When embarking on a new blogging project there are a few things that you'll need to think about early on. What are you going to name your blog? What topics will you blog about? How often will you publish posts? What kind of writing style will you use? In the remainder of this article I'll look at these questions more fully.
What Will Your Blog Be Called
When writing a blog, the first question you need to consider is whether the blog is primarily centered around your own writing or a specific topic. Many bloggers name their blogs after themselves such as 'Betty Boop' and others will name their blog based on the topic such as 'Cat Grooming World'.
If you will be using your blog to promote your own personal services or products then it can be be a good idea to name your blog after yourself as your blog name will always be relevant no matter how your work changes over time. However if you're blogging about a specific topic, and especially if you run several blogs on different topics it may be better to use a niche-related name and domain.
Choosing Your Blog Topics
Many people start their first blog in a rather broad way - blogging about anything and everything that comes to their mind and as such they cover lots of topics. This is not necessarily a good idea as the majority of your readers will only be interested in a small portion of your topics.
When it comes to writing your posts you will be able to organise them into categories which makes it much easier for new readers to find your posts and its easy for them to see at a glance what your blog is about. When you just post a mish-mash of posts on all sorts of topics that are not really related then it can be more difficult to turn a one-off visitor into a regular subscriber.
Deciding on a Posting Schedule
A common trend amongst new bloggers is to start out bursting with enthusiasm. Indeed, much of the advice around tells you to blog as much as you can - at least every day if possible. Whilst more posts do in theory give you more chances to be found in the search engines, there are many readers who suffer from information overload and simply cannot keep up with busy blogs which leaves many of your posts unread.
In my experience it doesn't really matter how often you post or on what days of the week etc. The most important factor is that whatever schedule you set for yourself, you try to stick to it and remain consistent. There are very successful bloggers that only post once per week and their readers look forward to reading their weekly post.
One trend that I see with many blogs is that the blogger starts out enthusiastically by posting every day or even many times per day but over time he either loses steam, finds it too time consuming or simply runs out of stuff to say and then the schedule starts to slip and the posts become less frequent. This is noticeable to the reader and it does not look good!
Personally, I would suggest the opposite approach - start off slowly with a nice gentle schedule that you know you can stick to. Over time if you feel you wish to do more then slowly increase it but don't do it the other way around!
What Style of Writing Will You Use?
Some people suggest that you alter your blogging style to fit your target audience but in my experience I find that it never works to try to blog in a style that is not uniquely you. Your blog is a reflection of you - your thoughts, your findings, your interests and passions.
I would recommend that you simply write in whatever way suits you. Everybody is different. Some people are conservative in their writing, others like to use language as a shock factor, some like controversy, others prefer a dry factual style. None of these are right or wrong - simply be who you are.
Similarly, I see people asking questions such as, how long should my posts be? This again is down to personal style though it is perhaps influenced by your posting frequency. Short, snappy posts may be best if you post very often but if you only post once per week you'll probably want to publish something with a bit more substance!
One thing to remember is that you can't please all of the people all of the time anyway so trying to modify your posting style to fit in with some idea of what your readers might like is an exercise in futility. At the end of the day some people will like your style and some won't. Those that do will hopefully subscribe and those that don't will not but that's just life and nothing to worry about!