Why another blogging how to? Aren’t there enough on of them already in the blogosphere?
My general feeling is there are so many ways to present ideas, and you will enjoy one persons style more than another, so I am just another style. I also figure that you don’t want to jump all over the place, so if you’re here why not get some added value.
I am not a techie, so I will be able to show you that anyone can set up a blog quickly.
Why Blog?
There are so many reasons for blogging. You might be a business that wants to have more open communications with your customers, a research group that wants to have a forum to discuss your current project, a small business that wants to sell a product or service, a budding writer who wants to get feed back on you upcoming masterpiece, or you might just want a place to journal and share thoughts and pictures with family and friends. Whatever your desire the simplicity of blogging makes it a snap.
Where To Begin.
There are two main ways to host your blog.
1. On a blogging network like Myspace or Blogger .
This is definitely the easiest way to start blogging fast, and if you are only interested in sharing thoughts, pictures and videos with family and friends this is the perfect place to start. It’s free, fast and easy to use.
2. Set up your blog under your own domain and upload blog software onto your site.
Though a little more technical, this is definitely the route for a business that want to have control over the complete blogging experience. It is also a must if you want to generate awareness about your blog. Myspace and Blogger to not optimize you for search-ability on the various search engines.
There are a number of blog software out there, most of them free. I use WordPress and I am very pleased with it. WordPress is very user friendly, their user forums are very thorough and they are constantly improving their product.
If you are going to set up your own personal make sure your hosting is on a Linux server (as opposed to a Microsoft Server), as many blogs need to use MySQL databases (which are Linux based).
If you don’t have a host I recommend 1and1 . Their beginner Linux hosting package is $2.99 a month and it comes with WordPress already installed.
If you are already hosting your domain elsewhere or you plan on going with a different host. Then just follow the instructions on the software you choose to upload.
If you have trouble finding your MySQL database names and passwords just email your host and they will show you how to find it (every system is different).
Customizing Your Blog.
I thing the real beauty of blogging is the ease of customization. The blog Admin panel has simple tables where you can enter the text for your titles and categories, select your layout and colors, and upload and activate various plug-ins (I’ll discuss plug-ins later).
One thing that is really cool about personalizing your blog is that you can search through thousands of themes (this is how your site looks) and then quickly upload it onto your blog. You can check our some great wordpress themes at http://themes.wordpress.net/ .
Posting
Again blogging makes it very simple to write a post on your blog. Just go to the admin panel, select write post, write your post and insert pictures and press publish. That simple.
Generating Awareness Of Your Blog.
If you want to go beyond your friends and family you will have to take steps to generate traffic to your blog.
The three main methods are.
- Let the blog search engines know about you.
- Comment on other blogs.
- Submit your work to Blog Carnivals.
1. Let the blog search engines know about you.
There are two ways to let the engines know about you; One is to submit you site on the engine ( on technorati you just type your name in the search box and you are submitted) the second is to write a post and ping the search engines.
Without getting in to the technicals of pinging, just know that when you write a post and submit it your blog send a message to all the blog search engines letting them know you just wrote something and they should check you out and categorize you. As I said most blogging software comes with this feature on it (it may need to be activated). If yours doesn’t you can go to a site like Ping-O-Matic and enter the URL of your post.
2. Comment on other blogs.
Many blogs let you make comments on their posts. Find blogs that have a readership that you want to attract, and write a comment on one of their post. In order to submit the comment you will be asked for your name and URL. Put in your Blog name and URL. If people like what you have to say they might come back to your blog, and if they like what they find there they will comeback again and maybe even tell friends.
3. Submit your work to Blog Carnivals.
Definitely one of the more effective ways to generate traffic to your site. A blog carnival is a forum for submitting a post to specific blogs that recommend other blogs. Sort of confusing but know that it works. I submitted a post on one of the business carnivals, the following week I was recommended to their readers and that day my traffic tripled.
To submit to a carnival just go to http://blogcarnival.com/bc/ and follow the instructions.
You know have the basics for starting your own blog. In future post I will discuss various techniques that will help you maximize your blog.
Have a great day.
