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Want a blog? Top Tips to get you started

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blogIt seems that the whole world is blogging and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.   However, I’m pretty sure that most people don’t really know what they want to achieve once they’re on the bandwagon and many don’t really know where it’s going.  So, before clicking that magic ‘create your blog’ button, here are a few questions to consider.

What do you want to achieve?

If you don’t know why you’re blogging, how do you know if you’re being successful (unless, of course, your reason is purely ‘because I want to’)?  So, before starting, ask yourself what you want to achieve.  Do you want to:

Increase traffic to your website

Get more sales

Increase/improve your Brand awareness

Share your passion

Promote a cause

To get known and to build trust as a thought leader

How will you measure success?

There are so many ways to measure how successful you’re being.  The trick is keep your finger on this button so that you can tweak your strategy to be even more effective. If you don’t measure, how can you manage?

Number of visitors

Number of subscribers

Level of interaction and dialogue (comments)

Number of sales

Number of websites/blogs linking to you

The reality is that it will probably be a combination of some of the above so, as long as you’re aware of what the measures are, you stand a much better chance of being successful.

How will you do it?

Once you know what you want to achieve and how you’re going to measure success, it’s time to roll your sleeves up and get started.  Now, the good news is that you don’t need to be a technical genius to start a blog but here are a few tips which I’ve learned the hard way:

    1. Don’t bother with a free blog – you won’t own it and therefore won’t own the content.  It will limit you and, you may not realise it straight away, but I guarantee you’ll be wishing one day that you’d bitten the technical bullet and gone the hosted route.  If you need any help with this, just contact me.
    2. Decide whether you’re going to build it yourself or outsource it.  There is something very liberating about owning your own blog (by that, I mean building it in its entirety – structure and content).  It means that you’ll never be beholden to anyone again and will have total control.  Having said that, time is money so the outsource option may be better for you (again, I can help you with that).
    3. Plan it first.  It doesn’t matter how you do it.  You can use Excel, Word, mind mapping or just the back of a cigarette packet.  But do plan – it’s much easier to have a plan before you start rather than having to re-engineer the blog as you’re building it.

If you’ve got any tips or advice about how you measure your blogging success, please comment.

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  • Tonylindeque

    Blogs….we have a blog, it started out as a ”well meaning source of info” primarily for new divers. We felt new divers found it hard to source info so we started with this concept, and also hoped it would direct more traffic to our website. Today, a year down the line we have had 34000 reads and made freshly pressed once. We have a few subscribers and even fewer comments but are happy with the progress. It has evolved to a form of diary of our diving and showcases the training, casual diving and general diving fun we participate in. There is little or no sales pitches and we do not endorse products other than our own equipment experiences and companies we have interacted with. Please feel free to visit and give us feedback…good or bad as we are still learning. thanks Tony
    learntodivetoday.wordpress.com

  • http://www.scubadviser.com Jackie Hutchings

    I know your blog well, Tony.  I’ve tweeted links to it a few times.  The content is excellent.  Always interesting and engaging.  The only thing that I’d suggest you think about is moving it to a self hosted platform rather than having WordPress host it.  It will give you far more flexibility as the blog grows.  It’s not too complicated (in fact, it’s really easy) and you can import your existing content.  The other thing I’d think about doing is putting a site search box in the top right hand corner and, perhaps, some of your top level categories on the menu bar.  You’ve got a lot of content and it’s not obvious until you scroll down the page.

  • Anonymous

    I find it VERY hard to add new topics, see who’s visited, etc. & now all I get are idiot spam messages on my site – each of which I have to “bin”….more of a nuisance than a help….

    • Tonylindeque

      Hi Tobago…we also have spam some times, hundreds at a time but wordpress are very good, if you report the spammer they take care to block them. I also find it hard to decide what to write about but started with a small book and every question divers or students asked me…I tried to write about…..things not covered in the courses or things divers some time find difficult.  

    • http://www.scubadviser.com Jackie Hutchings

      Hi Caroline, do you have Akismet installed?  It’s a plugin which manages spam - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/   There’s also a plugin - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/googleanalytics/ - which installs Google Analytics on your blog.  You can then go into your Google account and see all the same stats as you can for your website :-)  What’s the problem with adding new topics?  Is it a case of it being a technical issue or do you find it difficult to think of engaging topics?