Personal Blogging

Many of us keep personal diaries of events that have occured over the last few weeks, months, years, even a lifetime. With the emergence of the Internet and the great opportunities for reaching a wide and interested audience, many are now keeping these records online. There are 1,668,870,408 Internet users in the World; your audience. To have but one subscriber wanting to read your online diary on a regular basis gives one great satisfaction and a feeling of purpose. I believe that this is the attraction of personal blogging.



The online diary, which we call weblog, often goes well beyond the boundaries of simple communication. There are gripping articles and lots of interactive features that create an entertaining environment for any Internet user. Many brilliant writers began by keeping weblogs, records of personal thought, comments and ideas. Personal blogs allow a limitless space for expression of opinion and a clear record of ones development.

Personal blogging comes with caution as certain aspects of ones personal life can be detremental to other goals you may have set yourself, such as business success. Much caution now goes with MySpace pages and Facebook pages; what better way for a company to see the 'true' individual they may be hiring? It is sensible from the outset to keep personal and business blogging separate and to follow a few simple rules to ensure your personal blog is successful.

The first thing you need to put effort into is the topic of the articles you post; they are responsible for the overall image of the blog. There are many poor personal blogs, with uninteresting work and poor grammar and spelling. Please bear in mind that anybody with Internet access can view your blog and so you have a responsibility to self-censoring. This is for your benefit as well as others and unfortunately there have been cases of stalking and even stolen identity. Also remember that blogs are interactive; do not write about aspects of your life to which other peoples comments could hurt your feelings.

As long as you monitor your writing and others comments and adhere to your own self-censoring policy the outlook for your blog should be bright. When you write a personal blog you must consider its affect on your family and your friends. Do not fall into the trap of believing a weblog is a private, secretive place where you can store your opinions and thoughts. Your thoughts can have great power when you publish them to the World, but with great power comes great responsibility.

Next Time: Business Blogging

Overview: How do I get started blogging?

When you ask how a successful business communicates I am in not doubt that the main reply will be 'online'. Online communications are by far the most successful and effective ones worldwide. Email means no stamps, quick access and direct contact, no questions asked. More advanced techniques such as video-conferencing even allow the user to meet face to face with their clients, even though they are half way across the world. Yes online communication saves money, time while also allowing transactions,advertising and administration. Now forming part of this trend is blogging. There are a few outline rules you need to follow to get started blogging, but believe me, it can be as easy as putting finger to keyboard. Now a lot of sites and indeed other blogs will try to make this process sound more advanced, specialised and technical than it actually is. I aim to make blogging as simple as learning your ABC's or 123's.


Image from http://edutech.csun.edu.

Purpose

The most important thing for the creation of a blog is the purpose, why are you actually writing it and who are you writing it for. Now be honest here, if you are writing a blog to make money then thats fine but realise this. Do not fool yourself into believing you are interested in a subject that clearly you are not; you may lose enthusiasm later on down the line and heres why:

Joe wants to make money online so decides to write a weblog. 'Great!' he thinks, 'This seems easy enough!'. He reads online about how Politics and Camping are commonly searched for themes on Google. He decides to base his blog on Politics while making money from advertisements. Joe has no interest in Politics but realises the potential for making money from this area. Guess what, 4 weeks down the line and no new content is being posted to the blog, Joe has forgotten about it, members have moved on.

It IS difficult to continuously write about a subject that you have no interest in. There are ways around this by obtaining blog content from elsewhere but initially it is good to base your blog on a subject you are interested in. That way you have more to give and can interact with your readers honestly and effectively. You can make money from any blog on any subject.

Doing the Work

Who will create your blog, you? Or will you hire somebody to do it for you? If you are a business owner trying to promote yourself perhaps you do not have the time to write and maintain a blog, but you see the potential in it. This is not such an extravagant idea and quite a few people hire a blogging pro to get thing started and on the right track, then take over themselves.

Plan, Plan, Plan

Before even starting the actual blogging project, create a detailed plan. You really need this so that you do not get distracted from your true goal. Read alot, I mean alot. Download popular ebooks that will help you through this process, a favourite of mine is Blogging to the Bank. The author is a successful blogger now earning a living from his work. As with anything preparation is key and the 'Cash In On Blogs' blog will help you through this important process. You will need objectives, investment and the analysis of cost and profit, targeted audience, blog updates, administration and monitoring tools. You will need to really ask yourself 'Can I do the work?' 'Do people want to read this?' 'Will it make money?'

Attracting Visitors

The full potential of a blog is realised when you are attracting visitors. If your visitor numbers grow and consistantly return to check for regular updates, you know your content is sticky and interesting. To get the ball rolling search for special software that helps you choose the best keywords to use in your posts (the kind people search for all the time on search engines). This process is known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO as you might have already discovered. You need to learn as many SEO secrets as you can. Note, you will not find all of these in books and guides. If you had found a way to get high traffic yields to your website, would you share it with the world and potential competition? SEO should be a buzzword for all bloggers.

Sources of Revenue

Bear in mind that if you have great content and lots of visitors you still are not making any money. The hard bit however is out of the way. Now you need to monetize your blog by placing advertisements, sponsored links etc in appropriate places on your site. This is known as affiliate marketing and will be discussed further in a later blog post. A popular marketing scheme I use comes from ClickBank. The key point here is that great SEO + great advertising = $$$!

Do Not Forget the Basics

It is very easy to get caught up in marketing hype and trying to out do the competition and forget about the most important principle, content. Great content fill the best sites and is the reason why people subscribe to your blog and come back time and time again. Search engines love great content including videos and pictures. If you offer free email advice or a weekly newsletter, advertise it and use it as a way of retaining your members.

Be dedicated, punctual and responsible. Learn from the ground up and you will go far. You can even start write now, doing your research and learning about blogging. Choose a niche topic and start writing draft posts. If you really want you can even have a play with the free blogging utility Blogger. I have found a video for you on YouTube that should help:



As always any comments are more than welcome, I am here to help! This blog will step you through the process piece by piece, goal by goal and within no time you will have a successful Internet blog!

Next Time: Personal Blogging