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Okay, you’ve decided start a blog and you’ve put together a rough publishing plan: how often you’re going to post long and short articles, who is writing, who is editing, who is managing the webmaster-related tasks (blogmaster). [See link at bottom.]

If you’re a small business owner, you’re probably going to have to wear all of these hats. But if you’re prepared, the next step is to set the blog up so you can start posting articles (sometimes called “entries” or even “posts”). (All links shown at the end of this article.)

You have two blog hosting choices:

1. Set up your blog on a free host such as Google’s blogspot.com, or Typepad’s Livejournal or WordPress’s WordPress.com.
2. Set up your blog on your own domain that you’ve registered and that you own.

This article will focus on choice #1. A follow-up article will discuss choice #2.

If you’ve visited any number of blogs, no doubt you’ve seen little text ads crying out “free blog”. There are numerous choices and this article has no intention of listing all of them. While I have registered with several free hosts including Typepad and Wordpress, I’ve found that Google’s blogspot.com uses a very simple, easy to use blogging platform and client (interface) called Blogger.com - so I’ll focus my example on these services.

To clarify, Blogger.com has both the blogging “platform” and the “client“. A blogging platform is the software that generates the blog pages for you. Examples include MovableType, WordPress, TextPattern, Drupal, and Blogger.com. Every one of these platforms has an administrative panel page where you can manage your blog - add, edit, and delete articles; add article categories; etc.

The admin panel page is typically called the blogging client and its features are platform-specific. However, there are standalone software applications - also called blogging clients - that you can download to your computer, and which do not work from a web browser.

With these standalone clients, you can write your blog entries and pretty much post to any of the platforms. That means you can have one client to manage multiple blogs on several free (or private) hosts. (But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.) I’ve tried numerous standalone clients, but use two of them exclusively.

One is Zoundry.com’s BlogWriter, which is a true standalone client. The other is Performancing.com’s Firefox Extension (PFF), which works as a panel within the Firefox web browser. (While I find both of them highly efficient, I am not necessarily endorsing them.)

Other choices are Qumana, w. bloggar, Loch Journal, amongst many others. For those of you familiar with Microsft Word, Blogger.com has a plugin that lets you manage your blog directly from MS-Word. You don’t have to learn a whole new interface - beyond the setup stage.

As this article is intended for absolute beginners to blogging, I’m focusing on Blogger.com’s platform and default interface. The steps are relatively simple, and you don’t require a degree in computer programming to set up a blog - unlike some of the other platforms.

1. Go to http://www.blogger.com and sign up for a free account. (I’m using them as an example. Feel free to pick whatever you like.) The form will ask you to enter your real name, a screen name, a password, and email address. If you have a GMail (Google Mail) account, use that. For your screen name, keep in mind that it will appear at the bottom of each article/entry that you post live to your blog. So pick something suitable. Rules for names are provided.
2. Now create a new blog.
• You’ll be asked to enter a title for the blog and a sub-domain name.
• The title will appear at the top of your blog at all times - unless you change the page template. (More in a future article.)
• The sub-domain name will be part of the domain “blogspot.com”. For example, if you are starting a blog to promote your plumbing fixtures store, you may want to use something like “home-plumbing-tips“.
• This will mean that your blog address/URL will be http://home-plumbing-tips.blogspot.com. (Some bloggers and readers don’t like hyphenated sub-domain names, but I see nothing wrong with them.)
• You could, of course, use something like “plumbing-fixtures”, but it will not convey the idea that you are providing helpful tips.
• Now it’s entirely possible that someone has already registered the subdomain you want on blogspot.com. If so, you’ll get a warning message and you’ll have to choose another sub-domain name.
• As a result of this, some of my blogspot.com blogs have fairly lengthy sub-domain names, which are easier to remember because they’re hyphenated.
• You’ll also be asked a number of other optional questions, and be given a chance to enter the URL of a digital picture of yourself, if you have one elsewhere. (There are several services, including http://flickr.com, that let you upload pictures and graphics for free. The only drawback is that the terms generally say that in return for free hosting, other people can use your images, with some conditions.)
• Next, choose a page template. All of the free hosts have some pre-formatted page templates. Pick one from the samples displayed, and you can customize it later - although this does take a bit of technical know-how. Once the template is selected, Blogger.com (or what have you) will create the blog for you, and you can start posting entries.
3. Post a “Welcome to Such and Such Blog” entry.
• You should see a button that says something like “start posting“. What’ll happen is a edit page with a form will appear. There will be fields for the article/ entry title, the body text, and a date/time stamp (which defaults to right now). There will also be a number of tabs that let you use the large text area like a rich-text editor. Play with the tabs and “buttons” a bit; get acquainted.
• On blogger.com at least, there is a link that says “show preview“. You can click this link and see what your article will look like formatted (but not with your template features). When you’re happy with the “welcome” article, click the “publish” button. (If you’re not happy but don’t want to lose what you’ve written, you can click the “save as draft” button and come back later to edit and publish.)
• Depending on the time of day, and since this is a new blog, the article should publish very quickly. You’ll see a message like “100% complete”. Voila, you now have a live blog. You can click on the “View site” tab to have a look.

You now have a blog. Get acquainted with the adminstration panel. Most of the popular blogging platforms have fairly thorough details, but sometimes they may be a bit too technical.

