Yesterday I wrote a quick status update offering to help businesses easily drive traffic to their sites by using Mommy Bloggers – the responses I received were from mommy’s asking “How do I blog?”
I figured a quick reply would satisfy so I typed some thing like “Go to Blogger.com, create a free account and start writing.”
Right? I mean, isn’t that what I did?
Well, No – Duh! That’s not what I did. Why did I give such a stupid answer?
I can say with a great degree of certainty that I’ve been blogging since the beginning of the craft.
I didn’t start out to blog, I started out building websites, but that turned into blogging as away to assist my clients in learning how to use their web sites and that lead to trying to help everyone – and my blogging began and grew.
So, here we go …….
Blogging from the Beginning Part 1
There are many different types of blogs.
Some folks like to write, others want to make money, others need to spread conspiracy theories. Whatever your motivation, usually you start a blog because you want someone to, at some point, see it.
People who like to write or need to get their theories out to the world, have an advantage over those who want to make money – they already know what they want to write about – those people can skip to Part 2.
For those of you who want to make money, it’s a little more difficult.
When I’m asked “What do you do?” I usually start with “I write code” That is pretty much a conversation killer. But if I’m bored and it looks like the girls may never leave the play ground, I’ll tell the inquisitive mom “I blog. Companies send me their products, I write about it, they pay me.”
Of course they want me to elaborate, because “anyone can do that”.
And yes, anyone can, but no one is going to pay you to write about their stuff unless you have a following, an enormous amount of page views, and some kind of authority.
So if blogging is something you want to get into start by making a list of what you want to write about.
You can write about something you know, something you want to learn, something you are doing. You can video blog, picture blog, eat your way into a blog – the possibilities are endless as long as the topic is endless.
Most bloggers have a niche. One topic that they write about all the time. I have no attention span so I write about everything, but in the real world of blogging you don’t want to do that.
#1 Pick one topic and stick to it.
If you want to get paid to write, you need a topic.
Bored yet? Don’t be, you’ll be surprised at want crazy things you can find to blog about.
There is a blog dedicated to pictures of Legos: A Lego A Day
Is a blog where someone took a picture of a different Lego scene every day, then he turned it into a book!
Message with a Bottle is about a Dad and the day to day life if a house husband.
[My blog is mostly dedicated to spelling mistakes and grammar errors – My Own!]
There are Review Blogs, Gadget Blogs, Blogs on every Disease known to man and many not known to man.
Write a list!
Do you want to:
* Take a picture of something every day?
* Write about your cat?
* Learn something new
* Cook something
* Think up a new “how to”
* Explore a dead language
Get creative! Don’t be a copy cat. You can write about anything, just keep it on one topic – it will make your blogging life easier.
Before you start your blog you need some kind of topic – so find one.
If you want to get started ‘write’ this second, start a blog on how you’re learning to blog – You can always change it later!
Part #2 Where the Blog Stuff Is! What you need to start a blog.