How to Start a Coffee Shop Blog
How to Start a Coffee Shop Blog
How to Start a Coffee Shop Blog
The Ultimate Guide to Setting Up Your Coffee Shop Blog
When I started writing my coffee shop blog in 2011, people asked me why I wanted to write about coffee, coffee shops, and take pictures of latte art.
Baristas were amused that I took pictures of their lattes, macchiatos, and espresso machines. Even in Seattle, people seemed stunned by my curiosity about writing about something so “normal” to everyday life in the Emerald City.
At the time, there were only a handful of coffee bloggers when I started. We were scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Some of these coffee enthusiasts, coffee roasters, and geeked-out brewers continue to write, while others have gone on to do other things.
I only imagine that they all remain coffee lovers.
Today, you can’t find an Instagram account that doesn’t have a picture of coffee; and it’s hard to imagine a time when people didn’t take photos of their vanilla lattes or coffee cups. But in reality, it was just a few years ago. It’s been a fast transition – and it’s been great to see coffee shops have a bit of the spotlight.
I was there since the near beginning of coffee blogging. While coffee shop blogging has transformed, I’ve seen and worked with various platforms – from Tumblr and Blogger to WordPress.
So, if you are thinking about starting a coffee shop blog, I think I can help. This post will provide you with the ultimate guide to successfully setting up your coffee shop blog.
Disclosure: Some links are my affiliate links to help me pay for this site.
How to Start a Coffee Shop Blog
Starting a coffee shop blog has never been easier. When I first started my blog, I needed to learn HTML and a little bit of JavaScript. When I wasn’t visiting coffee shops, half of my time blogging was figuring out the code to create the look and feel I wanted my readers to have.
Today, most bloggers don’t have to worry about code. Bloggers can quickly and affordably create professional-looking blogs without knowing any code in just a short time.
My coding skills have taken a nose-dive in the last couple of years because I’ve moved on to more accessible time-saving platforms. This improvement means that you can spend most of your time being creative and delivering content for your readers!
Starting a coffee shop blog has never been easier today. However, it has always been challenging to sustain a coffee shop blog over time. So, having a game plan will help you have long-term success.
I want to encourage you to write, blog, and contribute to the excellent coffee culture that we have today. This can be an exciting personal venture!
Further Reading: How to Start a Coffee Shop Website
Knowing Your Coffee Shop Blog's Purpose
Consider your motivations before deciding on what type of coffee blog you want to. Understanding why you want to create a coffee shop blog will help you better position yourself right out of the gate. Starting a coffee shop blog can be a low-cost coffee business idea or a great way to market an existing coffee shop, among other things.
What are your blogging goals?
I want to…
- Be a local coffee shop business resource
- Highlight coffee shops that I love
- Write coffee roast reviews
- Sell coffee online
- Become an affiliate for a variety of products
- Strengthen my website development skills
- Open a coffee shop
Be a local resource – you may want to publish a local blog post to help community members and tourists find the best coffee shops in your town.
Highlight coffee shops – highlighting businesses can be beneficial to local businesses.
Coffee reviews – you may have a coffee shop blog that focuses on the taste and quality of the coffee.
Sell coffee online – Highlight coffee you love and work with wholesale coffee roasters to sell coffee online. For a detailed look, read our post, How to Sell Coffee Online.
Home coffee brewing – you can write about being a home coffee brewer and discuss ways you brew coffee to maximize taste.
Become an affiliate – As you write about coffee and coffee shops, you may become a coffee affiliate for various coffee products and home culinary items through different affiliate platforms.
Strengthen your website skills – You may be looking to strengthen your website or writing skills, and becoming a coffee blogger could be just the ticket.
Open a coffee shop – this may be a dream for many coffee lovers. Before you decide to open a coffee shop, you want to take small but feasible steps, like diving deeper into the coffee world and launching a coffee blog.
How to Start a Coffee Shop Blog
How to start a coffee shop blog
Filling a Coffee Shop Informational Niche
When starting a coffee shop blog, you want to make sure that you know:
- What your readers want
- Competition
- It’s original
What your readers want – Before starting your blog, ask yourself what your readers want to read about. What will their expectations be?
