How to Start a Blog on Blogger.com

Arguably, the most popular tool for creating and maintaining a blog is Blogger.com, part of the huge Google conglomerate. All you need is an Internet connection, and something to write about (and that's subjective). It's free and you can blog from anywhere in the world.

Getting started with Blogger is as easy as 1 - 2 - 3:

• One, you need to create an account. Go to Blogger.com and click the button 'Create Your Blog Now'.

  You'll need a user ID, and a password, and the name you'll want displayed when you make a post. Along with that you will have to choose an address for your blog. This address will be part of the URL for your blog. The e-mail address you use will be available to your blog visitors in your 'About Me' profile. (The e-mail address can be set so it isn't displayed, however if you're doing business on the web you want to provide a way for your visitors to contact you. A good e-mail address to use would be your business e-mail.)

• Two, is where you'll name your blog. The name you choose will be displayed across the top of your blog and is also the title you use when you submit your blog to directories. Though the address and name can be changed later, you'll want to spend some time deciding on a permanent name. Choose your blog name carefully. Surf the blogs in your market and you will see all sorts of strange names. Most people don't give it much thought. Unless your name is really common or weird, use it for the title, at least for part of the title. You might follow your name with a descriptive keyword phrase. This will not only let your visitors know the main topic of your blog but would also serve to help optimize your blog for the search engines.
  
  
• And three you'll need to select the appearance of your pages. Once again there's no reason to get too uptight about this either. You're given eight or ten template choices; choose one and if you want to you can come back later and change it. In fact if you know a little HTML you can modify your page and make it uniquely yours.
  
  The easiest way to decide what type of template you should use is to look at other blogs and swipe their ideas. Being unique is overrated. No matter how cool your site looks, ultimately your success is based on your content. Focus on making it friendly and engaging and then optimize the site.

Now you have your blog set up, whenever you log in to Blogger you'll see the Dashboard.  You can either go to the right of your screen and edit your profile or password, or you can click on the name of your blog there on the left and go to what I call the tab section. While at the tab section you can change all your settings, the template style, view the blog, edit posts, moderate comments and last but not least, you can make your next post. So get to it and write that post!

From there it's just you on the world's stage. Once your post is complete, you'll want to go to Pingomatic.com to ping your blog (I get tickled every time I say that). Apparently, pinging is to search engines what catnip is to your cat .

To submit your post to an RSS feed (you definitely want to do this), just sign into your Blogger.com account. At the dashboard, go to 'Settings' - then 'Site Feed' and then copy the site feed URL listed there.

Then go to Top Rank Results to get 'chicklets' for your blog. In step one, there are some feeds already checked (the most common ones) and I leave it at that. (I might check another one if I know something of it.) At step two, enter your blog title, the blog's URL and then the blog's site feed URL. At step three I also leave that as it is (it ends up looking rather nice). Then step four gives you the option of autodiscover. Being that I think the average blog surfer feels comfortable with the chicklets, I skip that part. Hit 'Create Chicklets' and you're done. Just copy the code provided and paste it on your blog.

Now you're set. As you can see there are lots of other different things you can do to publicize your blog. Look around and check them out. One thing you want to do is list your blog on the blog directories. Technorati is a list you definitely want to be on.

Read  - read - read. 'Blogosphere' is the collective term for all blogs as a community or social network. Many blogs are connected to each other; bloggers read blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and add posts on each others' blogs. For this reason you should search the blogosphere and visit blogs that deal with issues in your market  (use Technorati to find them). Read not only the 'biggies' who have a readership larger than most newspapers, but read the freshmen as well that are just becoming well known. And then finally, read lots of iddle-baby-blogs, the ones with around 50 daily hits.

You'll learn a great deal about design and volumes about captivating content; you can learn what your readers expect from your blog. You can also see what the best blogs are doing right and be able to mold your site after these super-bloggers right from the start.

Now go forth and blog.