Blogs are one of the revolutionary inventions of the digital world. The word ‘Blog’ originated from the term web log. Blog has given a common man the power to share opinion and influence. Blogging gained a significant momentum in the early 2000. Today, blogging is sort of professional need.

An individual uses blog to share his/her experiences; this is known as a personal blog. Some people use blog to share their expertise and knowledge in particular field, this is known as niche blog. Companies started maintaining a blog and started sharing information about their products, services, events and this is known as a corporate blog.

Personal blog will work well for celebrities, authors, journalists, politicians; if a common man writes a personal blog mostly only people who know him will want to know about what is happening in his life. Instead it is wise to write about a niche topic related to your profession or a hobby, which will interest a lot of people and will eventually establish yourself as a thought leader. Niche blog is the smarter option.

If you think there is nothing much to share about your profession, you can start blogging about your hobbies. There are tones of blogs on travel, cooking, photography.

Blogging requires a lot of passion and patience. So write something you are passionate about.

Choosing a publishing platform:

BlogSpot and WordPress are the most widely used publishing platforms. I would recommend WordPress due to its laudable features. There are a host of applications you can add to customize your blog.

Google is your best guide, just Google on the various available plugins and get them integrated to your blog. SEO and Google analytics is a must have add on for any blog.You can get a customized background image for your blog done; this will add a personal touch to the blog!

Gearing up to blog regularly:

Converting a visitor into a reader requires a lot of effort. You need to have interesting content and a lot of posts to engage your visitors. When you start your blog, you need to post every day at least for a month, ideally for 2 months. This will significant help you build a good reader base.

Irregular blog may not be able to sustain its readers.

After the first two months, you post 2 articles per week. After 6 months you can post 2 articles per month. Once you start receiving good feedback for your blog, you will have higher motivation or blogging!

Not sure if you can do this? Here is a secret idea to make sure you blog everyday for the initial month.
Get 30 blog posts ready before you start your blog. Then once you start your blog you will have to just post it. Keep a content bank and keep writing and adding articles to it whenever you find time.
A regularly updated blog fetches more traffic and visibility in search results.

Getting quality blog posts:

Value is the key word here, how much value your readers get from reading your blog is the success of your blog. There are humungous information available on the internet, what is that people can get from your blog that they can’t get else where is the million dollar

question; phew, it’s very simple –  you can add significant meaning to your articles from your experience or by extensively researching on the topic and collating relevant information. You can also collate peer reviews or collect views from industry experts/ professionals in your network.  The objective of writing the article must be quality knowledge sharing.

Making your blog interesting:

Yep, variety is the spice of life is very much applicable for your blog as well. Break the monotony of text; include presentations, videos, images, flowcharts, reviews, to make your blog interesting. You can record yourself speak on a topic and post it;  you need go for a sophisticated camera set up, a simple digital camera will give you a sharable video.

Get a guest blogger occasionally to add more credibility and give a back link to their blog. (You can be a guest blogger and get a back link to your blog). You can conduct a small survey and post responses.

Blogging best practices:

•    Choose an inviting heading, like 10 ways to … 5 tips on, best practices of….
•    Group the content under relevant sub headings; have a sub heading for each paragraph
•    Keep the language simple
•    Add relevant image
•    Add relevant key words
•    Promote the blog well; you can use them in your email signature, you can tweet about it!
•    SEO for your blog is a must to get in ranked well on search engines
•    Moderate the comments you get on your blog

1 Less known fact about blogs:

Blook – these are books based on blogs. Many successful blogs have been converted into books.
•    The first blook was “User Interface Design for Programmers” by Joel  Spolsky
•    Tucker Max’s blook “Hope they sell beer in hell” made it to become New York Times bestseller
•    A book based on Julie Powell’s blog was made into a film “Julie & Julia”