Blogging 101

[Boogie]

Writing your first few entries

Recently I got an email from a decent looking blog that was exactly 24 hours old.

The site looked great, the articles he had written were fine, but there was an obvious problem.

Why would anyone trade links with a blog that's 24 hours old?

What possibly do they have to offer the reader?

One article? two?

It is important that while your blog is in its infancy you write to it several times, over several topics, to create several entries, before showing it to anyone else. Nothing is more embarassing for a veteran blog reader or writer to come across a blog with 1 entry, especially if it reads "WOOT MY NEW SCRIPT IS UP AND RUNNING I CANT WAIT TO START BLOGGING"

For your first 5... or 10... or 15 entries, your target audience should be yourself.

Get comfortable writing it. Get comfortable using your script. Get comfortable creating content.

Cover some of the core aspects of your chosen topic, or if you havent chosen a topic, come up with some choice topics to start with.

This is especially important with a script that creates a seperate page for each entry.

When the engine bots come around for the first time, what do you want them to find? 30 well written pages on your topic, or just the one front page with nothing important to say?

Its fine to show your friends and family to get some feedback while you're building, but before you start sending hits or sending link swaps its a great idea to start off with the simple act of creating content.

While you're doing this, its also a great time to find out whether or not you're a blogger at heart.

Are you capable of writing 2-3 entries a day or is it like pulling teeth? Are you capable of finding good resources or are you struggling for content? Are you able to write things that are readable (tested on your friends and family) or are they all crappy and mispelled like my last entry about blogging was? (lol sorry I was just about to goto bed and forgot to spellcheck!)

Its during this trial and error time that you keep things hidden for yourself that you will learn whether or not you'll one day be an a-list blogger, or if you'll burn out like so many have before you and find that your time and resources are best spent building an easier to maintain website.

After you've written a nice set of entries, we'll talk about traffic.