Let’s cover some basic essentials to planning and publishing your blog. I will classify 3 categories of bloggers in this lesson. There are many more “types” of blogs that may fall into one of the 3 categories and these categories themselves are not all inclusive.
These categories are:
- Personal Bloggers
- Organizational Bloggers
- Business Bloggers
Personal bloggers tend to publish articles that voice their opinion on a wide array of topics and events. Personal bloggers typically find pleasure in documenting their personal lives, ranting, stream of consciousness type entries reflecting moods and mind sets and publishing a variety of themes or interests.
Organizational bloggers use blogs to communicate both internally within their organizations but they also may communicate externally with the public as well. An organizational blog will facilitate internal communications between colleagues, employees and other organizational personnel. An organizational blog may also publish information in that is in interest of public. For example, an organization my publish general announcements or seminar schedules for their clients or customers.
Business bloggers use blogs to promote products or services that help drive revenue and profits. Business blog may seek to increase reputation and authority with customers, vendors and partners by publishing content that demonstrates knowledge and expertise within a given industry, market segment or niche. A business blog can promote products and services through high value content that customers and prospects find extremely useful.
Here are several considerations you should give thought to as you plan your blog.
Why do you want to blog?
Consider your reasons for wanting to start a blog. There can many reasons for wanting to start a blog. You can desire to share your piece of mind with the whole world or to a small group of intimate family and friends. You may want to market your skills to your industry or perhaps create a online portfolio to job opportunities or contractual work. You may want to connect with others who share your hobbies or interests and collaborate on the exchange of ideas, applications and discoveries within that interest. You may have a business and you want to promote your brand, your product or your service using a blog. What ideas or interests do you want to promote?
Whatever the case may there is only one thing you must have if you are to be successful with your blog. PASSION. If you don’t have passion than you can expect your blog to experience to wax cold and stale and eventually you will abandon your blog and your audience. A passionate interest in something that you have a burning desire to publish information will be your strength going forward. You’ll need because blogging isn’t lights, camera and glamour. Got Passion? Get a blog. :D
What type of results do you want from your blog?
How do you want to your blog to support your objectives? Do you want your blog to be a update your family and friends of your life’s events? Do you want to attract prospects to a specific product or service and convert them to customers? Do you want to provide customer support for an existing product line? How about public relations for your profession or industry? Do you want to stir spirited conversations through brash and irreverent rantings about a specific subject? I really could go and and on here.
Knowing what you most desired response is will help you define the context for your content. Blogs accelerate online communications, help build reputation, promote information sharing and highlight the connectedness of the Internet.
I have a 3 letter acronym I like to use to help help highlight these important functions of blogging and how I might use them. The acronym is I.R.S. of all things!
I is for Information – Blogs allow you to share information quickly, instant, and powerfully.
R is for Reputation – Blogs build reputation. Whether personal of business blogs are an honest communications medium. Your level of integrity will weigh heavily on how you build authority and credibility regarding your blogs subject matter. What you publish will serve as basis for other to formulate an opinion about your expertise, knowledge and character in general.
S is for Self-expression – Blogs allow you to say absolutely anything you like. But that doesn’t mean you should say anything you like. While blogs can provide the ultimate freedom in written expression you must still self-aware of what you are publishing. Once you publish, you words will be out there forever. Don’t say anything you aren’t willing to defend and even with that you should still be fair and factual in your writing. Let your true self shine through and connect with your audience.
How much time to you have to devote to blogging?
Blogging is hot! There is no doubt about that. There are popular bloggers like Scoble or Kottke who make blogging and very exciting publishing medium. You note that blogging takes commitment of time, thought and effort. You can decide to what degree you will invest in our blog but you should count the cost before you jump in.
If you are passionate about a topic and you like to write in general plus you like to spend a decent amount of time on the Internet than blogging may be for you. If you only fire up the modem just barely enough to pull down email from AOL and QWERTY isn’t your friend then perhaps a blog may not be for you or you might want to have someone else blog for you (but that’s another story).
Who is your target audience?
Who will your blog be published for? To know your audience is to know what they need, want and desire. Your blog must provide value to your audience if it is to be effective in creating a dialogue and repeat visits. If you blog isn’t designed for a community dialogue with a specific target audience of any kind and instead is meant to be a personal collection of musings for yourself or select group of friends then that to is still and identifiable audience.
