Mar 04, 2010

5 key points to starting a blog

I just had my face-to-desk moment this morning. I had a little side gig and while working, I’m answering this guy’s email about his new WordPress site. I start asking some questions of my own and the stupidest answer I’ve ever gotten: I have no content for my site.

So here folks, this is what you should have when you begin a serious blog (as in not something you’re going to ignore for months on end). Whether or not is personal use or professional use, that is irrelevant. However, if you’re planning on reaching out to someone to help you design and get your blog started, you should have at least this much.

1) An idea of what you want to put on that site.
Is it going to be a personal blog like this one where you talk about anything and everything from life to your interests to the coin that fell out of your pocket and went down the storm drain? Is it going to be a niche blog focusing on one topic that you amazingly know a lot about? Is it going to be a photos blog?

2) What categories do you want to have?
Categories are key to site organization if you’re using WordPress (I cannot vouch for a whole lot of other blogging platforms). If everything is thrown into “Uncategorized,” do you have an alternate way to organize your content?

3) Design. How do you want your blog to look?
Are you going to go with a default blog and just overshadowed the design a billion other people have with amazing content? Are you going to want your design custom made? Are you going to find someone to do it or are you going to make it yourself?

4) Resources. What do you need to make this blog run?
Do you have hosting? Do you have a domain name or someone that can provide you with a web address? Are you going to use video? If so, do you have enough resource to store those videos somewhere?

5) Your own concept.
There are a billion blogs out there probably playing copycat of another blog. There are a million sites out there that does the same thing YouTube does and yet Youtube still probably is the most used video site ever (not based on any research). Have your own concept and your own niche. There’s a lot of “Been there, done that” so if you have a fresh idea not a lot of people have tapped into, use it!