Do they want to hear about how to use a variety of home espresso machines and brewing devices? Do they want to know the location of the best coffee roaster in your city? Determine what your prospective readers will be looking for, and then write for that audience.
Competition – It’s always important to consider what is already out there. If you are writing about coffee shops in Seattle, consider what other local bloggers have already registered and highlighted.
If you are considering writing coffee reviews, consider doing an internet search. Do you plan on competing directly with established blogs? Do you plan to offer something different? Of course, it’s easier to rank higher in Google for topics that haven’t been written about – or that you feel you can do a better job capturing the essence of what you’re writing about.
Be original – I’m not necessarily talking about plagiarism (although you shouldn’t do it). I am talking about finding your style and your voice. Blogging is fun when you’re not pretending to be someone else or trying to be something you are not. You’re already cool. You have your perspective. The more original your writing and perspective are, the more likely people will gravitate to your blog.
Start a Coffee Shop Blog
Choose a Domain Name
Choose a name for your coffee shop blog and buy the domain name from a domain registrar.
In a previous post about naming your coffee shop, I pointed out that when choosing a name, you should consider making your coffee blog's name easy to:
- Spell
- Remember
- Type
Keep your domain or website address short and two or three words maximum.
Website Fundamentals:
Every website or blog needs a:
- The domain name (website address)
- Hosting provider
- Blog content
The relationship between a domain name and a hosting provider is much like buying a computer and paying for wifi service. You need both to connect to the internet.
Start a Coffee Shop Blog
Choose Your Blogging Platform
Determine where you blog is going to live online. That is, where will your coffee shop blog be hosted? Fortunately, you have a few great options! (Actually, there are endless options, but I would recommend choosing one with a reputable brand, good customer service, and that is affordable.)
Blogging Platform Options:
WordPress.org – WordPress is a free open-source software that can be downloaded for free. You can create beautiful, secure websites with WordPress. While the software is free, the hosting and the theme may cost you upfront. However, I believe that going with WordPress.org will save you more money over time.
There is a difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. The WordPress.com site you will generally have to pay for hosting is a little pricey in my opinion than other options.
I'd rather go with using the free version (WordPress.org) and buying your own hosting service. However, there are plenty of resources online for setting up your WordPress site. We’ve also written a post that explains how to set up your coffee shop website here.
Shopify – If you plan to sell coffee or other items online, Shopify is an excellent option. Shopify offers an all-in-one opportunity to blog, sell, and host your website.
With Shopify, you can create your blog and shopping cart with ease. There are monthly fees and transaction costs, but they can offer you a very secure ban beautiful website.
Wix – This is a famous all-in-one website company that has been around for years. Like Shopify, they can offer you a beautiful shopping cart and blogging themes.
Blogger – Blogger, has been a go-to blogging option for many years. It’s perfect if you want to get started blogging. The platform doesn’t offer many theme options, and you’ll have to put up with Google’s advertisements.
Weebly – Like Shopify and Wix, Weebly provides beautiful, easy-to-use website development tools to help you start your coffee blog.
Other Coffee Shop Business Resources
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How to Start a Coffee Shop Blog
How to Start a Coffee Shop Blog
What Your Coffee Blog Will Look Like
Blogging Themes or Templates
Themes are like exterior skins for your website. Specific platforms have differently coded themes. For example, you can purchase WordPress themes, Shopify themes, etc.
These platforms also have free themes that are often limited by what you can do with them. While you might not need to purchase a theme to get started from the platform, you’ll probably want a theme that fits your writing type. There are thousands of themes to choose from, and all have unique characteristics that you might like.
I would consider working with a free theme for a while until you get used to the backend of WordPress and understand what kind of elements you want and need for your blog as it grows.
Customized blogs
Your themes can determine what your blog or website will look like, but you do have the option to create a customized website. I don’t’ recommend you have a personalized website right off the bat. Spend time with an off-the-shelf theme until you feel like you are ready to move forward with a paid website theme.
How to Start a Coffee Shop Blog
My Blogging Platform Recommendations
If I were starting, I would invest in an annual hosting plan – get a free domain name of my choice (for the first year). And upload the free WordPress software. Pick a WordPress theme and start publishing my content.
For an in-depth discussion on setting up your WordPress website, read our post, How to Start a Coffee Shop Website.