Identifying your target audience will help you keep your messages on target and effective. Your greatest joy with blogging will occur when you use your passion to blog or publish relevant information for a like-minded community of people where the free exchange of ideas can grow and enriching conversations can occur.
How To Determine Your Blogging Style
Here is something fun but beneficial. You can determine your Blogging style or personality by going to Bloginality. There is a fun test you can take to determine what your blogging style might be.
Here quick description of a few blogging styles.
The Pundit. The pundit style is spirited and passion discussion around specific topics that invite or result in quite a bit of feedback in most cases. The pundit loves knowledge and great conversations.
The Artist. The artist style incorporates quite a bit of imagery through photos. The artist likes to tell a story in pictures and few words. They share images of many things such as people, places or hobbies.
The Writer. The writer style loves the power and influence of words. A blog is the writers dream as blogs are the perfect medium for captivating and audience with humor, inspiration, or intelligence. Writers will write about almost anything.
The Daily Grinder. The daily grinder style results in comfort and release through blogging. Blogs are a therapeutic experience for the grinder. They like to just get it off their chest and let it out. The grinder blogs about anything and everything that happens to them. The grinder style normally targets family and friends online and offline with life events and updates.
The Patchworker. The patchworker style is identified by short commentary, consolidation of news and current events and useful resources and links to other items of interest.
[UPDATE: 01.23.2005] Blogging personalities are a great way to help you define your style and is a rare but interesting topic which helps bloggers find their voice. In publishing this part of this article I omitted the important reference to the source of this information. This implies that this genius was of my own creation and it was not and is not. The credit for blogging personality goes to and was originally published by Sheila Coggins, the Weblogs Guide for About.com. Your can learn more about blogging personalities and many other great articles on business and personal blogging here: Blogging Personalities & Personality Quiz by Sheila Coggins
Planning your blog starts with the establishing your purpose for blogging and finding your voice. Your will have fun and generate profit from blogs that guided by a publisher (that’s you) who has clearly identified the reason and results for a blog before it ever goes public.
Pros and Cons
There are few disadvantages to starting a blog. The biggest disadvantage is at the same time the biggest advantage. That is, the freedom of voice that blogs afford to anyone. You must, must, must be mindful of what you publish however or that freedom can come back to haunt you. If a potential client, partner or employer Googled your name what would they find? How about your present employer?
Will there be any questionable speech that associated with your “real name” that could hurt your credibility and character? Sure you could use and alias but most bloggers that want to truly connect with their audience will use their real name. It is part of the culture. The medium is open and honest in it’s communication. Be careful out there.
It seems there are a gazillion advantages to use a blog. Several of those advantages have been discussed already. Blogs ultimately allow you to share information instantly and in realtime, they allow you to build up a reputation and demonstrate expertise and blogs allow you express yourself freely.
Blogging can also make you a better writer, thinker and communicator. There isn’t a better way to become a better writer than have to put thought into you crafting content that can effectively communicate to audience.
Analyzing references, checking your facts composing your article all contribute to better critical thinking skills. Evaluating the usefulness of information, the quality of references (links) and effectiveness of your content takes critical analysis. You will only improve your mind when you start to blog. Blogging gives way to introspection, reflection and concentration. Got thoughts? Get a blog.
Lastly, blogging will help you become a better communicator. Analyzing content, formulating opinions and publishing your results requires that ability to communicate clearly and sometimes succinctly about items related to your subject matter. It takes practice, practice and practice. This translates into improved communications all around as you give thought to clear, sometimes concise but full effective communications that allows your opinion or conclusions to received and understood without difficulty by your audience.
Conclusion
You don’t want to just start a blog because it’s trendy and interesting. Establish a plan for your blog as you would anything else. Jot down some concepts and ideas for a blog you would like to start. Pick a purpose, decide a theme and brainstorm related topics you would like to share with others.
Be unique. Feel free to examine the blogs that contain topics and features that appeal to you. Build your own ideas from the observation of other blog. Add your own unique spin as you generate ideas for your blog. Taking the time to do this now will provide focus and direction as you move forward with starting up a blog.
In the next lesson, How To Blog 103 – Choosing The Right Blogging Tools and Software, I will discuss several tools available for to the easily write and publish content and manage your blog. You will then be able to decide which tools are best suited for to you as you learn how to blog.
