The blogging bug has bitten many people because many people are asking us what blogging is about. From teens to senior managers, everyone’s excited about this new phenomenon called blogging.
Based on our talk last year at a local college on how to blog right, it’s quite safe to say that blogging is very popular. So this article is for all of you who want to start a blog but don’t know how.
The number one consideration before you start a blog is this: what is your goal? Are you looking for a way to share your knowledge and expertise on a subject that’s close to your heart? Are you looking to earn quick money? Are you looking for a way to practise your writing skills? Are you looking to compile all these blog posts later into something you can publish or print as a memoir?
The second consideration is: do you have time to blog? Like our first toy, we get excited for the first week when we first get our blog up and running. But blogging for fun and serious blogging are two different animals.
Fun blogging doesn’t care much for anything else - the blogger just blogs because he wants to write what he feels like writing. Serious blogging, on the other hand, can be about marketing one’s business, earning money from adsense or pay per review, spreading one’s ideas and lots more.
If you are into serious blogging, it will eat into your time. You may need to plonk yourself right in front of the PC and blog away. We often tell friends that serious bloggers take a lot of time in creating blog posts for their audience. It’s not something you can type up in 5 minutes. And factor in too the time you need to resize photos or Photoshop them properly before you add them to your blog. So all in all, it’s not that easy or simple to be a serious blogger (or one that makes moolah from blogging).
It’s not rocket science if you start with a simple blog solution like Blogger.com. The advantages? It is free and easy to start. It doesn’t need much technical knowledge (unlike other blog solutions such as Wordpress). Wordpress however is fairly popular and has lots of expansion potential and flexibility and is great for those who want to totally personalise their blogs.
To start your blog, just go to http://www.blogger.com. You must first have an account with Blogger (Blogger has been bought over by Google so if you have a Gmail account, signing up is even easier!).
The cool thing is, they’ve got new features which allow you to drag and drop features so you can in a way ‘design’ how you want your blog to look like. You can even change colours of the background and text quickly to reflect the kind of theme you want.
They’ve even thought about privacy. Let’s say you want to create a blog just to update family and friends about your life (which saves you the trouble of repeating yourself in your emails anyway) - well, you can set permissions within Blogger and only those you allow will be able to view your blog.
Or say you want to have a community blog where you and your friends/colleagues take turns to write about matters close to your hearts. You can have multiple authors in Blogger so everyone gets a chance to blog as and when they wish, from wherever they are.
Like Blogger says, you only have 3 simple steps to follow:
1. Create an account
2. Name your blog
3. Choose a blog template
When you are at http://www.Blogger.com, click on the orange arrow which says “Create your blog now”. You will be taken to a page which asks you to create a Google/Gmail account if you don’t already have one.
Next, you will be asked to name your blog. This will identify your blog from the gazillions of blogs out on the web. Remember, your blogname will be followed by blogspot.com (unless you buy a domain name of your own and use it to mask the blogspot URL). For instance, if the blog name is AuntieMargaretStories then the blog will be AuntieMargaretStories.blogspot.com when it is created. But before that name can be yours, you need to check its availability. So think of more creative names (well, it also helps you stand out anyway).
If you wish to host your blog somewhere other than Blogger, you can do that too. If you choose this option (under Advanced Blog Setup), you need to fill in your web server details.
After that, you are almost done. The next step is to choose how you want your blog to look like to the world by choosing the blog template you like. And that’s it - once that’s done, you can start posting!
And if you ever get stuck, you can refer to the Blogger Help Resources section at http://help.blogger.com which really is quite helpful with its tips, tricks and additional information.
Here’s to Happy Blogging!
Krista Goon is a partner and co-founder of Redbox Studio, a web design and web consultancy firm based in Penang, Malaysia. She has been blogging for 5 years now and currently manages 4 blogs, each dealing with a specific passion and interest. More blog tips and ideas plus marketing insights can be found at her business blog, http://www.RedboxStudio.com/blog
