The key to getting started with a successful blog is having a loyal following who will eagerly wait for your new posts each week. To attract a following, it helps to have a professional-looking site with actual content on it!
Below are six tips to help build the foundations for your new fashion blog.
1. Define Your Fashion Niche
While it may sound like a glamorous job, starting a fashion blog takes hard work. You don’t just wake up one morning and start putting outfits together. The first step to creating a successful fashion blog is settling down on a fashion niche.
The fashion industry might already sound niche, but it’s composed of dozens of smaller niches—each based around a different style. As you learn how to start a fashion blog, your initial goal should be to identify and narrow the focus of your target audience.
Doing the above allows you to create marketing campaigns tailored specifically to their needs. You can start by identifying your core style and asking how you own that uniquely.
2. Select Your Blogging Platform
You need to select a blogging platform that will enable you to create, manage, update, and optimize your fashion blog. When you blog, you may choose from free web-hosting services, free and paid blogging platforms.
If you want to proceed with a free web-hosting service, WordPress can be your best bet. When it comes to free web-hosting services, it is important to note that they offer automatic backups and security updates without requiring you to download or install any additional software.
But that also means you have less control over your blog than if you were using a different platform. If you want to make money from your blog, purchase a domain name and set up your own hosting plan. This will make your blog appear more professional and give you greater flexibility in terms of design and monetization.
3. Pick a Great Domain Name
After you’ve zeroed in on the blogging platform, you must find a domain name that best conveys your blog’s identity. If you already have something in mind, be sure to check that it is available as a domain name.
To find a domain name, you can use a domain name generator. These sites allow you to try different combinations of words until you find the right fit for your blog. Make sure your own your domain name.
4. Choose a Web-Hosting Service
Once you have a name for your website, you’ll need to choose a suitable hosting service for the site. Great hosting boils down to three things: speed, support, and security.
If you’re a small business getting started, you may want to consider a cloud-based virtual private server (VPS) or managed service, which can cost from $10 to $100 per month.
A wide variety of hosts provide one-click installations for WordPress or the popular blogging platforms, so you will likely have several affordable options from which to choose.
5. Choose a Good Theme
Once you’ve selected a blogging platform, you must go forward and decide on a theme that suits your fashion brand.
If you’re a beginner, it is most likely that the blogging platform of choice would be WordPress; it offers great themes that you can select from. The angle you take in a blog post ultimately determines the theme and content that you use, so it is important to pick a theme that emphasizes your content.
Fashion bloggers often pick themes on whether they have features such as vertical or horizontal menus, how many columns comprise the site, whether the site has full-sized photos or thumbnails, whether ads are acceptable.
It is also helpful to look at other blogs for inspiration; this will help you determine what features your blog needs. Not all themes offer the same features, nor are they all customizable to the same extent. So, it’s crucial to pick a theme that will fulfill your needs.
6. Add Plugins
After you’ve chosen a theme that goes well with your sense of style, you must build the backend of your site and keep it running. Plugins will help you do that. Now, what are plugins?
Plugins extend the functionality of your site for a variety of purposes, such as making eCommerce products available for purchase on your site or creating a portfolio to display your work. The right plugins can add features to your site, such as shopping carts or directories, so you can create virtually any kind of website.
For increasing your readability and SEO keyword optimization, you can use Yoast SEO. You can add social share buttons for easy integration. Moreover, you can also add Autoptimize for optimizing site speed—and ShortPixel for ensuring your images are in good shape.
7. Track Patterns With Google Analytics
After your fashion blog is live, you must be consistent with the content you’re posting. That’s how you’ll attract your readers.
But, how do you know who is visiting your site and who isn’t? That’s where setting up a Google Analytics account can come in handy. Google Analytics is a powerful web analytics tool that displays important statistics about your website’s traffic.
It can tell you who is visiting your site, what they’re looking for, and how they’re getting to your site. It also keeps count of your page views and unique visitors so that you know how well your fashion blog is doing.
Don’t Forget to Market and Monetize Your Blog
Marketing on social media is essential for most bloggers, but even more so for fashion blogs with their image-heavy posts. Aside from starting a fashion blog and getting some quality content on it, you also need to make sure that your blog is easily found by people looking for you.
You can integrate your site with Instagram and create a social media strategy. Moreover, you can work with social media tools to organize your marketing campaigns.
The best way to truly understand how to run your fashion blog and grow it into a successful one is by applying what you’ve learned from this post, experimenting with new strategies, and hitting some bumps along the way. But eventually, you’ll find out what works best for you!
