Podia is a learning management platform and a website builder that can be used for various purposes. It’s an all-in-one, cloud-based platform for bloggers, educators, marketers, designers, and entrepreneurs to create and share all kinds of content, ranging from online courses to e-books.
One of the most popular ways to use Podia, however, is to create and run a blog. You can get your blog posts to reach a wide audience and achieve success in the blogging community by using Podia.
If you’re interested in starting a blog on Podia, read on to learn how to create a blog on Podia!
It’s easy and only involves 6 steps. While it can be a bit of a learning curve at first, it’s worth it!
Does Podia Have A Blogging Tool?
One of the challenges involved in using Podia to create a blog is that while Podia is very versatile in terms of its potential uses, it does not have a designated blogging tool. This can complicate the process slightly because you’ll need to think outside the box a little to create a blog structure, but don’t panic, it’s still possible!
You can create a blog on Podia either by using custom pages, making use of the community feature on Podia, or making your previewable course. We’re going to discuss all of these options in more depth throughout this guide, so stay tuned!
Creating A Blog On Podia
Decide Your Subject Matter
Given that Podia doesn’t have a dedicated blogging tool, you’re probably scratching your head trying to work out how to create a blog on the platform in other ways.
We’re going to get to that in a moment, but for now, the first and most important thing is to decide the subject matter of your blog – in other words, what is your blog going to be about?
The good news here is that you can choose just about anything to write a blog about.
The less good news is that if your goal is to create a successful blog and maybe even make money from blogging, you’re going to need to think strategically about your niche.
Passion For The Subject
The most essential thing when choosing a blog topic is making sure you’re genuinely passionate about your subject. Readers are only going to stick around and read your posts if they are interested in what you’re writing about, and people who are passionate about your chosen topic(s) are going to be able to tell if your heart’s in it or not.
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Knowledge Of The Niche
In addition to being passionate about your chosen subject, you should be informed about it. Of course, you can consult other sources for information when writing your posts, but you should have enough of your knowledge to make your blog a valuable source of information in its own right.
Specificity
If possible, try to keep your niche small enough to ensure specificity. Specificity is key when it comes to finding your niche and making your blog unique. On the other hand, you don’t want your niche to be so small and specific that you struggle to come up with new content.
Potential Profit
The profit potential is also a key element of blogging. Not everyone wants to make money from their blog, but if you do, you need to think about whether enough people are researching your blog’s topic to ensure consistent traffic, and whether you can easily incorporate advertising or affiliate marketing.
Competition
Too much competition is not a good thing, but too little probably means there aren’t many people interested in what you’re writing about. You should be looking for a niche with a moderate level of competition.
Longevity
If you’re going to start a blog around a particular niche, you should have some idea of how long the niche is likely to be around. Starting a blog on something likely to be a passing trend will limit your ability to continue blogging in the future, so it’s best to choose a topic that people will be interested in for years to come.
Sort Out Your Domain/Subdomain
You need to set up a website on Podia before you can create a blog on the platform, and this involves choosing a custom domain name or subdomain.
When you sign up for a Podia account, you’ll be given a Podia subdomain that is customizable. If you use this, your URL will look something like www.exampleblog.podia.com.
However, you also have the option of creating a custom domain, which is easy to do if you’re on a paid plan with Podia. You’ll just need to buy your custom web domain first and then link up either a subdomain or root domain.
Podia has a complete guide to setting up your domain name, so you can follow these guidelines if you want a custom domain for your blog. Otherwise, you can go ahead and use the subdomain provided with your Podia account.
Choose A Blog Structure
As we mentioned earlier, Podia doesn’t have a tool specifically for blogging, so you’re going to need to use some of the other features of the platform to create your blog structure. You have three main options when it comes to doing this, which are:
Custom Pages
You can add custom pages to your Podia webiste for digital downloads, and these are perfect for creating blog posts. To add a custom page to your site on the Podia website, you will need to go to the site editor and select ‘page navigation’ from the top corner of the page.
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From here, you will be able to create a blank page, in which you can add video content or written content by clicking on the ‘+’ sign. One reason we recommend using the custom page feature to make a blog on Podia is that it’s excellent for SEO.
