How To Create A Free Business Blog In 15 Minutes

One of the most effective forms of getting noticed on the web and inbound marketing is a business blog or site. Engage your customers with your latest news, services, views and developments and help build brand loyalty.
If you have a brick and mortar business that lacks an online presence - read more to find out how to create a free business blog in 15 minutes!

Sign up

Visit WordPress.com and sign up for a free blog. All you need is an email address. If you don't have one of those - head-over to G-mail.com and get one. If you have a domain, head over to WordPress.org and upload the file to your site.

Choose a domain

While signing up for WordPress.com you will eventually be asked for a domain name. Take a minute to think about this. If you want to rank in Google for any specific term (like cars), try to use that word in the domain name. You will also be asked if you want to purchase a premium domain, this isn't required to start, but if you want to remove the wordpress.com from your website address, that is how you do that.

Settings

Once you are done setting up your site you can log in (or will automatically be logged in). When logged into the back-end of your site you will see a menu on the left. Near the bottom of this menu is settings. Go through these and tweak the settings as you see fit. There is no real right or wrong here, most decisions are personal preference. You can control things like privacy (the more public the better for your business) how many posts appear and etc.

User profile

WordPress is a bit different from a stand alone website as it is also a community of sorts. Since this is the case, you have a user profile and I highly suggest you take advantage of it. Of someone is reading you blog and wants to learn more about you they will check it out. If they find it empty or unfilled it will look unprofessional.

Also Read : Avoiding the Common Mistakes Bloggers Make in the Beginning

Theme

WordPress allows you to change/customize the entire look of your site trough the use of a theme. The theme is essentially a skin or layout that controls the entire look and feel of your site. You can find the theme selection area under Appearance in the WordPress menu. Choose a theme that you like. Try to avoid the default theme because it is always overused.

Widgets

Widgets can also be found under Appearance in your menu. Widgets control what appears in the sidebar along with your body or content in theme. Most themes have a sidebar area either on the left hand or right hand of your site (maybe both, maybe footer too!).

Content

The next and mos major part of your website is the content. Using Pages and Posts you can add content to your website. Pages are used for static information (doesn't change too often). You could add pages like "about us" and "contact us". Pages will automatically appear in the navigation of your site.
Posts will make up the majority of your content (and this is what your visitors looking for). Here you can add helpful tips related to your business, announce sales, and share company news or what ever you like.
To get the most out of your blog or website, add content regularly and often. Set a frequency, post; daily, weekly or monthly.

Share

Now all that left is to share your site. Put a brand, poster, banner or logo up at your business, ad your website to all promotional material and use Facebook, Google page, Twitter or any popular social networking site that you like and mention your new blog on there as well.

Read more posts on beginner guides to blogging

Source : Caroline-baxter.com/how-to-build-a-business-blog-in-just-40-minutes-infographic