Now that you have your blog live and running, the next step is to post several more relevant articles in short succession, then start promoting your blog. I’ll talk about blog promotion in Part 4 (after 3b, which is an overview of setting up a blog on a private domain).

Links: Part 2: Planning Your New Blog

Raj Kumar Dash is a writer, author, and Internet consultant. Visit his hubsite at http://www.chameleonintegration.com/ to find the full introduction to blogging. (A free ebook on blogging is in the works.) Newbie bloggers can also visit Raj’s BlogSpinner blog at http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/ for a “how-to guide to blogging”.

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Blogging is a relatively new form of communication, closely related to the newsletters of days long past. Your thoughts, ideas, and activities are posted for the world (or a chosen few) to view, and if you choose to include the option, leave a comment. By creating a Blog and adding to it every day or relatively often, you create in your reader a desire to see “what was said next”. They will return to read what you post next. Particularly, if what you posted the first time is interesting, valuable information, presented in a manner that is fun to read. A few ideas to get you off and running with your informational Blog, might include: travel, a new baby, planning your wedding, building a new business, working with your clients, developing a new product, counting your blessings, or ideas you are interested in sharing.

No matter what topic you choose, if your goal is to create an unending stream of income, generated by your Blog site, through promoting products, sites, and opportunities to visitors such as yourself. This book will help you attain your goal.

An alternative to the news filled Blog, which includes entries on a regular, or daily basis, is the Informational Blog. An Informational Blog is a site where information is presented on the one page format, along with any advertising you wish to include, and the content is so intense that it draws people back time and time again to reuse the site. Informational Blogs can be as long or short as you wish. Informational advertising links run down either side of the page, promoting topics similar to the one you are writing about.

These Blogs are chock full of information, links, ads, and ideas that promote the content or purpose of the Blog. A Blog of this type will run on “Auto-Pilot” for many weeks at a time, just earning you money, while you go out and play with the kidlets, take a vacation, or build a “real” business on the side.

Have a desire to communicate and something important to say, Blogging can get your point across. Concentrating your knowledge on one topic brings a specific traffic to your site. Jan Verhoeff is an expert at making affiliate links work. Contact her at eBiz Brand Performance.

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The term blog comes from the word iweblog. Blogs have been around for approximately 6 years in their current form - as a digital journal maintained by one or more authors. The blogosphere is the portion of the Internet where the websites are blogs. Anyone who blogs (writes blog entries) is referred to as a blogger.

Part of the charm of a blog is that the writing voice is very personal, one-on-one. This is much more palatable to readers, making it easier for them to trust the writer. Research shows that the most popular blogs also have a photo of the writer, even if the blog ultimately exists for promoting the services or products of a business. This also builds trust, and would seem out of place on a regular website, unless it was a regular column - and thus similar to a blog anyway.

Another advantage that a blog has over a regular website is that Search Engines currently love indexing them, since the content is typically updated very regularly. In fact, successful bloggers say that you must write and post blog entries at least daily, if not multiple times daily, if you want your blog to rank high in the Search Engines and blog directories for relevant keywords.

An ongoing experiment of mine shows that my blogs get indexed by the Search Engines more frequently than my regular websites. If you have both a website and a blog, you can then use the relative popularity of your blog to advertise your website, thus drawing traffic.

Another use for a blog is to develop Google PR (Page Rank) for your main site. If you write and post quality content to your blog frequently, you will eventually draw links from other arwebsites and blogs. This in turn helps increase your blog’s PR - a relative measure of popularity - which helps your visibility in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Similarly, if your blog links back to your main site, the site’s PR will eventually increase as well.

On the issue of using a blog to promote your business, you have to tread carefully. Your blog has to offer informative content without hard-selling your products and services. (But there is one blog, Woot.com, which exists solely to sell a new product every day.)

If you do publish a “business” blog, offer tips relevant to your business and its industry. Build trusting relationships. For example, if you selling antique furniture to consumers, offer useful do-it-yourself tips on refinishing, hints on how to save money by bargaining, materials to use for fix-it projects, and so on. Show the reader that you are interested in their well-being and finances, not just your bottom-line sales.

On the other hand, if your business caters to wholesale furniture buyers for chain or department stores, your blog content will have to be different. Such buyers are not interested in the same information as the average antique buyer. Target your blog content appropriately.

You can also add advertising to your site, which should be relevant to your blogging topics. Many of the ad networks provide “contextual” ads by scanning your blog (or website) and checking for keywords. The delivered ads will be thus be relevant.

While some people view ads as an annoyance, there are others who are searching for information. They may find your website via a Search Engine, but they may still be looking for additional information, or even product-specific information. The intent of contextual advertising is to provide links to sites with such information. And you get rewarded for (legitimate) clicks on ad links.

The truth is, there are millions of blogs out there, and blogging services report that number is growing rapidly on a daily basis. Carve out a niche relevant to your business. Exercise the leverage that Search Engines give to blogs. Post surveys and comment boxes so that readers can interact with you. In other words, build a relationship with readers. It takes time and effort to develop regular traffic to your blog, and quality content and frequency is the key.

(c) Copyright: 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, Chameleon Integration Systems

Raj Kumar Dash is a writer, author, and Internet consultant. Visit his hubsite at http://www.chameleonintegration.com/ to find the full introduction to blogging. (A free ebook on blogging is in the works.) Newbie bloggers can also visit Raj’s BlogSpinner blog at http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/ for a “how-to guide to blogging”.

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