How To Efficiently Set up a new Blog

It would only be appropriate to rename my blog as: “Perils of a Procrastinating Mind”. I’ve been delaying the process of writing a new post for quite a long time, for no apparent reason. Maybe, I’m just going through a phase of extreme lethargy. Last week can be described as, for lack of a better word, uninspiring.

But now, I’ve come out of my reverie and have decided to flex my writing muscles again. Since the inception of this blog, I’ve scribbled my thoughts on various topics. Though this route has given me the flexibility of exploring various genre, it has skewed my readership in a weird way. The week before I was helping my friend, set-up a new blog called Green Blog (a blog about environment, global warming, Solar energy etc). He asked me to write the first post for the blog. In my zealous attempt to write a perfect “first blog post”, I decided to send my draft post to some of my friends for review. I realised, to my horror, that almost all the comments in the feedback had a unifying theme: “You seem too conscious while writing this post”, “You are not being your usual self” etc etc. Either they sat down together and generated the feedback OR they are *right*.

So, I scrapped the original post and painfully rewrote the whole thing, but this time I tried being myself. I also jotted down some pointers on how to set-up a new blog. I’ve learned from my own experience that setting up and maintaining a blog isn’t a cakewalk. Here are some pearls of wisdom from me:

Choose your *Blog host* carefully:

There are several blog hosting services available on the world wide web. Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, LiveJournal et al. There are pros and cons to each of them and it would take another post to list them out in detail. So, I’ll be brief and blunt. Blogger is very easy to set-up a new blog, but it sulks like anything when you become an experienced blogger and try to expand your blogging experience beyond publishing posts. Typepad can be called as a wonderful blogging tool, but then it is definitely not ‘new-blogger’ friendly. If you try to register yourself at Typepad, it asks you your financial details upfront before you even publish your first post, which is a big put-off for newbies. LiveJournal is more of a community site, than a thorough-bred blogging site. It has many unwanted, irrelevant features; pop-up adverts, for instance get on my nerves. WordPress has a balance of everything. It doesn’t seem too daunting to a new user and has all the right features for quickly setting up a blog without any hassles. My recommendation would be: start with WordPress, and when you’ve gained enough experience blogging, try out other advanced blog hosts.

Layout:

Alright, you’ve set up your blog account and you’re all excited and ready to dive in and start writing n publishing your posts. But hang on a sec, before you start writing, you have to decide the look of your blog. Blog page layout defines the style and look of your blog. Don’t rush through this section as this will determine your taste when it comes to design. It *is* a big deal. The way your blog looks speaks a lot about you. If your blog looks like an angry fruit salad, then nobody would wanna make a stop to devour what you have to offer. The Blog hosting site offer several default templates( blog themes) to choose from. You also have the option of creating your own page-layout via HTML, CSS etc. It, really is a matter of personal preference though, and you have to use your discretion while making decisions like: whether the blog should have three column format or a two column format; how many posts should be displayed on a single page; background colour-foreground colour and so on and so forth. My mantra is to keep the design simple and elegant.

Blog Frequently:

Now you’re all set, you’ve set up your blog account and carefully chosen the layout as well. Then you write and publish your first post. From here on, the secret recipe for a popular and successful blog is to post on a regular basis. Keep your blog alive by frequently updating it. ‘What’ you write is not as important as ‘how’ you write it. Create a niche for yourself by writing about obscure topics. The more you write about it, more the people would want to read it, and slowly and steadily you’ll have a growing stream of readers. If your blog has a consistent theme, you might end up being an expert on that topic.

No Ads Till You’ve Grown:

Avoid placing ads( via Adsense or Yahoo ad service) on your blogs till you have a wide readership. Ads on your blog will only be tolerated if you’ve proved yourself an expert blogger and are worthy enough to be read regularly. Personally, I find adverts on blog page, appalling. They ruin the whole look and feel of the blog. So, first focus all your efforts into building the pillars of your blog which will appeal to a greater mass of readers and will constantly attract them to your blog. Only when you’ve reached a readership of, say 500 hits per day, you can fancy inserting advert links into your blog page.

This is what I could come up with at the moment, but I’m sure there are many more tips and tricks to successfully start your spin-off as blogger. Look them up on google and try to put them in practise. And if you’re successful, share the idea with me as well.

How Successful is your Blog ?

First of all, I would like to apologize for the long gap between my last post and this one. I was compelled to sacrifice my on-line time for something else. I’ll get to it in a short while. But first, I’d like to thank you all for responding so zealously to my previous post. It’s good to receive flak and/or appreciation for my views than to have a passive reader, whilst it also broadens my ken of understanding. This kind of dialogue helps me see the flaws in my argument as well. So, I would encourage all of you to share your thoughts and opinions.

The reason for my absence here, is that I was hooked to the hit television action drama 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland. I became so addicted to the serial, that I ended up watching 48 episodes(season 1 & 2) in 7 days. I couldn’t help it, each episode ends with a to-die-for suspense string, that I had to watch the next episode. Well, I’ve snapped out of the 24 reverie for the time being. And I’ve decided to watch seasons 3,4, 5 at a future date. As of now, I’ve got my social and on-line life back .

Coming back to the topic at hand, me and many other bloggers out there, are trying to figure out the recipe for a successful blog. What does “successful” mean in this context ? It means to have a regular and growing stream of readers; readers who not only cherish reading the blog, but also contribute their views, ideas and thoughts for each and every post. Successful also means that the readers either hate or love the author’s ruminations. There is no scope for mediocrity. Everybody likes mediocre products, but not necessarily love it. A great product always evokes extreme emotions from its users, they either ‘love‘ it or ‘hate‘ it. Similarly, readers of a great blog will either swear by it or will try to abolish it. A successful blog also converts it’s readers into passionate evangelists who spread the word to others, and before you know it your blog feed is being subscribed by several thousand RSS clients.

There are many good features of a successful blog, but the one’s which stand out are:

Original Content:

Every topic discussed, every idea written in your blog should shine with originality. There are gazillion blogs out there who just plagiarize each other. In their quest to jump into the blog bandwagon, many just copy paste ideas from other sources. The key to make your blog stand out is to always have original thoughts. Dare to take a dive into unknown topics, who says you have to be an expert to discuss anything. Just think aloud, type out your thoughts and you’d end up with ideas nobody else thought of. Try it, it is not as difficult as you think. Try brainstorming your topic of discussion, write down as many random words, sentences that come to your mind during this session. Then re-wire these random words and sentences into something meaningful, try connecting the dots to get the complete picture. The end result would be a highly original version of the topic ever written.

Make it worth reading:

Whenever I write a line or a para in my post, I imagine a fictitious parrot sitting on my shoulder, asking me “Is that line really required? Do the readers give a damn about it ?”. Validate everything you write before posting it on your blog. Ask yourself again and again, whether this will make the readers care. If your answer is yes, then your blog is in safe hands.

But, if the answer is no, then do something about it.

Keep it short:
Again, this formula manifests itself in many of my previous posts. I’ve re-iterated this idea here, because I’ve read long posts which lose their momentum half way through. The writers start to deviate from their central theme and eventually the readers attention wanders off with the theme. So, in general, it is best to have short and precise posts with strong and rich content. Though, there are few exceptions like Paul Graham or Steve Yegge.

These are the few basic characteristics that I’ve observed in many successful blogs. And if you want your blog to have that kick-ass element to it, try to inculcate these basic features.

If you’re successful in doing this, tell me how .