These suggestions are aimed at people seeking a low stress way to get started.If you are bogging "professionally" to support a product or other goal then some of these do not apply. In particular, you probably want to control your branding more than the free hosting sites will allow.A couple of days ago I wrote about starting blogging. I have a few more hints in case you are feeling inspired.
- Don't worry if you lack the technical knowhow to make a website, there are plenty of services that will host your blog for you. You need no knowledge beyond knowing how to type.
- Do not get hung up on the look of your blog. You can go crazy and waste huge amounts of time trying to pick just the right font and color scheme. Choose a clean looking theme and stick with it.
- Once you have everything up and running, resist the temptation to mess around with the styling. Every minute you spend on the look of the blog is another 20 words you could have written.
- Have a few articles published before you tell anyone about your new blog. Nobody wants to read your "Welcome to my new blog" introductory post if that is the only thing on the site.
- Maintain a small backlog of in-progress articles that you can hack away at odd moments.
People like pictures, they needn't be too aproposConsider including an image with each post - it is a design cliché for a reason.- Don't obsess about your audience - you owe them nothing.
- Don't violate copyrights - fair use rules only go so far. That said, don't fret about including screenshots or stills from films, but don't just grab photos from the Internet. Avoid copying large swathes of text from other sites.
- Don't defame or libel anyone, and avoid linking or mentioning other sites that do.
- Don't let your blog rot. Some people advocate doing a little every day although I do not keep to that schedule.
- If you allow comments you are taking responsibility for their contents as well. Moderate accordingly and do not allow spam to build up.
- Stop reading this and start a blog already!
You should know that I am a total hypocrite and follow almost none of these ideals.