So you want to start a blog?

The task is exciting and can infuse energy into your small business, but it can also be overwhelming and those prone to “analysis paralysis” may find themselves stuck in a sea of decisions that get you nowhere fast.

This quick step-by-step guide will help get you ready to know how to start a blog.

Extra time and brain space is hard to come by.

So keep it simple by sticking to this 4 step process of setting up a blog.

By following this step-by-step guide you'll feel empowered to start your blog and never look back!

1. Decide What to Blog About

You're here so one could guess you already know what you are going to blog about!

Congrats, friend! you have this figured out! you are now one step closer to starting your blog!

2. Buy the Domain for your Blog

A domain name is just your business name plus dot com.

If you have not settled on a name just yet, it's recommended that you choose your own name as your company name.

For example, if your name is Sandra Gabriella Brown, you could buy the name SandraBrown.com, SandraGBrown.com, SandraBrown.co, SandraGabriellaBrown.com, or any other form of your name you can get your hands on.

The important thing is grabbing it while it's still there.

If you are on the fence between two company names, buy them both.

Most domain names will be around $15 for a year.

Why choose your own name as the company name?

By using your name as the company name, it will be easier to determine a brand voice, potential clients will weed themselves out, and hey, if you decide you want to switch business paths, you don't have to start from scratch with a new name, brand, and marketing.

If you don't own a domain name, we recommend you purchase a domain registration through Namecheap.

as they provide private registration and hosting for a low price.

More details about domain names can be found here.

3. Design Your Blog

This is where the “techy heavy lifting” could get a little overwhelming.

Notice we said “could.” You no longer have to search blog themes only to settle on one and find out it doesn't work with the account you have.

After you log into Showit, there are a huge amount themes that are continually updated and ready to use…for FREE!

If you have something specific in mind, you can search over 100 designs in our Design Market, too!

There you can search with terms like minimalist, romantic, or whatever you most identify with.

Whether you want to choose a design for your blog there or just get some inspiration flowing, it's a great place to start.

3a. For Those Who Really Want to Dive into Customizing Their Blog Design

This is where your creativity and vision as an artist comes in!

Naturally, you want to select a design that aligns with your brand and your website.

While blogs are a wonderful way to highlight your recent work and to give clients a behind-the-scenes look into your life, they serve a different purpose than your website… which is your first impression and introduction to potential clients.

Think of your website as your front porch.

It's a place where people stop in to peek in the windows and maybe sit on the porch awhile to say hi.

Your blog is an invitation to come inside for a cup of coffee.

Of course, when you invite your new guests in for that cup of coffee you want the house looking nice.

That's where the look and feel of your design comes in… it's the framework of the style of your house.

Be careful not to get overwhelmed once you've reached this step! Just one design is all you need.

With Showit, you choose once and then with every website design, there is a mobile and blog design to match.

If you are looking to only have a blog, that works, too! (The full Showit blog scoop here.)

Open your Showit app up (http://app.showit.co/) in Chrome and dive into designing your blog.

Pick a design to start playing with and completely customize with just dragging and dropping! You don't need to know code, or even how WordPress works. We take care of all that and hosting. Just get cozy with your new online home. Hang up some pictures, paint your walls, and start designing your blog with your new guests in mind.

(If you already have a blog, Showit Support Pros can facilitate the migration of your blog from your current host to Showit hosting. Request that by logging in here: Showit Account Login There you can also request to have a blog added to your current Showit account if you are just starting a blog.)

Learn more about FREE Managed WordPress Hosting for Showit subscribers here.

4. Get Started Writing Content for Your Blog!

You go!

You are already on Step 4 which is the very last step, and the one you have been waiting for!

Let's get you writing those blog posts! Once you have designed your customized blog, you are ready to launch your site and have our team create your WordPress blog for you so you can officially start a blog.

If you haven't yet launched, you can learn how to launch your site here.

