So you want to start a blog. That is awesome, but do you know what you’re getting into?
90% of the people who come to me about starting a Blog have no idea what all is involved with blogging. They go to a conference and hear a speaker tell them they need a blog and that is all they hear. Then they will come to me asking what it takes to become a blogger.
They are always shocked to find all that goes along with blogging that has little to do with blogging.
Back a few years ago I outlined what all is involved with blogging. I even blogged about the Downside of Blogging. And I may have even touched on in another blog what I am going to blog about today, the Admin side of blogging.
Get Serious or Go Home
Back in 2000, my mentor made it very clear to me that if I was going to start blogging I would have to either take it seriously or not blog. Now after almost 18 years of blogging I clearly understand what he meant. You have to be serious with your blog or it is waste of time and effort.
There is no wading around in the shallow end of blogging because, as bloggers know, there is no shallow end to blogging. You have to go into blogging with the mindset of undertaking everything that is involved with blogging even if it has nothing to do with blogging.
Today, every business person, or brand, has got to have a blog to archive their opinions or product/service descriptions. As consumers get more internet savvy, the demand for businesses and professionals to have a robust digital footprint increases. The same goes for the hobbyist bloggers.
Which Door Will You Take
From the first day you decide you are going to blog there is a fork-in-the-road for blogging to face. In order to know which direction to take a blogger needs to find out what it takes to manage a blog.
It is one thing to write a blog and another, more important, thing to Manage a Blog. A blogger cannot do one without the other.
Most newbies to blogging have a pretty clear picture of the journalistic aspects of blogging. What all find surprising is all that goes into creating the blog and maintaining the site over time. It is the set-up and daily management of a blog none of them realize goes along with blogging.
Here is a breakdown of what has to be decided on Day 1 of Blogging
1. Blog Platform?
There is an assortment of Blog Platforms. A blog platform is where you create your image and write your blog.
WordPress is the best-known blogging platform and the most used. That is because it has a broader base of users and support.
There is a Free WordPress.com or there is the professional WordPress.org platform. WordPress.com gives your blog a URL that you do not control what it will be. WordPress.org provides you a Platform to use on a Website Hosting service, you provide the custom URL..The question becomes, Am I going to blog on the Free Blog hosting service or the, more preferred, professional blog hosting service?Bottomline: Remember..either take blogging serious or not blog. The free hosting blog sites use to be considered a training ground for blogging. It now has proven to be a waste of time and effort if you are taking blogging seriously. The ramp up to gaining traction with an audience going the Free Blogging direction is much longer than going the professional hosting direction.
Remember..either take blogging serious or not blog. The free hosting blog sites use to be considered a training ground for blogging. It now has proven to be a waste of time and effort if you are taking blogging seriously. The ramp up to gaining traction with an audience going the Free Blogging direction is much longer than going the professional hosting direction.
The question becomes, Am I going to blog on the Free Blog hosting service or the, more preferred, professional blog hosting service?Bottomline: Remember..either take blogging serious or not blog. The free hosting blog sites use to be considered a training ground for blogging. It now has proven to be a waste of time and effort if you are taking blogging seriously. The ramp up to gaining traction with an audience going the Free Blogging direction is much longer than going the professional hosting direction.
Bottomline: Remember..either take blogging serious or not blog. The free hosting blog sites use to be considered a training ground for blogging. It now has proven to be a waste of time and effort if you are taking brand image seriously. The ramp up to gaining traction with an audience going the Free Blogging direction is much longer than going the professional hosting direction.
2. URL/Domain Name
If you take the Serious Blogging route the first thing a blogger has to have is a URL, or more technically is called a Domain Name. For those who do not know what a URL or domain name is, it is the name of your blog with a .com, or .??? after it. You have to purchase the domain name and then register it every year. Many see this as just part of the start up process. However, it is not uncommon for me to get an email asking me how to recover the URL after the domain name registration expires. The domain name registration has to be managed frequently.
3. Blog Site Design
How your blog site looks and how easy the blog is to use makes a huge difference. Having a blog site that can be easily seen on a mobile device is also a must. Having a creative logo, title, images and profile content also plays a huge part in the blog site design. If the website is not eye catching or appears to be constructed by an amateur, the viewers are going to move on quickly, never to return.
Then, of course, there is the learning curve of learning how to be creative and maintain the site. This could take years of making mistakes to become comfortable with working on your blog site.
4. Search Engine Optimized
There is no getting around it, a blog site has to be optimized so the search engines will find it and share it. This is not something new to blogging. However, most blogger will ignore it. Bloggers who take their blogging seriously will spend hours researching the internet to learn more about effect SEO. There are SEO “Experts” everywhere online. How qualified they are will depend on what you consider qualified. I prefer to go with a digital marketing agency since they provide a broader service than SEO agents.
5. Creating a Digital Footprint
If you truly are going to take blogging seriously you need to Brand your blog in all relevant social networks. This means you need to go in, create an account, fill in the profile info, post a headshot images and then post the content on Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn and then, if you have the stomach, open a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram account once you understand how to blog. The content on all social spaces has to be the same and all of the brand images need to be the same.
Once you get all of this done it is time to start blogging. However, this does not mean you are finished with this part of blogging. All of the above tasks have to be maintained and updated frequently along with posting frequent blog posts of over 500 words in each social space.
As you see, this is a LOT to do but has to be done if you are going to take your blog seriously.
Once bloggers find out what all is involved in blogging and are still serious about blogging, the next fork in the road comes along. has to deal with if you are going to maintain your blog site or if you are going to hire a professional to manage it for you.
The next decision will be, are you going to maintain your blog site or are you going to hire a professional to manage it for you.
DIY or Professionally Managed
The question quickly becomes, do I spend the time it takes to learn to build the site, manage the URL, domain name and SEO, OR, pay a professional to take care of all that is involved?
For many beginner bloggers, the cost to hire a professional to manage their blog is out of the question and as a result, over 90% of wannabe bloggers will decide not to blog due to what they see as being an overwhelming about of administrative duties associated with being a blogger. I suppose I am fortune since I learned everything about blogging from one of the pioneers of blogging while I was blogging.
There are businesses who offer blogging services that can make it easy on a blogger. Many can even write the blogs and post them so all you need to do is write a check and you are blogging. However, hiring a blogging service to blog for you defeats the purpose of blogging for a large number people who are looking for a creative release or activity to use to express their ideas.
Still, many of the admin duties the blogging services or management companies offer are well worth the cost for people who just want to write blogs and not worry about all of the duties associated with keeping the website up and running.
Blogging can be complicated. Even for the hobbyist, the time it takes to publish a blog is a lot of time away from what they want to be doing. So, before you jump into Blogging, make sure to consider all that is involved with blogging.
My suggestion is to hire a blog manager, like me, to oversee your site, keep it up to date and offer to consult or mentor on what comes after the blogging process. I have a few slots available to take on a client or two.
Let me know how I can help.
Originally published at Scot Duke.
