QuickOverview

By Mridu Khullar

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the better part of last year, you’ve probably come across the terms “blog,” or “blogging.” The new rage on the Internet, a blog is actually a personal website, or journal, if you will, that showcases the writer’s thoughts, feelings and expressions on a particular topic. Since these personal diaries are available online for everyone to read, they invite a great deal of reader interaction in the form of comments and trackbacking. Most bloggers update their blogs regularly and the most recent entry appears on the top of the page.

So now you want to know how you can create one too, right? Read on.

Creating A Blog

When setting up your own blog, your first choice involves hosting of the blog. That is, do you want to host the blog on your own website, or use an existing server (most are free). If you have a website of your own, it’s a good idea to put your blog up there for maximum traffic. If not, you need to host the blog on another server. For that, it’ll take you five minutes to register with websites such as Blogger or LiveJournal. These websites usually have a listing of the hundreds of blogs hosted on their servers and will let you set up your own as well. Other blogging sites include Mo’time, HaloScan and QuickTopic.

Setting up a blog is very easy. With Blogger.com for instance, it’ll take you no more than a couple of minutes. To create a blog, first log on to the website such as Blogger.com and create an account. Think up a nice title for your blog, and a brief description of it so potential readers know what topics you’ll be covering in your blog and how often you’ll be updating it. Then choose from a wide variety of designs or templates, after which you can start the actual blogging.

Some of these blogging websites also offer a host of additional features that you can incorporate into your blog. You could have a search function, a tag board, a comments feature, site statistics and counters, lists and polls and even a mailing list to let users know when your blog is updated. There are also many websites dedicated to specific blogging features. For instance, Blogrolling (www.blogrolling.com) can help you organize links to other blogs and NotifyList (www.notifylist.com) will let you host your own mailing list. Just make sure that these features are compatible with your blogging tool.

Don’t forget though, that the whole purpose of a blog is interaction and readers look forward to reading new entries on the blogs that they like. So update it regularly to keep your readers happy. Try and keep up with news and updates on the topic of your blog, too.

But here’s the most important question: what will you write about? Currently, the most popular blogs have some sort of a niche and don’t try to be all-encompassing. For instance, you’ll find blogs on the Internet, women’s issues, news and politics, travel, sports, business, writing, career, family life and whatnot. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Just write from the heart.

Creating an Audience

There’s really no point to a blog if it doesn’t have the ability to communicate and interact with readers. That’s what really separates it from a static website. To add interactivity to your blog and have readers coming back for more, try incorporating some of the following techniques:

• Enable the Comments Feature: There’s just no blogging without comments. You do want your users to be able to leave their thoughts and notes with you before they leave, don’t you? Some do give you the option to approve/disapprove posts and not have posts by anonymous users, though.
• Put up a Contact Address: Like it or not, some people just want to get in touch with you, but not while the whole world is reading. For those people, put up your e-mail address, so that they can easily get in touch with you if the need be.
• Add-on the Extras: Enable Trackback, create polls, add tag boards or shout boxes—anything that makes it fun and enjoyable for your readers to hang out around your blog. The more they like being around your space, the more often they’ll come back for more.
• Create a Community: Everyone likes being part of an exclusive club. Make your readers feel like that, too. If you want to spread the word about your blog, you’ll need to do some blatant self promotion. That includes, listing your blog in directories and portals, joining web rings, and visiting other people’s blogs and leaving comments.

And that’s all there is to being a successful blogger. Don’t forget to send me the link!