Blogging is a genre term frequently mentioned in pop culture conversations, but everybody has different ideas about its purpose. Before Google took over the Blogger.com online platform, the site defined blogging this way:
A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.
In simple terms, a blog is a website, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what’s new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.
Recreational blogs are fairly easy to find and commonly shared through social media sites like Pinterest.com. Common recreational blog topics include cooking, parenting, health, exercise, and much more. Professional blogs often showcase work-related skills and experience in traditional discussion-post style formats, but some also function as digital portfolios.
The following sections provide an overview of Processes, Tips, Tools, and Resources for building a blogging site.
Getting Started
First, study and collect examples of blogs you like, considering the following factors: design and content.
Design: each blogging platform is a tool that affords you a wide variety of templates as design choices. Note what colors, fonts, and layouts you most enjoy viewing as a blog reader, and consider whether or not those design choices would enhance the message of your blog. Note also which blogging platforms made those design choices possible. If you don’t see the name of the blogging platform in the URL, scroll to the bottom or check the side widgets. Usually, there will be a theme or platform marker to denote the site the blogger’s using.
Content: what will you write about? What images will you share with readers? Again, looking to other blogs you admire can help inform these decisions. Consider the timing of your content, too. You can be organic in your timing, posting just as often as you like or as needed, or you can plan to post once, twice, or multiple times per week. What’s nice about the blogging dashboard is that these control centers allow you to draft and save pages and posts well in advance of your intended publishing date and to schedule content to be pushed out at later dates. Not sure what dashboards, pages, and posts are? Read on.
The Language of Blogging
Once you’ve chosen your blog theme, you’ll open a dashboard with a lot of pre-set options. Here are a few terms to get you started in understanding those options.
Dashboard: this is the main screen that allows you to control the administration of your blog. You might also think of the dashboard like the desktop on a computer. When you need to start over or start something new, going back to this main screen is always a good idea.
Pages vs. Posts: even seasoned bloggers sometimes misuse or mix up these two P-words, and that’s probably because the screens used to compose pages and posts look very similar. However, you might think of a page as being more static and a post as being rolling content. Of course, you can keep a post forever so long as you have the link saved or your blog is searchable, but eventually new content will push a post further and further down the screen until you can’t scroll for it anymore. On the other hand, a page can be included in your menu tabs so that it’s always available for easy viewing. There are easy ways to feature or hide both, but neither will show up as live content until you press “Publish.”
Appearance: also in your dashboard center is the appearance setting, which allows you to choose a new theme, customize an existing theme, create special menu tabs, and add or remove widgets.
Widgets: contrary to the popular use of widget as a word in business culture, a widget in blogging culture is similar to an application. The widget applications you choose to install on your page will direct readers to other quick links and information you want them to have easy access to. For example, there’s a widget that adds a Search bar to your pages and a widget for directing readers to an Archive of past posts. Other commonly-used widgets spotlight social media platforms as a way of connecting with readers outside of the blogging platform, such as the Twitter.com widget that’s available on most blog theme templates.
Up and Running
Most new bloggers prefer to keep their blogs private or unpublished until the appearance of the theme, widgets, and menus are all designed to meet their blogging visions. You can control the privacy settings of your blog by visiting the Settings page of your dashboard. You can customize your theme design for as long as you like before publishing the blog publicly, but you can also make ongoing adjustments at any time after publishing.
In blogging, it’s safe to say that the “In Progress” and “Finishing Up” stages are one and the same. Maintaining a blog is an ongoing process that benefits from reflection and refinement over a long period of time. In other words, a blog is a living text. The dashboard of the blog will change, usually offering you more options to improve your designing and composing processes. It’s likely that your blog preferences or writing style may change, too, so a blog is never really finished.
Set time limits. It might sound unnecessary, but once you start tweaking themes and appearance settings, it’s hard to stop. Giving yourself a start time and a stop time will save you hours in the long run.
Back up content. You may want to keep an alternate storage system for archiving the content or images you post. Most blog sites do an excellent job of saving all the images and content you upload, but even with built-in storage features, it can be challenging for new bloggers to relocate old content.
Get social. Adding social media widgets to your blog can help readers connect with you in multiple places, boosting the visibility of your site. Pushing content through social media platforms can also help direct readers to your site over others. Many bloggers integrate Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to connect with more readers in more places.
Link up. Adding hyperlinks to other websites increases traffic to your site in two ways: 1) the sites you link to can track back to your hyperlink and 2) search engines are more likely to increase your indelibility if you link out to other sites. You can also link to relevant content previously published on your site to increase blog traffic.
Read other bloggers. Subscribe via email to other bloggers’ sites to send new content directly to your inbox. Over time, you’ll learn their stories, see how their site themes and content preferences change, and get a fresh perspective on what it’s like to be a reader. You might also notice that successful bloggers refer to other bloggers all the time, oftentimes borrowing Proust-style Q&A features or news stories to generate new content.
New blogging tools and sites are cropping up every day, but some tried and true favorites we use in the CDEx regularly include:
There are plenty of others to choose from, but these three provide the most useful templates for new users. What’s nice about Weebly is that it features a lot of drag-and-drop design decisions. Once you become more adept at blog designing, you may find yourself preferring WordPress or another platform that provides more design and HTML coding options.
The costs associated with blogging can be minimal or completely free if you don’t select a more advanced theme or personal URL domain name. However, if you’re interested in paying for advanced design features or templates on your blog, check out related readings in Resources.
This blog is dedicated to all things blogging, featuring annual reports on blogging, projections, suggestions, and no shortage of tips on how to approach blogging as a contemporary but always-changing genre of writing.
Read Smashing Magazine’s in-depth editorial on choosing WordPress blog themes that match the design vision you hope to achieve.
Free vs. Premium WordPress Themes
Read a blog on blog themes for WordPress or search the site for more information on non-WordPress blog themes.
If you’re hoping to use your blog to support any sort of entrepreneurial effort, read what writers at The Houston Chronicle recommend for securing blog sponsorships.
Creative professional and writer Jeff Goins has experienced full traffic and no traffic on blogs, but in this article–commented on 492 times–he reveals his best tips for directing more traffic to your site.