How to Create Your First Blog
I’ve been running a blog now for about 2 years, and I’m amazed at the number of visitors that I get from my blog and the variety of folks that inform me that they first heard about me from my blog in preference to my website. The word weblog is derived from the time period “internet log,” or a web diary or magazine. If the HBO collection “Sex and the City” had been being filmed these days, Carrie Bradshaw might be a blogger in addition to a columnist, I assume. Why? As she reviews her revelations approximately life, love, and relationships, she could submit them to her blog for the world to peer and comment upon.
Blogging has opened internet site introduction to almost everyone, as it takes a tiny understand-a way to get a weblog up and walking. In fact, many service enterprise owners are using a weblog platform as their number one internet site, with a number of them creating static pages as you will locate on a traditional website, even as others are using the platform as a weblog and are posting updates often.
1. Search engines love blogs. The method that appears to be attractive to search engines like google these days is frequently updated content material. I can log in to my weblog at the start of an afternoon and publish a publish. Within 24 hours, I’ll get a notification from my Google alerts account that Google has listed that submit.
2. Content can be allotted quickly. If you instruct your site visitors to subscribe to your blog through updating services like Bloglines or Feedblitz, they may be notified within hours of any new posts in your weblog.
3. Little internet programming know-how is required. Once your weblog is set up, it is truly a count of logging into your account, typing the data for you publish, adding pix or pics as wished, and publishing your post to your blog.
4. Reader feedback. Your readers can provide you with feedback and feedback approximately your posts nearly straight away once you log in to access them. Blogs are a terrific manner to engage your target audience. Are ezines and conventional websites dead? No, because humans devour data differently. Some are auditory learners and like to pay attention to the info (exquisite target audience for podcasting, an audio form of running a blog), a few favorites to acquire updates as they may be published (weblog readers), even as others like a solid, desk-bound medium to which they can refer. At the same time, they’re geared up (readers who archive ezines or bookmark net pages).
How do you start a weblog? Here are 10 simple steps you could follow:
1. Blogging platform. The easiest manner to get started is to use the free provider found at Blogger.Com or WordPress.Com. The ability to personalize your blog is restrained with the unfastened services, so I urge my customers to subscribe to Typepad.Com so that it will host your weblog for you on their servers or buy a hosting account where WordPress can be hooked up. The downloadable model of WordPress is positioned at WordPress.Org and is freed from the fee if you need to put in WordPress your self in your website hosting account. I use Typepad for my weblog, so many of my examples will relate exclusively to blogs hosted on that platform.
2. Name. What do you want to call your blog? Blog names tend to be attention-getting and off-beat. However, I inspire my clients to use keywords crucial to their commercial enterprise when naming their blog for carrier corporations. You may even want to accumulate them.Com model of your blog’s call or your blog’s name with the word “weblog” attach as your weblog URL. After installing your blog, your blog issuer can provide you with extra information approximately the way to map your domain to your blog. (Note: You don’t want to, in reality, head your blog on your area call, as that affects the URLs of your man or woman weblog pages).
3. Look and Layout. How many columns do you want to display? Do you need hyperlinks to static pages? What hues do you need to apply? How about a signup box for a free giveaway? Should you operate one of the templates furnished or have something custom designed? Do you need your blog data displayed? Do you want to be the best author, or do you need to allow others to make posts as nicely? You may be asked many questions within the startup segment, approximately the appearance of your weblog. A Typepad weblog permits you to exchange your mind about your format at a later date. The excellent manner of determining the appearance of your weblog is to observe the layout of other blogs and determine what appeals to you.
4. Widgets. There are some of the widgets or add-on packages that you may comprise into your weblog. Check your blog software’s web page for extra info approximately what features you need to add to your blog. At a minimum, you may need to provide site visitors more than one ways in which they can get hold of weblog updates through various updates, or feeder offerings, as referred to in advance.
5. Comments. The newest sp*am making its rounds online is comment sp*am. Don’t these men have something better to do? Set your feedback to moderated, which means that that you need to approve any comments to your blog before the put up is going stay. You’ll keep yourself high-quality many complications and time by selecting to mild the feedback. Once you’ve gotten this some distance, you should have a fundamental weblog hooked up and are equipped to start with the weblog.
6. Blog content material. The time has arrived — your weblog is prepared to accept posts. What do you write approximately? You can put up content material with wealthy articles of interest for your goal marketplace, comment on a modern event, solution questions from your visitors, gift a before and after case observe outlining how your enterprise helped someone, and many others. Keep your eyes and ears open for statistics applicable to your audience. I use my weblog to bring on information that doesn’t shape well into my e-newsletter layout or something that arises among publication problems. I submit my ezine content material to my weblog as properly.
7. Posting frequency. Blogs are similar to gardens — they want to water frequently and require a little care and attention. For maximum effectiveness, you need to put up several instances per week for your weblog. I attempt to submit four instances in line with a week in my blog — 2 posts are items I run throughout or remark upon as noteworthy inside the second, and the latter 2 are the contents of my ezine published over 2 days. And, respond to reader’s remarks when they come — blogs provide an amazing forum for ongoing discussions.
9. Measure the effects. Some blog packages, like Typepad, have built-in records so you can view info on your blog traffic. Some of the feed/updater packages have built-in information as properly, or you may install a metrics program as an add-on on your blog. Review your data frequently to decide how much traffic your weblog generates.
10. Rinse and repeat. Don’t permit the newness of blogging put on-off. Blogging is effective most effective if you keep your running blog efforts often over an extended period of time. I realize several people who’ve gotten ebook deals from their weblog and radio and TV interviews. Just assume — your blog is probably your ticket to reputation!