How to start a coffee shop blog
Your Coffee Shop Blog Content
Pictures – It’s no secret why Instagram is so popular – people love pictures. Your readers will also love photos too. Make sure that you offer your readers plenty of pictures.
Videos – Exclusive videos and interviews may also be a great way to entice your readership. Use clips on Instagram or Facebook to entice readers to click on your blog.
Articles – Deliver articles that capture everything you wish your readers to feel, see, and experience.
Writing Your First Blog Post
Sometimes the first post is the hardest. My recommendation is that you start. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just perfectly you!
In time you will begin to find your “voice” and the style to which your readers will best respond. You may consider having a comment section that you’ll need to monitor for spam.
Make Writing a Good Habit
Try to publish a post at least once a week in the beginning to get your website tracked by Google. This is important for SEO purposes (I’ll discuss it below). Later, as your website gains some traction, you can schedule a post every month or so, depending. Have a schedule for writing and publishing posts.
Utilize a Blog Planner
You can create your blog planner in an Excel file or any available online service. It’s an excellent way to stay organized. With a coffee blog planner, you can brainstorm your blog post ideas, track your progress, see which posts are already published and which need more research, have a publishing schedule, etc.
Partner Up & Get Help
You may consider starting your coffee shop blog with a friend or two. Not only would this help you develop more content quickly but may help you leverage all of your skills. You may write posts together or separately. Additionally, you can get people to submit their own blog posts on coffee shops in your area – though you should always have the right to edit.
Side note: As a blog publisher, you will get tons of spam and even more people asking to contribute to your website though they simply want to add their own link to your articles.
Your Coffee Blog SEO
As you develop and publish your coffee shop blog content, you will want to consider your search engine ranking.
If it’s your goal to rank high for “Best Coffee Shops in Nebraska,” you’ll need to be aware of those elements that will improve your “Google Ranking.”
Increasing your “Search Engine Optimization” is an art and science beyond this article’s scope. But I will say that you can do several easy things to help your website rank higher.
- Keep your blog posts more significant than 300 words. Ideally, between 750 to 1000
- Utilize your H2 and H3 tags
- Embed links within your article to other articles within your blog
- Get external links from the websites belonging to those coffee shops you highlight
- Create sharable content
- Fresh and regular content
- Give readers a reason to come back
Building a Coffee Blog Brand
Building a coffee shop blog brand. Your brand will make it easy for readers to identify with you.
Logo – Design a logo for your blog. You can use your logo for your website, social media accounts, and business cards.
Theme – Your website theme can be a part of your branding. The style, color scheme, and look and feel can affirm your coffee blog branding.
Motto – Come up with a cathing phrase that will accompany your coffee blog concept.
Promoting Your Coffee Shop Blog
Email Marketing
Offer a subscribe field and button on your blog post to collect emails. If you use WordPress, you can do this for free (although most free WordPress email subscription controls are a bit clunky). When you are ready, you can use a paid email marketing service.
You can email your customers every time you publish a new story. Over time, your email readers will develop trust in you. When it’s time, you can sell them a variety of products.
Social Media
You will want to post on social media regularly. Social media can be a quick way to gain more followers and fans for your coffee shop blog.
Further Reading: How to Start a Coffee Shop Successfully
How to Start a Coffee Shop Blog
Publishing Your Blog Content
Things to Know When Starting a Coffee Shop Blog
I’ve been writing for a while, so if you would allow a few extra moments, I’d like to share a few pearls of wisdom.
- Don't be intimidated (you can do this!)
- Building a blog takes work
- A blog takes time
- Getting traction will also take some time
- Share your blog
- Ask those you highlight to share it with their audience
- Writing takes time
- Print business cards
- Acknowledge the side-hustle
- Network
- Be mindful of your privacy
- Have fun and don't be afraid to mix things up a bit
How to Start a Coffee Shop Blog
Conclusion
Starting a coffee shop blog can be an excellent opportunity to achieve various vital goals. With having a game plan right for the beginning, you will likely reach the goals you’ve set.
Sometimes the first step is the most challenging. But if you follow your passion and believe in your concept, you will undoubtedly run a successful coffee shop blog. If I did it, you could do it too!
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