Addendum, this was originally written a few weeks ago – 60 hours has come and gone some 200 hours ago.
Okay so I’ve put about 60 plus hours of research and asking people in the know about starting a blog. A lot of people say just start a blog and flounder from there but what I’m realizing while doing this research (and not putting it on my blog just yet) is a little patience will probably go a long way (oh and a little expense). The old adage, ‘you can’t get something for nothing’ seems very real in the cyber world.
I did not adhere to any of the bracketed information below, in fact I’m still floundering along while being “live”. What I realized after all is that let’s face it, if you don’t know what you’re doing, no one’s really paying attention at the beginning anyway, and your friends are understanding and forgiving (and hopefully sometimes amused by your blunders) so it’s as good a place as any to get your feet wet. I’m still not sure about how I feel regarding advertisement. I may end up setting up two blogs and seeing which one fares better. But I am definitely going to be picking some brains before I figure it out. Be sure to reach out to friends and family when rooting around in the blogasphere, you’d be surprised how many people would like to help. I did get a domain, that seemed very important to me.
[So after several weeks research, here’s my conclusions:
Don’t “go live” until you’re absolutely sure that you have all your ducks in a row. For me this means, getting a domain name, getting a website set up with a correct way to set up banners and ads and a hit counter. Make sure your links are maintained and first and foremost make sure you proofread and spell check your stuff.]
I will repeat the above again and again because I found whenever I went to a site if it was sprinkled with bad grammar and spelling I immediately closed out and found their site of no value. How can their advice be credible when they can’t even spell check before they post? (Okay, crappy grammar, not such an issue for certain things but would it kill people to use a little punctuation from time to time?)
However, I also use slang, “isms”, popular acronyms and so forth as well which is often discouraged – it’s a personal choice. I like to think my audience, while blog uneducated like myself, is otherwise smart and sophisticated. I read something yesterday that really appealed to me wherein the blogger said, write for you and that’s what I’m doing, writing what I’d like to read, what amuses me, what I’m interested in.
Plus, in case you haven’t noticed, people today have the attention spans of fleas. Paragraphs should be short, concise and pertinent. If I was reading a blog, even a well written one and it tended to go on, I’d lose interest, skim through it or close out altogether.
Very few will read pages and pages of information. This is in fact one of my longer entries as I’ve found the blogs I liked were the ones that were short and sweet, oh and a sense of humour never killed anyone either. Gawd you would think all these bloggers were friggin’ teetotalers (that’s straight-edge and boring for you kids) from the way they write. Did no one here remember how boooooooooring those teachers were in school that just droned on and on?!
Girlie Groove 