Blogging During COVID-19: 5 Reasons to Start a Blog Now and How

COVID-19 is currently a hot topic, and what do you do to (hot) topics? You write about them. Which brings us to blogging during COVID-19. Should you or should you not start a blog during this lockdown?

With nearly 3 billion people at home in over 130 countries, reports estimate the economic impact of COVID-19 could be north of $4 trillion or up to 4.8% of global gross domestic product. This has, is and will affect the lives and livelihoods of billions.

Early in April, 6.6 million Americans lost their jobs within a week, bringing the total job loss due to Coronavirus to a whopping 16 million and counting.

With more and more people jobless and forced indoors and online, it is high time we rethink screen time.

Speaking of screen time, one of the best ways to maximize your lockdown screen time is to start a blog now. In this post, we’ll highlight five (5) key reasons why you should start a blog during COVID-19 lockdown and how, but first.

What is a Blog?

First, it was known as “web log”, then “weblog”, then “we blog” and finally “blog.”

A blog is a section of a website dedicated to creating and publishing content on a regular basis often displayed in reverse chronological order.

Let’s take a look at

COVID-19 and Blogging

Blogging has proven to be beneficial and essential for a time like this when businesses and life as we know it are on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Transiting from the boardroom to the bedroom means boredom for many. One of the ways to maximize your time, beat boredom, keep in touch with customers, and retain your current customers during this lockdown is to start a blog.

Here are

Some Popular Types of Blogs You Can Start

• Personal Blogs focus on the author and their life e.g
• Business Blogs e.g BPlans for people starting a business.
• Niche Blogs cover a particular subject in-depth e.g Coffee Review for coffee lovers.
• Professional Blogs are run by bloggers who make a living from their blogs e.g Ryan Robinson of RyRob.Com.
• Reverse or Inverse Blogs allow several bloggers or contributors e.g. Quora
• Media Blogs use multimedia to create content like vlogs, photo blogging, linklogs, art blogs, podcasting, e.g PewDiePie
• MicroBlogs or Tumblelogs allow users to create short pieces of content e.g Twitter

And here are:

Some Important Blogging-Related Statistics

• There are currently over 1.7 billion websites in the world
• About 500 million of these are blogs
• Tumblr hosts over 440 million blogs
• WordPress powers around 60 million websites
• 36% of the web is built on WordPress
• Around 2 million posts are published daily
• 70 million posts are published monthly via WordPress
• Monthly, nearly 404 million people view 20 billion pages of content
• 77% of internet users read blogs
• Each month, readers generate 77 million new comments
• It takes around 3.5 hours to create an average blog post
• Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages
• Businesses who blog receive 97% more links
• Blogs are the 5th most trusted source of information
• By 2020 there’ll be 31.7 million bloggers in the USA, etc

Following are

5 Reasons to Start a Blog during COVID-19 Pandemic

People are asking, is now a good time to start a blog, business or anything for that matter? Although FEMA reports that 40% of businesses fail after a natural disaster with 25% of them within a year, now is no doubt a good time to start that blog you’ve always dreamed about.

1. Time

Reports say it takes roughly 3.5 hours to create an average blog post. Of course, it may take more time to create above average articles, but this depends on certain other factors like experience, expertise, depth of research, word count, etc.

However, whatever the case, chances are you have more time on your hands now than pre-COVID-19. Without anything inspiring to fill your lockdown time, boredom can set in, leading to depression, anxiety, frustration, etc.

Interestingly Ryan Robinson of RyRob explains that he built his first blog while building other side hustles like Case Escape to over $160k a year putting in extra hours after work. Now you have free time, it’s a great time to start that blog.

2. Training

Without training, you would be straining. You’ll need someone to show you exactly how to start a blog from scratch. There are tons of courses, tutorials, and resources that teach you how to start a profitable blog even as a novice.

Depending on your niche or area of interest you can check out people, places, or programs like:

• Ryan Robinson
• Pat Flynn
• Neil Patel
• Seth Godin
• CopyBlogger
• CopyHacker
• ProBlogger
• Udemy, etc

3. Tools

To create and run a successful blog you will need certain tools and online resources. You will need a CMS like WordPress (powers 36% of the web), a domain name, hosting company/package, plugins, extensions, etc.

Some of these tools cost a fee and come with a free trial period. Thankfully, most businesses are offering discounts, trial extensions, and exemptions to small businesses impacted by COVID-19.

For instance, Shopify is offering an extended 90-day free trial for people who want to open their online store during the lockdown: it used to be 14-days.

Other companies/businesses implementing COVID-19 giveaway for SMBs include:

• Ahrefs (Get an extra month subscription for free on the Lite Plan)
• UberSuggest (Access to historical data, More keywords, More content ideas, and top pages, etc)
• BlueHost (Money-back guarantee extended from 30-60 days during April)
• Buffer (Gifting essential features, Waiving upcoming payments, Pause your subscription, Extended 90-day trials for new customers)

All you need do is check your favorite online or blogging tools to see if they’re offering any CORD-19 palliatives.

4. Traffic

Worldwide, people are home and bored. To pass time, majority go online visiting social media sites, online stores, and playing online games, etc. Recently, Facebook reported a drop in revenue amidst rising user engagement, especially with voice and video calls.

The report says traffic across Facebook’s messaging platform has increased by over 50% since COVID-19. This has even prompted the WHO to launch a Facebook Messenger chatbot to help combat fake news and misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

With more screen time and traffic online, not blogging is akin to leaving money on the table. This could be your chance to land new leads and connect with your customers or audience via blogging. Coverage of essentials like COVID-19 safety tips, lockdown, work from home tips, money management tips, etc, can go a long way.

5. Topics

Blogging is all about content and context, and there’s plenty to talk about now. Whether you’re blogging for personal, business, professional or other reasons, now is a great time to start and run a blog.

You can blog to build authority or expertise, to advertise your products or services, to communicate and relate with your customers, for lead generation, nurturing or conversion purposes. For each of these, there are plenty of topics to choose from.

Tools like AnswerThePublic can help you generate topic ideas to write about. Type your keywords or search query into the search bar and it will generate topics using visualization or data with results displayed as questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabeticals, related.

Trending topics include COVID-19, lockdown, stay at home, boredom, work from home, social distancing, job loss, 5G, among others.

Conclusion

There are so many reasons to start a blog during this COVID-19 pandemic orchestrated lockdown. The time, the training, the tools, the traffic, and the topics are in perfect alignment for you to start a blog during this lockdown. And the best part, you’ll still own the blog and likely earn from it long after Coronavirus.

So why not?