How to Start a Blog

So, you’ve read 3 Reasons to Start a Blog, and we’ve convinced you to start blogging!  Yay!

But wait… now you actually have to start a blog… What do you do first?

At the bottom of the page, there is an excellent webinar from Vertical Response (an email marketing tool) called Getting Started With Blogging.  It’s Blogging 101 in about 42 minutes.

Here are a few highlights from that webinar (sprinkled with a few opinions based on my own experience):

First you have to choose a blogging platform.  Our favorite is WordPress.  We have built several websites and blogs on WordPress, and it’s very user friendly.  (If you interested in a custom website design, check out our Web Design Package.)

Your biggest concern is probably “What the heck am I going to write about?”  The webinar below gives a long list of ideas for coming up with content, which included:

• Give advice/expertise
• Provide comprehensive “how-to” articles
• Lists: Top 10, Best/Worst, Dos & Don’ts
• Re-purpose content while adding your own perspective
• Case studies (include a problem, solution & results)
• among others (watch webinar for full list)

As I said before in 3 Reasons to Start a Blog, one way to determine content is to go through old emails and find questions that you seem to be answering over and over again, and turn those answers into a blog post that you can reference later.

And don’t be afraid to throw a few anecdotal thoughts in there, even if they don’t have anything to do with your business (See Catvertising).  If you see something that’s funny, chances are other people will think its funny.  And they might appreciate a break from the more serious content they read the rest of the day.

Also, if you’re like me, you probably troll the internet for news throughout the day, from Yahoo, CNN, Twitter, Mashable, and other blogs.  Anytime I read something that makes me stop and automatically form an opinion about the topic based on my prior experience, I try to write down that thought.  If it’s interesting enough to get me thinking quickly, it is usually interesting enough for me to spout off a few quick sentences.   And the more you do it, the more often those sentences will turn into a blog post.

So take a look at the webinar, and if you have any other questions about getting started, give us a call!