access.

To one of our programs.

This month we're giving away Easy Course, a $500 course over at EasyCourse Co Ezcourse helps you build and launch your own online course in 30 days. Today somebody's gonna win it for free.

Simply by just leaving us an iTunes rating and review.

We when you leave us a review.

You enter the draw every week until you win.

It's our way to say thanks for leaving us some love on itunes. Alright, let's jump into today's episode. Heyo. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar RMBA Show. Because you can't build a business empire on your own. That's why we got your back every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world on I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online.

And today's episode is part two of.

Our two part episode on starting a blog from scratch.

If you haven't listened to part one, check Out Part one. First hit pause on this episode, listen to part one, yesterday's episode, and then.

Come back and listen to part two. It'll make a whole lot more sense.

In part two, we're going to get.

Into the tech of blogging, what platforms to use, how to choose the right.

Platform, how to make sure that you.

Can publish on time regularly, and how.

To wrap your head around the whole tech of blogging. That way you can launch your blog without a hitch.

I purposely made part two the tech.

Of blogging and not part one, because.

The content of your blog articles that.

You produce, that's really what's gonna make.

Or break your success.

The platform is just a tool.

You gotta choose a tool that's gonna allow you to produce the content easily.

Like let me show you how in today's episode.

So let's get into it.

Let's get down to business. Let's get into the tech of blogging.

When choosing a platform to blog on, there's a few factors you need to consider. Number one, your existing website. What are you building your website on? The website that your business is all about, the website that you're the blog is going to be tied to. If you're already using a platform that has a blogging feature, just go with that platform. It's just so much easier to manage one platform for your website and your blog rather than doing two.

The only exception to this rule is.

That it's super hard to use and it's super confusing for you to use the built in blogging platform. But if you're using something like Weebly or Squarespace or WordPress, then the blogging features are pretty straightforward.

Now if you're blogging not for your.

Business for another reason, maybe you're trying to test pilot a book you're thinking about writing or, or it's just a.

Creative outlet, then you don't need to worry about this.

Step one, because you really don't need to tie your blog to your business.

Now from a technical standpoint, the reason.

Why I recommend if it is part of your business to use the same platform is because you want to be on the same site, on the same URL, the same domain name, so that any of the articles that you write will refer back to your site and.

Increase the traffic and increase the SEO.

Or the search engine optimization for that business site. Any of these platforms that you build a site on has a blogging feature. Just use that if it's tied into your site and your business.

Now if you're blogging outside of your.

Business again for different reasons, then you're.

Gonna have a few more options.

The first option I want to recommend is Ghost. It's an open source platform and I actually met the founder recently, John O. Nolan. First of all, John's an awesome guy, super creative guy, very interesting person and he used to work for WordPress and he started Ghost on his own. And it's a very, very popular blogging platform.

In fact, a lot of huge businesses.

And brand Ghost, this is, we all know, like Tinder and DigitalOcean.

Ghost is a very fast and easy to use platform that is great for blogging.

So I highly recommend you take a look at it. Plus, it's open source, so all you.

Need to do is take care of the hosting. And they offer hosting plans over@ghost.org so you can easily get started at a very low price. So with Ghost, you can use your own domain.

So say, for example, you're building your own site and you're gonna be blogging.

As a personal blog. You can have like your name.com if.

It'S available, of course. So you want to make sure that it is available or a version of.

Your name is available if you're going to be doing that. But that option's there with Ghost. Another option, if money is super tight, is Medium. Medium is a blogging platform. Medium cannot be hosted on your own domain. So any kind of search engine optimization will not go to your own site or your own URL.

It's like Facebook, right?

Any post you put on Facebook goes on facebook.com but. Except this is blogging. But Medium has grown a huge audience because of its simple and easy to use interface. It's improved over time, actually, they've improved a lot of features and you can do things like schedule posts in advance and all that kind of stuff.

If you're looking for a straight up.

Easy to use free option, Medium is.

A good place to look at.

But for me it is a deal.

Breaker that I can't use it on.

My own domain and that all the traffic goes to Medium and not to me. But if it's just purely for writing, want to write blog posts, I guess Medium is a good option if you're that type of person or that's the reason why you're blogging now. Whatever you use, make sure you understand.

How to optimize the SEO for that platform.

So say, for example, you're using WordPress. How will you make sure you have good SEO for each blog post that search engines can find it easily? One of the Easiest ways to do this is to install a plugin called Yoast. Yoast is a great SEO plugin. It allows you to know how to actually optimize each blog post, and it gives you hints and tips. It'll also show you what your blog post will show up as, what it'll look like in Google when I search for it. Every platform will have its own SEO options. Make sure you understand what they are, and they do exist on your platform. So you got to take a look at that. Because every time you write a blog post or you copy and paste it from your Word doc, one of the things you're going to have to do is cross the t's and dot the I's for search engine optimization. This is not applicable if it's on Medium, because Medium, again, is not on your site. It's on Medium's platform. You don't own the domain, but when it comes to having the blog on your own domain, you gotta make sure SEO is on point. Now, you might be thinking, what are you talking about? What are the things I need to make sure?

Well, you gotta make sure the title.

