Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

The way to achieve credibility is by writing a blog.

At least that’s what I heard, and you probably did too. Is it true? Will a blog give you a writing career boost? Yes and No. It’s like planting a garden, if you give it the attention it needs to thrive, you will have good results, but if you neglect it, it will wither and die.

Here are some things to know if you are beginning a blog

1.  There are “free” blog hosting services like blogspot, blogger, and wordpress who are happy to have you join their family of bloggers. It costs nothing and they provide templates and other assistance to get you started.

2. What do the templates do? The templates are available to help you create a theme, and set up your dashboard. The dashboard controls all of the content on the blog. The theme is a term used to describe the look of your page. You can choose to personalize your blog by selecting one of many pre-built themes. If you want a site that is totally unique, you may want to consider hiring a web designer.

2.  Is there a downside to free hosting? It depends. If you are planning to use your blog as a revenue generating source, i.e. selling services or products to your readers, you may not be allowed. Also, the way the free hosting services keep it free is they can add advertisements to your site. That may not be a problem unless the ad turns out to be a direct competitor of yours.

3.  Unless you are already an experienced blogger, you may not know what you intend for the blog. The way to avoid having conflicts with hosting services is to host your own. You will have to get a domain and probably need the services of a web savvy friend to help you get set up, and going.

4.  Blogging is dynamic. If you put up a page and fail to nurture it will die. A dead blog won’t help credibility, and could hurt.

5.  How do you nurture a blog? There are two things that must be done. You have to add regular original content — not necessarily daily — but a couple of times a week if you can. The second thing is marketing. Think of marketing as telling people where your blog is and why they should go to it. It’s like being a cyber-carny barker. Some 170 thousand blogs are started daily,  so to stand out from the crowd takes some pretty strong barking.

6.  Do you have to write all of the content yourself? No, but if the purpose of the blog is to establish your credibility, you had better write a good deal of it. There are sites like ezine that gather articles for your use either for free or at a nominal charge.

7.  How much time is required to nurture your blog? Well — that depends. Working a blog can take as much time as you can give it. It can become a black hole. Treat your blogging as a business and do what successful business people do, spend your time on the activities that promise the highest rewards.