What is a blog and how to start one

This is my first blog post. It’s really hard to decide what your first blog post should be about, so I decided mine will be on blogging.

For complete beginners, here are some Frequently Asked Questions about blogs:

Q. What is a blog?

A. A blog stands for ‘web-log’. It is basically a website with posts displayed in reverse-chronological order.

It became popular because it is a free creative outlet for budding writers, journalists etc. Click here to see 10 reasons why you should start a blog. Take this quiz to see if you should start a blog.


Here is a video that explains what blogs are (in plain English).

Q. Why blog?

A. For many reasons. You may want to share your ideas with the world, keep people up to date about something, to share your amazing knowledge with mere mortals, or just write your heart out. Whichever it is, it is a fun hobby, and probably more attractive than, uh, scrapbooking.

Q. How do I decide what I want to blog about?

A. It’s probably best to blog about something that you enjoy doing, or have experience in. Click here to see 5 tips for choosing a blog topic.

Q. How often should I blog?

A. It is probably best to blog regularly. Maybe you have enough free time to blog every day, or maybe you can only blog on weekends...or once a month.

A lot of you out there might want to start your own blogs, but don’t know how to get started, and then how to follow on from that. So here’s some help for you guys.

1.       Decide what you want to blog about.

There’s no point creating a blog if you have no idea what to write about. That is a waste of space and blog names.

There are lots and lots of blogs, so you need to attract people by writing about something you are passionate about, and that other people will want to read as well.

2.       Decide if you are going to pay for hosting.

If you’re just starting out, it’s probably best to go for a free blogging service until you get used to it. And anyway, you might change your mind about blogging, and you’ll still have to pay for it.

Free blogging services include Blogger and Wordpress. Find out more about them by clicking here. It is a comparison of the two platforms, showing all their good and bad sides.

3.       Think of a good name for your blog.

This can be tricky, because there are hundreds of millions of blogs out there, but you can use websites such as NameCheck and NameChk to see if the name you chose is available.

4.       Make the blog.

Go on the website of the blogging platform you chose in step 2, and just follow the steps. This is probably the easiest part of all. Watch these tutorial videos, they will really help.


Blogger:

Wordpress:

5.       Just blog!

Once your blog is online, you can customise it, add themes and widgets/gadgets etc. Read the ‘Help’ menu when you’re starting out. Afterwards, it will be easy.

Don’t give up! You can’t expect to be the next Perez Hilton on your first day as a blogger. Blogging is hard work. When writing posts, make sure they are accurate. Research the topic you’re writing about, check it, write it, do a spell check, reread it, then publish it when you’re sure it’s right. Add lots of pictures, videos and interesting links to hold the reader’s attention.

And most importantly, have fun writing it.

Finally, here is a video where 3 bloggers share their blog tips. Enjoy!