After your blog is created or migrated by our team and your new site and blog are live, you will be provided a WordPress login URL that will look something like this:

The WordPress dashboard where you will start your blog will be something like this.

This is just the back end of your blog.

Think of it as the typewriter, Showit is the printing press, and the final product is a beautiful glossy magazine.

Here you will get writing and finally start a blog!

If you are new to WordPress and just this image makes your heart start to palpate, have no fear!

We broke it down for ya with images and nice words in this help doc.

With your new company name, domain, and a fabulously designed new website, the writing will be a piece of cake!

Just be you.

Write like you are talking over coffee with your new friends. It will just be more thought out, and you won't ever stick your foot in your mouth!

You got this, friend! And we are always here if you need any help!

P.S. Now that you've got your blog started, lets get organized to help make your blog a success!!

If you haven't jumped into Pinterest for more than personal pins – you are missing out on a great opportunity to market your business! Pinterest continues to grow, gain traction and many creatives now use it as their go-to search engine. Which is great to remember – Pinterest is a Search Engine (like Google) and should be treated as such, and not a Social Media platform. You don't need to use hashtags on Pinterest, but you definitely want to make sure that you are honing in on the right keywords for your potential clients to find you! More on that in another post. We digress…

One of the great things about Pinterest is that it's great for showing off images. What's even better is that unlike Facebook and Instagram, with Pinterest you have some “flexibility” in those images. They can be horizontal/landscape or vertical/portrait. The research shows that vertical images are more popular, meaning they are re-pinned more often than horizontal images. But what about those long format vertical/portrait images on Pinterest? Have you ever wondered, how are they doing that? Where are they “hiding” those long vertical images on their blog?

We were wondering too… and we've found a great resource for you!

Look no further than the blog of wedding photographer Natalie Franke. Natalie is also the co-founder of The Rising Tide Society and runs the wedding blog, The Bayside Bride. She knows a thing or two about social media and how to make it work for your business. Last month she shared a great article on her site; The Pinterest Secret Every Blogger Needs to Know. I highly recommend reading it and watching the included video. In the video, Natalie walks you through step-by-step and shows you how to create hidden images on your blog for Pinterest!

It's a lot easier than you would think. Yes, it does involve a teeny, tiny bit of html code, but once you understand why and where you're placing that code, you won't have to be overwhelmed by it at all.

Here's the code again: <div style=”display:none;”>PASTE IMG CODE HERE</div>

Just copy and paste it into the text editor/text view of your blog. Then take that image code that starts with “<img class” all the way to “/>” and copy and paste that bit of a code (about a pragraph) And, of course, there is a hidden pin in this blog post for good measure.

And if you love to Pin, we would love to follow you on Pinterest!! You can find Showit on Pinterest too! Our boards are full of great photography, blogging, business and design pins! We're super pinteresting, and can't wait to get pinvolved with you on Pinterest!

When you started your business it's likely that you were following a dream. But have you stopped chasing that dream and instead find yourself barely staying on top of the day-to-day tasks involved with running your business? Photographers Graham and Ashley Scobey have spoken on this exact topic at conferences around the country and they want to encourage creatives, photographers specifically, to build businesses that support dreams.

Here's what Ashley had to say about the importance of taking action to make your dreams a reality…

There are certain things that most people, especially creative people, can all agree on. For example: we should all follow our dreams. Uh huh. True. We agree. Amen. Every time. We haven't met anyone in the creative entrepreneur space that fights against the idea that dreams are important.

But we've met hundreds of people who fight against the ACTION of it.

So the question becomes, if we understand that following our dreams is important, and many of us have these beautiful pieces of purpose sitting in our hearts calling out to us, then why are we not doing anything about it?

And the answer to that is different for everyone. We're afraid. We're busy. We're short on resources. We're insecure. We're waiting for something.

