When you are starting a new blog, there are several things that you need to plan from the outset. What will your blog be called? What kinds of topics will it cover? How often do you intend to post? What will your writing style be? The rest of this article will look at those aspects in more detail.

What To Call Your Blog

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 are branding yourself with the intention of marketing your personal services then naming your blog after yourself is a great move as you will always be able to use it to promote you. This is especially useful if you’re not sure what direction your blog will move in over time. But if you are building a blog around a specific topic which may not be part of you long-term then you may be better off with a niche-related name and domain.

Deciding Upon Topics For Your Blog

Some people find that their first blog starts out as a bit of a broad mish-mash of anything and everything they can think of and as such it ends up covering a large number of possibly unrelated topics. This is not really a good idea as most readers will only want to read a handful of your posts.

By clearly defining the topics you intend to blog about at the outset you can organise your posts into categories which will make your blog more organised and it will also be easier for new visitors to find what they are looking for.

Coming Up With a Blog 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.

Another danger with trying to post too much, especially in the beginning, is that you may not be able to maintain your pace. You may run out of ideas, find the time committment to be too much or simply burn out and if you start posting less and less, this looks bad and it looks as though the blog is dying. Many readers will unsubscribe when this begins to happen.

A much better idea is to start off with a gentle posting schedule (you wont have many readers at the start anyway) and if you feel that you want to do more, to increase it slowly over time. Don’t do it the other way around!

Do You Have a Particular Writing Style?

I have often read advice that suggests that you should establish who your target audience is (this is good) and then alter your writing style to fit and that part is not so good. People will read your blog for its content and if you try to write in a style that is not comfortable for you it will show. Your blog is a reflection if you, your thoughts, opinions and passions and so on. Let the real you shine!

As for the style of the content itself, again this is highly personal. Each of us is different and you should write in your own style and not how you think your readers want you to write. Some people like to use humor, others prefer to stick to dry facts, some people like to rustle up some controversy and so on. Do what works for you.

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!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Blog Marketing, Guest Bloggers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.