BlogWritingCourse

For the next few months, we’ll be featuring some of our best posts from the Blog Writing Course archives.  If you are new to our blog, then you will enjoy the opportunity to catch up with the terrific tips and tricks we’ve shared with new bloggers over the years.

When I was a little girl, there were few things that could make my pigtails bounce with joy more than getting a letter in the mail addressed to me.  It made me feel so important and valuable.  It didn’t even really matter what it was, or what it said – - it just mattered that someone had thought of me enough to write.  (Although I’ll admit there was an extra little pigtail bounce when I saw the letter was from my grandmother, because that usually meant there was a crisp new dollar bill inside.) Years of junk mail have dampened my excitement over heading to the mailbox, but I still get a little thrill when I open the mailbox door and find an honest-to-goodness letter with my name on it.

Come to think of it, bloggers have a lot in common with little pigtailed girls. The biggest part of the excitement of writing a blog, is knowing that others are going to read it.  And the only way to know what other people think of your writing is when they take the time to leave a comment.  Do you remember on Andy Griffith when Barney would finally  do something right, like remember to lock the jail door, or remember to put his bullet in his pocket?  Andy would get this proud look on his face and tell Barney he was doing "fine" work.  Barney would hike up his pants grin and nearly knock his ear out of joint with that sideways grin of delight.   That is pretty much the sum total of how a blogger feels when a reader leaves a comment on his blog. He or  she is not only proud that what they wrote mattered to someone, but is inspired to continue writing.

Commenting on a blog can be sort of like rolling a snowball down a hill.  It motivates the writer to interact with his readers and write more blogs, which in turn, brings about more comments.  Even more importantly, when a blogger knows she has readers, she is apt to raise the bar in terms of her content.  Posts get better, and more readers are drawn in.

For new bloggers, commenting on someone else’s blog has an additional benefit.  It gets you noticed.  Let’s say you are starting a blog about 80′s music, and you are also a regular reader of the Bangles Buff blog, the Duran Duran Devotee blog, and the Aerosmith Aficianado blog. By commenting on these blogs often, and using your blog url in your comment, you are making the writers aware of your similar interests, and hopefully they will stop by your blog to check it out, and maybe, if your blog hits the right 80′s "chord" with them, they will even add you to their blogroll!  And so on, and so on, and so on….the snowball keeps rolling.

Commenting is just one of the many things you can do to grow your blog readership.  To find out more information on starting a new blog or building a better blog, sign up for one of our blog courses today.  There is no better time to get the blog rolling!

Until Next Time,

I was looking this morning at the recent comments from students who have taken our eight-week online blog writing course, Blogging 101.  We offer a survey to those who have completed the course, and we use the results to help us make the course even better and more helpful to future enrollees.

As a perk, though, it is also really encouraging to read how much our students have enjoyed the course.  I thought today I would share with you some of the supportive things our alumni have said about Blogging 101.

I learned a lot in eight weeks. A lot more then I expected. Not once did I get bored of the weekly assignments or think it was a waste of time. I am the person who at times loses interest quickly and that did not happen with this course

I would recommend this to absolutely anyone. I really felt the pace was just right and I got WAY more out of it than I expected. I am VERY pleased with my blog and all of the help getting going. It was truly a bargain

The course was easily explained and understood

I’ve already recommended it to two friends. I was impressed with the progressive format and the helpful information

I learned all I needed to know and more about setting up a new blog. I had very little knowledge on the subject and had done a lot of reading online before I started this course. But I got even more information that was not readily available elsewhere.

We are so proud of this course and delighted that those who sign up are getting a quality blog writing course for an incredibly reasonable price.  If you have been thinking about blogging, this may be exactly the course you’ve been looking for.  And thanks to our students, you don’t just have to take my word for it!

Sign up today!!

October is often associated with goblins, ghosties, and ghastly ghouls, but for a new blogger those things can seem tame compared to the idea of having to write something in code for your sidebar or header.  But learning a little HTML actually isn’t all that frightening.  It’s like going through a haunted house in the daylight…once you see how it’s all put together, you realize you had nothing to be afraid of.

A lot of times, in fact, when you want to create a widget or button for your sidebar, you don’t even NEED to know code.  Both Blogger and WordPress have dozens of sidebar gadgets that are already coded for you.  All you have to do is click and choose which one(s) you want, then decide where you want it situated on your sidebar, and voila!  Instant widget.

Other times, you want to add an off-site button or widget, though.  For instance, you might want to add your Facebook profile badge to your blog sidebar.  Or maybe you have a favorite forum you visit and you want to share it with your blog readers.  Chances are, most of the sites or networks you want to promote already have their buttons and badges pre-coded for you!  All you have to do is copy the code, create an HTML gadget in your blog sidebar, paste the code there, and click “Save”.  Voila again!

