Successful Blogging in 13 Steps

"13 Steps to Successful Blogging"
ProBLOG MENTORING (November 2, 2009)

"Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

"1) Where to start?

"You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home. I don't say that because I'm the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit...."

The advice here is fairly common-sense and - I think - useful. Provided that the reader takes it with the proverbial grain of salt.

#3, for example:

"...Update Daily (nothing less)

"This step is a must and not a suggestion...."

In general, this is good advice. On the other hand, the second-most-visited of my eleven blogs, Another War-on-Terror Blog, is updated whenever I have something to say. Which can be several times in one day, or once every five or six days.

I do not recommend writing posts 'whenever you feel like it.'

I think my sporadic posting in that blog works, because with few exceptions I post my reactions to, or opinions on, current events. Today, for example, I gave my view of the tragic shootings at Fort Hood - and the occasionally-hysterical responses by some of my acquaintances. I sincerely hope I don't have occasion to write a post like that for quite a long time.

It's my opinion that regular, predictable posting is important. Daily posting is, again in my opinion, a really good idea - provided that you have something to say.

#8: "...Short & Concise...." is spot-on, in my opinion.

Unhappily, the author of this post has paragraphs that run around 250 words. That's fine for a 19th century novelist like Charles Dickens, where people would take all the time it took to journey through a paragraph. These days, I don't think long paragraphs are a good idea. Not online.

Don't get me wrong: this is a good post, with useful ideas. But, like I said, take it with a grain of salt.

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A tip of the hat to timethief, on Twitter, for the heads-up on this post.