Neil’s blogging 101

I don’t profess to being a blogging expert, far from it. But despite the infrequency of my posts I do consider myself to be one (small) step up from beginner, and from that lofty vantage point I feel 100% qualified to offer sage advise to newbies. So here goes…

Why blog?

Simple huh? Why not? Actually there could be many reasons for blogging. Maybe you just want your 15 minutes of fame, maybe as a communication tool for a business, group or sport team, maybe to share your great and infinite wisdom with the unwashed masses. The reasons people blog are as varied as the people themselves.

Blogging sites

Next you’ll be needing somewhere to host your blog. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist or be bank-rolled by a millionaire to get started. WordPress.com and Blogger are just a couple of free options.

I started out using Windows Live Spaces. For me it wasn’t a smart choice, but if you’re just blogging for family and friends it might be the right fit for you.

Got the look?

Your blog is yours, right? So it shouldn’t look like anyone’s else’s. While the default theme is functional and looks just fine, you should take a little bit of time looking though some of the other included templates and play around with a little customisation. Just remember the K.I.S.S. rule.

Get connected

If you have a twitter account, a Facebook page, a YouTube channel etc, there’s a pretty good chance that you can link them.

For instance…

• When I post to this blog, it automatically tweets a link
• When I tweet, my Facebook status gets automatically updated
• At the end of the day (I’ve set it for 21:00) LoudTwitter bundles up all my tweets for the day and posts them as a blog entry (which in turn tweets that I’ve blogged, which then updates my Facebook)

This way I’m always posting, even when I’m not posting.

Publish. Publish. Publish.

Of course the whole point of having a blog is to blog. So get writing and posting already. Just make sure you think about subject categories on your blog, and always tag your posts so that people can find what you’ve written.

If you don’t like the built-in editor that your blogging service provides you, you might want to check out some offline blogging editors. Personally I use and recommend Windows Live Writer. It’s free and works with pretty much any blogging service.

Happy blogging

Bye-bye Live Spaces, hello WordPress

This has been a long time coming, but I finally found a way to get all my posts (yeah… all 23 of them) from my Live Spaces blog over to WordPress (check here if you’re interested).

Anyway, now my blog is on a real blogging platform. Will I blog more often? Who knows? But here I am. I’m not 100% sold on the theme yet, so it may change a little until I’m totally happy. Happy reading.