People have this devastating habit of making their dreams the last thing they do anything about. It becomes the thing we entertain with our spare time. The major problem with that is that nobody has any spare time so nobody is doing the things they dream of doing. What would happen if we were the kind of people who put our primary efforts into the purpose that we have been given? What would happen if our dreams were the first thing on our to-do list? What if your business was set up in a way that allowed you to spend more time on your dreams, instead of being the thing that took time away from them?

When you order your life around dreaming; when you build your business as a vehicle to support your dreams, it's a priority decision and it creates opportunity like you wouldn't believe. And we want that.

When you build a business that supports your dreams, it facilitates them. It accelerates them. It creates an environment where you get to have more dreams more often. It's magic. And it's hard work.

But we believe that doing the hard work of continually investing in your own purpose is so much better than the hard work of running yourself ragged at the edges.

We are so excited to have photographers Graham and Ashley joining us for Showit Live next Tuesday. Tune in at 10am PT / 1pm ET right here at Showiteer.com and be sure to log in to the chat so you can ask questions! Check out our archives of other great shows.

It's the most wonderful time of the year. Which also means it's the right time of year to use one of the lesser known features inside of Showit… Snowit!

Snowit is a feature that was added to Showit Desktop in 2009 as a fun widget Showit users (better known as Showiteers) could utilize during the Christmas season to make it appear that it is snowing on their sites.

Snowit is still alive and well and ready to be added to your Showit site! You'll find Snowit inside of the widget library. Once you've added Snowit to your site (and you can choose to add it to the entire site or just to a specific page), you can adjust the settings for the widget including snowflake count, size and speed.

We noticed this week that several Showiteers are getting into the holiday spirit and have already added Snowit to their sites for the season.

Check out Vancouver Wedding Photographer Justine Russo who recently redesigned her own site and added Snowit for the holiday season. www.justine-russo.com

And UK Family & Child Photographer Nadia Swindell's gorgeous site www.nadiaswindell.com.

Sisters Emily and Elizabeth of Emmazing Photography also have Snowit on their gorgeous site which is a stylegroup designed by Showit Design Partner Melissa Love. Check it out at www.emmazingphotography.com.

Finally, Australian Gold Coast fine art film photographer Casey Jane also has it gently sprinkling snow on her site at www.caseyjanephotography.com.au

When Christmas is around the corner, it means WPPI is just around the bend. As a community Showiteers love the opportunity to be together, and it's become a tradition to kick-off the WPPI expo week with dinner at the Wicked Spoon inside of the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas.

This year's dinner will be held on Sunday, March 6th starting at 6:30 pm and if you're a Showiteer we'd love to see you there! Tickets are $40 per person and there are a limited number available, so don't wait, grab your tickets now!

Your ticket includes the full (and amazing) buffet at the Wicked Spoon as well as non-alcoholic beverages. A cash bar will be available.

They say the best camera you have is the one you have on you. Thanks to technology, that means most of us have our smartphones on us at all times. In October we decided to take advantage of that fact at Showit UNITED, and asked our attendees to please take photos and videos that we could use in a montage. But instead of taking the hours it would require to put all of those photos and videos together ourselves, we connected with the team at Storymix Media and they created one for us.

And because we love a little fun competition, we decided to award prizes to three of our UNITED attendees that participated!

Grand Prize Winner: 6 Months of Showit!
1st Prize: Promo video from Storymix Media for your business
2nd Prize: $550 WeddingMix package you can give to one of your clients!

And the winners are…

Grand Prize: Brooke Hickethier of BFocused Photography
1st Prize: Kimberly Wilson of Kimi-G Photography
2nd Prize: Ryann Lindsey of Ryann Lindsey Photography

The WeddingMix app is great not just for weddings but for events like UNITED. Guests simply download the WeddingMix app to their smartphone, enter your personal wedding/event code and start taking images and video. Images and video that are submitted before the deadline will be incorporated into the Wedding Mix video.

Visit their website to find out more and check out our video from UNITED below. And stay tuned for details about the next Showit UNITED!!