Made the following presentation to the 3×2 Networking Group this morning on the basics of blogging.
Many customers, friends and family ask me all the time for advice on how to get started in blogging. While I could go on and on about everything one could do to successfully blog, it could prove to be overwhelming. So to make it easy, I will start out with some basic information and add to it from time to time.
- Decide what you’re going to blog about. Keep in mind that there are literally 100s of millions of bloggers worldwide. If you’re going to attract the right readers you best know what you’re talking about and be passionate about it.
- To host or not to host – You need to decide if you’re going to sign for a freebie blogging site such as blogspot or blogger.com or if you want to set up an independent blog on a web server where you pay for the hosting services. I pay to have this blog hosted. It cost around $6-$7/year. With a freebie site you have to be prepared for two things: one, you don’t own your domain name. Your domain becomes something like this “blogtitle.blogger.com”. Should you decide at some point you want to strike out on your own, you will lose all the content you spent perhaps years building up. And you have to let your audience know where you went. Second, you have to put up with their ads. Frre doesn’t really mean free.
- Host your own – Offers more flexibility because you “own” the turf. You can monetize the site (topic for another time), your content is your own and your audience stays with you (so long as your good). It costs money, but its money well spent.
The best software when hosting your own blog is WordPress in my humble opinion. The hosting company I use set up my site with the software already installed. When inside the admin part of the site I can set my theme and a variety of other configurations. I will discuss these at a future blog post.
Watch for more tips and tricks to help you get started. Mike and I also conduct seminars through the Illinois Small Business Development Center at McHenry County College.
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