Are you someone who has great ideas you’d love to share but don’t have the financial stability to write a book? Do the words “free” and “easy” appeal to you? If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, continue to read on.

The solution to these questions is simple: WordPress! Many digital marketers are familiar with WordPress and how it’s free and easy to use to create your own website and blog. This step-by-step process will walk you through your first WordPress blog. Before getting started, it is crucial the website is living on WordPress and you have the logins to the backend.

How to Get Started with WordPress

To access the back end of any WordPress site, simply type in your website and add /wp-admin to the end of it. i.e: www.example.com/wp-admin

WordPress Login

You will then be brought to your dashboard where you can write a new post for your website. It is important to keep in mind that when creating a blog post, you choose the New Post option- not the New Page option from the tool bar. The New Post option can also be on the left hand side. You are now ready to begin writing your blog! Be sure you are on the Visual tab when typing the content.

WordPress MenuWordPress Dashboard

Blogging Basics

When creating your first blog, you want to make sure you have a catchy title, engaging content, proper metadata, categories and tags that relate to what you are writing about. You can also edit the URL strand to include a keyword the blog is targeting, if it makes sense to. There are more advanced plugins and themes you can install as well but for a first timer, the basics will be more than enough!

WordPress Title

Once you have written your awesome post, you can begin formatting and adding photos. To add any photos simply click the Add Media button right above the body content. You can align the image to the left, right or center just as you can with the text. You can also add alt text to the image when uploading or clicking “Edit Image” button on the photo and link the image off to another part of your website or offsite.

WordPress - Add Media

Editing the text with bold, italics, underline, hyperlink, color etc. can be done by using the tool bar located right above the content body portion. Be sure the ‘Toolbar Toggle’ is clicked so you can see these options. (Located next to green square in the above image). To create headings, simply use the ‘Paragraph’ drop down menu, which will allow you to choose what type of heading you want.

For the Tech Savvy Bloggers

Moving to the Text tab you can double check to make sure your headings, alt text and spaces are where they need to be. The text tab is for more of the tech savvy writer as it is all HTML code. The text tab is also beneficial if you have a video iframe code, you can drop it in this part. You can easily toggle back and forth between Visual and Text to make sure if anything was touched in the HTML, the Visual still looks correct.

WordPress - HTML

WordPress - Text Tab

Sharing Your Blog With the Internet World

After the visual content is to your approval, you are ready to publish! On the right hand side is a Publish section. You have the option to publish immediately or schedule when to be published. You can also preview the post before or after it is published!

WordPress - Publish

Wasn’t that easy? Now that you’re published, you can begin sharing your content with the world through social media!

Want to learn more about creating custom SEO content? Contact the experts at PCG Digital Marketing!

 

About the Author

PCG Digital Marketing is an award winning digital agency headquartered in Eatontown, NJ. We help our clients get found online through innovative search, social and online advertising campaigns.