Okay Geek Farm
How to Start Your Own Blog - Introduction
Ricardo Trejo
Tweets and site comment boxes just not cutting it? Do you need a bigger soapbox, one to call your own, to express your thoughts and share them with others across the globe? Then you my friend are ready to enter into the world of blogging. It’s not as complicated as some may make you believe, and at the same time it’s not as easy either. It takes dedication, consistency, and a good understanding of how not to go overboard with verbiage and funny Caturday pictures.
Think of this as an introductory post in a series that I’ve been charged to create, to help people (such as yourself) get a better grasp of what it means to blog and how to do it. But before I go into that, it’d probably be best if you knew a little bit more about my own blogging adventures.
Who Am I?
I’m not an online guru, and I don’t do “market research” — I’m simply a guy named Ricardo who got caught up in the craze of owning your own slice of the internet and began blogging. To give you a little history… In mid-2007, I opened a free acount on Blogger and made my first ever blog. It was a humble beginning, and for all the time I put into it, I didn’t really get that much out of it. I eventually transferred that blog onto Wordpress since I preferred their site tools better than Bloggers, and while I still didn’t get all that many readers, maybe just a handful per day, knowing those pairs of eyes were reading over my handwritten words gave me a rush I couldn’t describe. Not to mention having a place that had my name at the top, and a URL that I could direct friends and family to and say “check out my blog”, well those were just the icing on the cake.
A little later on I came in contact with another blogger by the name of Brandon Davenport, who had just recently opened a new blog called t3chh3lp.com. We decided to team up and it’s been working out for us ever since.
How Can I Help?
By using the experience I’ve gained in the near 4 years I’ve been writing for blogs, I hope to give you a good picture as to what choices and challenges you’ll face in this venture. Think of this as a guide on how to make — no, not the best — a blog that you’re proud of and want to share.
Questions to Think About
Before we begin talking about how to write your first blog post, there are quite a number of important questions you’re going to have to ponder over first. For instance, did you know that there are different avenues of blogging you can take? Services likes Tumblr, WordPress, Squarespace, and LiveJournal are just a few of your options, and they’re all great — however, before you decide which one you want to latch onto, you may want to think about why you want to blog in the first place.
Being able to answer this all-too important question will give you the information you need to find the best tools suited for your needs.
Beyond figuring out your own personal motives for wanting to blog you’re going to need to name your site. Have you figured that one out yet? Will it be a .com, .net, or neither? And how will you promote it so you don’t end up using your blog as a virtual diary to vent to? This series will be ongoing and I hope I will be able to answer most, if not all, of people’s common questions regarding this new internet trend, which has actually become more of common place as each day passes.
Next Time: Choosing a Blogging Service
In the next edition of “How to Start Your Own Blog”, I’ll go through the process of deciding which blogging platform will be best for your own personal, blogging needs — delving into each one based on features, design layout, and the required amount of technical prowess a user must have to use each service.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them in the comments below and I’ll answer them as they come in.
Image by Tojosan - Flickr
