The ‘How To Start a Blog’ Series:
Tips and Suggestions for Launching a Successful Blog
Blogging — By Joe Carter on September 23, 2006 at 12:34 pm [Note: Since my blogfather kindly plugged this series, I thought I should bump this back onto the front page.]
Starting a blog is easy and can be done in a matter of minutes. Starting a successful blog, however, is much more difficult, often requiring months or even years of dedicated effort. But there are ways of improving your chances of garnering attention and gaining an audience. After spending over a year studying successful blogs I’ve put together a series of posts providing tips and advice on how to emulate the “A”- list bloggers. Hopefully if you are just starting a blog or simply hoping to improve your efforts you”ll find these posts helpful. Thanks to everyone who linked to the original posts.
- Part I – Before You Begin
- Part II – The Beginning Bloggers Toolbox
- Part III – How to Become an A-List Blogger
- Part IV – The Art of Marketing Your Blog
- Part V – Owning a Micro-Niche
- Part VI – Three Essential Elements of Blog Design
- Part VII – The 5/150 Principle
Update: These seven posts can also be downloaded as a Word document or PDF.
- A Review of the Top Ten Blogs
- How to become a Higher Being
- How to get linked by Instapundit
- What”s the point? — Defining “success” in the Blogosphere
- Paris Hilton’s Tips for the Striving Blogger
- Information Flow and the Gatekeepers of the Media
- Choir Preachers, Shepherds, Thinkers, and Dirty Tricks: Black Ops in the Blogosphere
- Tipping the Blogosphere: A Review of Hugh Hewitt”s Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation
- Megaphones Without Oversight: Blog Swarms, Opinion Storms, and Brand Destruction
- The Autobiography of a Blogger
Other Resources
- Australian blogger Darren Rowse has a comprehensive lists of tips that I found to be invaluable when I first began blogging.
- Simon World has a must read contribution with “Everything you wanted to know about blogging but were afraid to ask”
- Paul from Right Side of the Rainbow has some excellent advice on managing expectations.
- Pejmanesque teaches the basics in Blogging 101
- Brain Shaving has suggestions on gaining attention for your blog.
- James Joyner – who showed me the value of reciprocal blogrolls — has a list of his own blog tips.
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Great timing, Joe. I’m about to teach teachers how to blog–and blog in the classroom–so I’d invite your readers to come on over and suggest topics, examples, or anything else worth learning about blogging.
Joe: Thanks. This is an awesome post with incredibly helpful info all in one place. I’m bookmarking it! And, just as a reminder on one of your virtues:
“Do Return the Favor
Hi Joe C:
Your how to start a blog series was thoughtful, and is helpful to me now that I have a bit more time to think about such matters.
Joe A:
I have been thinking for some time about using blogging technology as a means to create distributed education resources [this is one of the "new" names for distance education].
I have bookmarked your blog post no 1 on this and will be tracking.
Grace to all
Gordon
Oops: JIM A