Shows up when people search for it. You make sure keywords that you're searching for, trying to rank for.

Say, for example, I'm running a blog.

Post on webinars or, or what's the best time for a webinar?

Then I need to make sure that.

My keyword best time for a webinar shows up in my title, it's in my meta tags, it's in my description, and it's going to display nicely on Google.

You want to make it easy for.

Search engines like Google to find your article. SEO is a behemoth of a topic. I can't cover it all in today's.

Episode, but if you want to learn.

More about how to optimize your blog posts via SEO, check out Brian Dean's site, Backlinko.

Love Backlinko. It's one of the best resources that.

I recommend for search engine optimization.

The other thing about the tech of.

Blogging that we wanna talk about is scheduling.

Make sure you know how to use.

The scheduling feature on your blogging platform. This allows you to write and actually line up your blog posts before it's the day to publish.

Great.

Because, hey, what if you go on vacation? What if you take a holiday? What if you're traveling? You don't wanna have to publish your blog posts on the day it publishes. You wanna make sure you can schedule it so it automatically goes live when it's time to publish. In theory, you could publish a weekly blog and have it all lined up a year in advance. And you don't have to touch your blog for a whole year. Things get scheduled automatically. What else?

When it comes to blogging, there is the big question.

Should I have comments on my blog? Comments are a hot topic because like, if I open up comments, will I have the ability to answer every comment? Sometimes the comments won't be always great and rave reviews. There'll be some haters, there'll be some.

Nasty comments or some tough questions. But at the same time, comments really grow an audience.

Comments really get the conversation going. And it's great for search engine optimization.

So my recommendation is definitely have comments.

If you're going to dedicate the time to reply to them.

And at the start you may not have a lot of comments and that's okay.

And it's not going to require a lot of your time.

But as your blog starts to get.

Traction, you're going to get lots and lots of comments. So make sure you schedule time for it. And if you don't have the time for it, then you may need to shut it off.

Just something to Consider Every blogging platform has a commenting system. If you're using WordPress, I actually recommend.

Using the plugin Discuss. It's a D I S Q U S. It's a great little plugin that.

Makes commenting much better than the native.

Commenting system on WordPress.

Dear McDonald's, your breakfast menu fire tens across the board. I could be happy with anything even though I order the same thing every time. Thanks for not judging me. I'll try something new next time.

Maybe score a two for five dollar deal on a sausage McMuffin with egg and more. Limited time only. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer single item at regular price.

What do the steam engine, electricity and AI have in common? These technologies not only change how we work, they can transform entire economies. Stephanie I'm Stephanie Huang, host of where the Internet Lives, a podcast from Google and Latitude Studios about the unseen world of data centers. Explore how data centers are unlocking growth in every sector of the economy. From agriculture to medicine to manufacturing, data centers are powering a new era of AI innovation. Listen to where the Internet lives. Wherever you get your podcasts, I want.

To remind you that the blogging platform.

And the tech of blogging is here to help you.

There is going to be some sort.

Of learning curve when you're learning how to use the tech, but I want you to choose what's easiest for you so you publish consistently. So take on the advice that I laid out in today's episode as well as the advice in part one when we talked about the content of your blog and get started. Put yourself on a deadline.

Tell yourself, I'm going to launch my.

New blog from scratch on this day.

A month from today.

That's plenty of time for you to start writing a couple articles and launch that blog.

Hold yourself accountable, even get a buddy.

If you want to get involved so.

That you can hold each other accountable to launch each other's blogs for that deadline. And you can have a launch party. And the launch is just the beginning. Blogging is one of those things that grows over time and you really reap the benefits of blog posts years after you've launched them the years after you've published them.

I have a blog post that I.

Published about five years ago and it's titled how to Self Promote Without Looking Like Donald Trump. Now, whether you're a fan of Trump.

Or not, back then I had no idea who's going to be the President.

Of the United States. But it's gained traction now five years later.

So sometimes you push out things and.

They don't gain traction till later. Point is to push out content consistently.

All right, that's the end of today's lesson.

But today's episode is not over because.

It'S Free Ride Friday. I got to announce who won this week's Free Ride. Who won free access to easy course, our 30 day course over at EasyCourse.

Co on how to launch your own online course in 30 days.

Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is Zeppel 159 from Canada. Zeppelin 59 says the 100 MBA is.

A great resource for small businesses.

Their vast library of topics is incredibly valuable.

It's great when you need specific information.

On a specific topic. Keep it up Omar.

Love your work.

Well thanks Zeppelin59. Really appreciate that comment and showing us love on itunes. You are a Free Friday winner. Your mission is to email me over at omar@100mba.net so I can host hook you up with that free ride to Ezcourse.

Guys, we do this every single week. Just leave us an iTunes rating and review no matter where you are in the world.

You enter the weekly random draw and.

Listen out on Friday to see if you won.

And you enter the draw every Friday until you win.

Alright, that's it for me today guys. But before I go, I want to.

Leave you with this. Blogging is one of those platforms that has lasted the test of time. It's not a fad. It's not something that's just going to go away. It's writing, it's journalism, it's literature in digital form. Definitely worth investing in. All right, I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

Of Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals, like business management, strategic planning and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.