[Note: This is the second post in the How To Start A Blog series. Click here for part one.]
Blogging isn’t about the underlying technology but about content. What you write is far more important than the means by which you send it out into the blogosphere. But building your blog requires a familiarity with a few essential tools.
As you become more comfortable with the medium you’ll find dozens that you’ll want to add to your toolbox in order to make the process of blogging more effective. But beginning a blog requires only a few basic items. Here are four invaluable ones you’ll need to get started on the path to success:
Publishing platforms – The interface between you and the blogosphere is the publishing platform that translates your brilliant prose into a readable format. A few of the more popular ones are Movable Type, Blogger, and Word Press. Your comfort level with HTML and other web applications will play a role in which to choose so talk to other bloggers and ask their advice before settling on one. Read the user forums to get an idea of the problems that arise and the technical support available. Also, keep in mind that your choice of hosting service will affect how easy or difficult it will be to install the platform. If it all possible, choose a service that is “blog friendly” and offers free installation.
Templates -- The easiest way to determine what type of template you should use is to simply steal someone else’s idea. Originality is highly overrated. No matter how impressive your site's design may be, your success will be based on your content. Focus on making it readable and user friendly. No one is going to visit an impressively designed site that has nothing to say. But even the most noteworthy content can be lost behind a poor design (i.e., blue text on a yellow background).
Once you have a basic idea how you want your blog to look, find someone who has something similar and copy their style, tweaking it enough to make it your own. Ask them where they found their layout. Most bloggers are more than willing to help someone who admires their taste. (Keep in mind that your choice of templates will be limited by the type of publishing platform that you choose.)
Hit counters – If it doesn’t matter to you if anyone reads what you write, then you don’t have a blog, you have a diary. Most of us do care (perhaps more than we should). But readership is important and you will need to know how many people visit your site. The unit of measure for this is “site hits”, the primary currency of the blogosphere. Since a key barometer of your success will be how many people visit your blog on a daily basis, you'll want to keep a close eye on this number.
For this you’ll need Sitemeter. There are other hit counters that you may choose to use but they should be in addition to this one. Although Sitemeter can be used for free, its worth is invaluable. Knowing where your traffic is coming from will help you connect with your readers.
[A note about site traffic: Don't get too wrapped up in the numbers. Every pageview you have means someone cared enough to visit your blog. Cherish every one and make sure your readers realize that you appreciate their taking time out of their day to visit your site.]
Link Tracking – While site hits may be the reigning currency, the true coin of the realm is influence. And that is measured in links. Hit count is a measure of overall readership while link count is a measure of your influence within the blogosphere itself. The more bloggers link to you the more influential you are as a blogger. To find out who has added you to their blogroll or who was impressed enough by something you wrote to point it out, use Technorati. All you do is type in your blog’s address and it shows you a complete list of who is linking to your site. Pay close attention to the bloggers who link to you. It shows that they were impressed (or outraged) enough by you that they took the time to both visit your site and include a mention of it on their own.
For a list of more blog tools visit the Weblogs Compendium.
Coming next: How to Become an "A"-List Blogger
1
Random thought, and I am not sure if it is technically a "tool" or not, but you might want to include the Truth Laid Bear Blogosphere Ecosystem too. If nothing else, it is an amusing way to keep track of links to your site, when it wants to work...
posted on 01.01.2005 10:50 AM3
Joe I notice some Blogs won't allow images, some will. Any advice on that? Are there a ton of features yuo can choose from in that regard? And why is that some are set up for quick code and others are not? Is that somehting that can be done to any platform or only certain ones?
posted on 01.01.2005 3:59 PM4
I don't know of any blogs that won't allow images. Some people won't allow it in their comments perhaps. Some bloggers may not know how to do it, also. It takes knowing HTML code unless your software has a shortcut GUI set up for it. I don't know any that does that.
posted on 01.02.2005 4:25 PM5
DS,
Do you mean specific blogs or types of blogs (like blogspot blogs)? If types of blogs, like blogspot, then one of the issues is that there is nowhere to host the image, which can take up a goodly amount of bandwidth. There are ways to do it (through Picassa's Hello function for example http://www.hello.com/), but it is not always easy.
6
www.flickr.com is another free way to post images to your free hosted blog. Easier than Hello. Flickr is new and still in beta, so it may have some lag...but like I said, it's free.
posted on 01.09.2005 1:49 PM