So you're thinking of starting a blog, because everyone else has one, or because you or your company has an itch that needs to be scratched. Here's a run down of what you need to know and what you need to think about before you put the first words down on paper.
1. Pick a blog platform that matches your personality. If you choose right, you can pick from a default template and not have to make very many changes to get started with something that looks good. Otherwise you end up spending all your time tweaking templates and layout and not enough time writing. Tip: find blogs that you already read, and that you like the look of, and see what they are using.
2. Brainstorm some great titles ahead of time. You don't need to write entire essays on every topic you want to cover before starting, but before you do any typing sit down in a quiet corner with your favorite pen and paper and put down 20 or 30 or 50 titles of things you know that you could write more about. You'll have all the time in the world to write about these (or more, or different), but if you start with something in mind you will have some clue what direction you're trying to go in. Tip: For even more pithiness, start with Twitter and limit yourself to 140 characters or less per title. Fill that character limit exactly if you can.
3. Select a catchy title for your weblog. (All of the good ones are already taken.) The name of your weblog gets put into the header of every post you make, and as a result it is overweighted on search results. It's a problem as hard (or as easy) as naming a pet, or a rock band, or a new subdivision. Some consistently good words to add in are your name, your city (if you are writing about that city), and some of the themes you write about.
Good: Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104
Good: Four Obsessions: Reading, Writing, Cooking and Knitting
Bad: Ed's Musings
Tip: you can change the long name of your blog after you start it, so if you find your focus shifting over time, don't be afraid to rename to be more specific.
4. Write for yourself. Really, you are best off with an audience of one to start, and use your time and effort to write down things that you will want to read in a week or a month or a year. If you are interesting to your audience of one, you have some hope of being interesting to some other person somewhere else on the planet who is interested in you. Tip: If you have already writtten something somewhere on the net that you're proud of, repurpose it or reprint it in your blog; that can get you off to a good start.
5. Write for an audience of one. Once you get beyond having your future self in your sights, pick a single person who you can identify will be interested in what you have to say, and write your blog entry as a letter to them in public. When you post it, send them an email and let them know that you wrote it. Many times the emails that you send out contain things that you will repeat from time to time, and by fixing the output in a place that is online you can get it going without much of an extended effort. Tip: Don't write anything on your blog that you don't want in public - but then again if you are blogging you already know that, I hope.
6. Write for an audience of the Google. Somewhere between 30% and 80% of your weblog traffic in the long run will be coming from search terms on Google. Writing for Google is no great shakes - just make sure the key words you are talking about match with the search terms people are using. Tip: look through your search logs to see what search terms people are actually searching for, and what questions they are actually asking, and if they ask interesting questions answer those.
7. Quote from people who you respect. An early writing practice was a "commonplace book", where the literate people of the pre-Xerox, pre-Internet day copied out by hand passages from other works that they wanted to save and make their own. Pieces of poetry, bits of news, copies of messages you want to fix in time, can all go into a blog stream to be commented on and added to. Tip: only quote from people who you respect, because the last thing you want is to be on the top of a search queue for something you don't care anything about.
8. Don't be afraid to stop blogging. There's nothing wrong with taking something up, trying it out, and deciding that it's not for you. If your schedule or your constitution doesn't allow for a few minutes a week to reflect on what's going on around you, find some other way to express yourself. Not everyone is cut out to write long essays, and it's ok to quit. Tip: if you do decide to put a blog on mothballs, make sure that your last post to it points people to something you do want them to see.
9. Weblogs don't need to be about long postings like this one. Use Flickr for photo blogs, Twitter for very short format blogging from your cell phone, or YouTube if you're doing video. It's relatively unusual to put together extended ten point plans for doing anything. One paragraph - even one sentence - can capture a moment or tell a story or answer that crucial technical question you need to have saved for your future self or someone else with a similar need. Tip: when in doubt, fill the size of the input box for whatever tool you are using to post with.
10. For some reason, people who read Digg love long lists. If you are writing ten short things on a topic, write an 11th long "top ten" list that rolls them all together. Tip: you can do this piecemeal, if you need to.
Great post Ed. I need to figure out how to blog from Twitter.
Posted by: Derek Mehraban | May 01, 2007 at 08:44 PM