You can edit the metadata for each page by going into the site editor again and opening the page navigation menu, from which you can select ‘page settings’ and edit the title, link, and meta description. Even better, you can make a custom landing page to represent your blog as a whole.
This way, you can incorporate a custom button to take readers to your blog posts from the landing page, so it’s easy to navigate.
Public Community Posts
Another option for creating a blog on Podia is to use the community feature, which allows you to create public posts for all of your community to see.
On the other hand, if you want your blog to be membership-only (for example, if you want only people on your email list to be able to access it) you can make access to your topic private.
To get started, just create a public topic on your community page and choose to make it either public or private. Then, go into the post editor by clicking on ‘new post’ and add the content you want your readers to see before publishing the post.
Previewable Courses
Finally, it’s also possible to make a blog on Podia by making a previewable course. Just set up a course on Podia where access is free, and make sure you set all the lessons to be previewable so that your viewers don’t have to pay or join a membership to see the posts.
The course creator tool in Podia has a text editor that allows you to not only input written content but also add images and GIFs as well as other files. When it comes to organizing your posts, you can simply create sections within your course to arrange your posts either by topic or by date posted.
Put Out Some Content
Once you have chosen how you’re going to structure your blog on Podia, whether it’s through community posts, a previewable course, or custom pages, you need to start putting out content. We recommend sitting down and working out a structure for your blog post before you start writing.
This will help you to create a blog post that flows naturally and that is easy for readers to follow.
It’s easy to just sit down and write a long wall of text about a subject you’re interested in, but if you want readers to read all the way through, you should use clear and logical headings as well as subheadings, and do your best to use shorter sentences and paragraphs. Always remember to edit your work before you publish it.
You want your blog to seem professional and high-quality, and nothing ruins that impression like lots of typos and grammatical errors. Use spell check and have someone else proofread for you if you can since it’s easy to miss errors in your work.
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Search Engine Optimization
Here’s where things get serious. If you want a lot of people to find your blog without having to scroll to the 10th page of Google search results, you need to optimize your content for search engines.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is something that you can pay a professional to do if you have the budget for an SEO specialist, but realistically, most people don’t. Plus, when you’re just starting, hiring a professional can seem like a big decision.
Luckily, you can optimize your content for search engines yourself if you bear a few simple rules in mind. Firstly, all of your blog posts need to contain relevant keywords that a lot of people are likely to search for.
There are tools online that will search for the best, relevant keywords in relation to your chosen topic, and we recommend using them to get ahead of the competition.
You should create pillar pages within your blog that link out to other, more specific blog posts, making sure that you keep your pillar pages updated and link back to your pillar page from other posts. This will help your posts to rank higher for specific keywords.
Always be on the lookout for broken links and duplicate content, since these will lower your blog’s SEO, and make sure you have a good linking strategy to keep your blog climbing through the search results over time.
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Build A Following
SEO will help more people to discover your blog, but there are other ways to build a loyal following for your posts.
For a start, we recommend having an email marketing list that your followers can opt into in exchange for some kind of reward (the reward will be up to you to decide on, but if you’re selling digital products through your blog, a discount is a good choice). Make sure to have an effective call to action to encourage people to sign up!
You can also use lead magnets to show the value of your blog and incentivize readers to give you their contact information. The best way to do this is to identify your most popular content and create a lead magnet on that page to get readers to be your email subscribers.
Featuring as a guest poster on other successful blogs will help to raise awareness about your blog. Hopefully, the other blog’s readership will click over to your blog and subscribe to you, as well.
Just make sure the sites you’re appearing as a guest for are high-authority and that you have a good pitch to convince other bloggers to let you feature.
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Final Thoughts
Although Podia does not have a specific blog tool, you can use custom pages, the community post feature, or the course creator tool to make a blog on this platform.
Once you’ve chosen a blog topic that will generate a lot of traffic for the foreseeable future, and that you’re passionate and knowledgeable about, you can start building a successful Podia blog.
Make sure to choose a good custom domain or Podia subdomain and optimize your content for SEO if you want more people to find your blog. Opt-in email lists, lead magnets, and guest posts on other blogs are all good ways to build your Podia blog’s following.
