All About Google Blogger: Ready to Start Blogging?

As mentioned earlier in this series, starting a blog using Google Blogger could not be easier.  It really is just a matter of a few clicks and anyone can have their own blog in a few moments.  Once you do this, you will officially be a member of a massive community of bloggers known as the blogosphere. 

Before you become a part of the blogosphere, however, I would suggest taking some things into consideration so that you can get started the right way.  There are approximately 500,000,000 blogs on the Internet today.  As much as 15% of this estimation could easily be abandoned blogs that are not being maintained.  These blogs serve no purpose other than taking up bandwidth.  This causes several problems for new bloggers trying to get a footing as a viable member of the blogosphere. 

It is my personal opinion that many of these abandoned blogs are as such simply because the blogger did not take the things into consideration that we are about to discuss here.  They went into their blogs with no direction and no understanding of what it takes to establish a successful blog so they simply walk away from it.  If you follow this series and implement the steps put forth here, there is no reason your blog can not be very successful and launch you into the blogosphere as a reputable blogger.

Understanding the implications of blogging

Before you ever make your first blog post you need to understand something very important.  Everything you post becomes a part of a permanent archive of online content.  This means that you might want to think carefully about how you present yourself in the blogosphere.  It is not uncommon to hear about someone losing their job for something they posted on their blog or other social site.  Nor is it uncommon to hear of individuals being prevented from working for a company due to their public, online personality they had created for themselves.  It is easy to think of the online world as being a place of anonymity; it is not.

Not only can you present yourself online through your blog in a negative way, you can do the opposite as well.  It is up to you.  You can drive your blog to a heightened level of popularity inspiring your readers to have confidence in you as a trustworthy member of the blogosphere.  It has been the case on several occasions that a blogger becomes so successful within the blogosphere that they inevitably open various doors of success. 

(Dooced is a term coined by Heather Armstrong in 2002 when she lost her job because of the content published on her blog, Dooce.com.  She went on to turn her demise into success.)

Set goals for your blog

This should be simple.  You would think that anyone thinking of starting a blog would at least have an idea of what they would like to blog about, but no.  It is not uncommon for blogs to be started without so much as a topic or blog title in mind.  It is not difficult to come up with clear blogging goals before you actually start blogging.  I would suggest grabbing a piece of paper and writing down a few questions and actually answer them on the same paper.  Some questions you could begin with:

• Why are you interested in starting a blog to begin with?
• How much of an online following/readership are you wanting to have for your blog?
• Are you planning on monetizing it and making money from your blog?
• Are you prepared to spend the time that it may take to maintain a successful blog for a long period of time?

These are only a few questions to ask yourself to give yourself and your blog a little direction. You may have heard before that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.  This is definitely the case with blogging.

What are you going to blog about?

Your blog topic will, naturally, be the biggest part of your goal-setting process.  You must know the topic before you can decide what direction you want to take your blog.  When choosing a topic you should remember the figure stated above.  Out of hundreds of millions of blogs currently in existence, you may be hard-pressed to come up with an original topic.  This should not dissuade you at all, however.  Maybe you can present the topic in a better way than has been done before.  There is nothing wrong with competing with other blogs if you think you can do it better and provide more for your readers. 

The fundamental point is that you can blog about, literally, anything you want.  Based upon some of the answers of your questions above, the pool of topics could be narrowed.  For example, if you intend on monetizing and making money from your blog, it may not be the best idea to use a blog about something that very few people are interested in for that purpose.  This is where you need to think about the marketability of your blog.  What is in demand?  What are people interested in?  Can your blog solve some sort of problem for your readers?  Does it offer your readers something they can’t find anywhere else? 

To help you choose a blog topic, try taking a look at why others blog.  Some people blog simply for the fun of it with no intention of making money or gaining a large readership.  Some people build businesses or promote them with their blogs.  Others like to take a philanthropic approach and blog about something that will make a difference in the world we live in by raising awareness to important issues humanity is faced with.  Maybe you want to simply blog about yourself and establish yourself in the blogosphere as an expert in your field.  Maybe you’re a scientist and you want to blog about study you are conducting.  The possibilities really are limitless.

The next thing I would recommend would be to visit other blogs often.  Get yourself familiar with blogging trends and how the ‘professionals’ are doing it.  You can get a good feel of how a successful blog is formatted and what features and applications are available and commonly used on popular blogs.  Maybe you can come up with a new blog feature to offer your readers that others are not. 

In closing, your homework assignment is to write your goals for your blog down on paper.  This should include the topic you want to blog about, whether or not you want to make money with your blog as well as how much time you are willing to dedicate to its maintenance.  In the next article we will go through the step by step process of getting your blog up an running.  There is a lot of great information coming in the subsequent articles, so be sure to revisit this series.

Previous article in this series:

All About Google Blogger:  A History of Blogger

All About Google Blogger:  The Google Acquisition

All About Google Blogger:  The Benefits to Using Google Blogger