There ARE a few instances where you might want to create text or image links on your sidebar, but don’t have the built in code handy.  Our Blogging 101 course includes a handy resource for guiding you through the basics of HTML coding for blogs, if you ever need it. 

See?  That wasn’t so scary, was it?   In fact, it’s almost too peaceful around here.

That’s much better.

Have you ever noticed that when life gets busy, the first thing to suffer is your blog?  Fall time can be such an active season for people that we start to feel like our blog writing is just “one more thing on our to-do list.”  That is too bad. Why? Because fall is such a beautifully inspirational time of year! 

If you are feeling especially overwhelmed right now, maybe all you need to get those fingers back on the keyboard is a little inspiration.  I thought I would help out with that by sharing a few of my favorite quotes about writing.  Reading any of these often gives me that little extra “push” I need to square my shoulders back and start spilling out words again.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.  ~Sylvia Plath

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.  ~William Wordsworth

Writing, I think, is not apart from living.  Writing is a kind of double living.  The writer experiences everything twice.  Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.  ~Catherine Drinker Bowen

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you.  And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.  ~Arthur Polotnik

It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.  ~Sinclair Lewis

Life can’t ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer’s lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.  ~Edna Ferber

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.  ~Samuel Johnson

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.  ~Hart Crane

You want to start a blog. You really do.  But it seems so complex.  So time-consuming.  Maybe even a little bit boring. 

You have things to say, but you aren’t sure how much.  And you aren’t sure you can write enough interesting things or ground-breaking content to make people actually want to stick around. 

So what is a wannabe blogger to do?  One great idea is to test the blogging waters with one of the many “Light Blogging” platforms out there.  The important thing, though is to remember that blogs and light-blogs usually have very different goals. If you are trying to build search engine optimization for your business or to create brand identity, you probably won’t be turning to a light-blogging platform.

Light-blogging is for those people who want to share things quickly – - whether it be quotes, video, images, links, or music.   If you don’t care whether or not you have navigational tools, menus, static pages, or widgets, then light-blogging may be for you.

Tumblr is by far the most popular of these media-rich but free ways to express yourself.  Other light-blogging platforms include:

• Posterous
• Floort
• DailyBooth
• Kontain
• Rememble

If you feel like you may not be quite ready to commit to a blog, a light-blog may be just the way to ease into the blogosphere.  But if you want the customization, sophistication, and focus of a full blog, there are plenty of ways to ease into that as well – - starting with our Blogging 101 course for new bloggers.  This eight-week course will guide you every step of the way through starting up your own blog, creating content, and drawing traffic. 

Whether you are just testing the waters of blogging, or ready to plunge in, we at BlogWritingCourse.com are cheering you on!!

Okay, so people are starting to find your blog.  Hooray!!  You are building up an audience and they seem to like what you have to say.  Woohoo!!  You’ve even gotten a few comments on your last posts.  Alright!!

But maybe you’ve noticed that the visits are a little sporadic.  Or you wish that the comments were coming more consistently.  The question to ask yourself now is….”what do I need to do to make sure my visitors come back again?”  And the best answer to that question is: MAKE SURE YOU MAKE IT EASY FOR THEM!

The most important way to make sure that visitors find your blog again is by double-checking that you have a blog feed enabled.   A feed is kind of like what it sounds like – - a way to give your hungry readers exactly what they want…your blog! 

If you create a way for readers to subscribe to your blog feed, then they can be automatically notified anytime you create a new post.  It is their choice of how to receive that feed – - by email or in a feed reader.  But the nice thing is they don’t have to DO anything to find you.  Your blog comes to THEM!!

For more information on how to create feeds in the different blog hosts and how to display your feed in your blog sidebar,  be sure to sign up for our beginning blogging course, Blogging 101.  There, you will find all the information you need about blog feeds and many, many other ways of ensuring your blog visitors come back again and again.

We all read blogs.  They give us instant access to information, insight into other people, and provide multiple viewpoints on specific subjects. But sometimes, reading a blog just doesn’t cut it.  Sometimes, you realize YOU are the one who has something relevant to add to the online conversation.  In those cases, starting your own blog may be exactly the thing to do.

But the world of blogging can be intimidating – - especially if you have never written anything online before.  Where do you start?  What tools do you need?  Is it even safe???

For people asking themselves those kinds of questions, BlogWritingCourse.com has created an introductory blogging course.  Intro to Blogging is a free, automated, online course that will teach you the basics of blogging at your own pace and from the comfort of your own computer. 

There are a series of videos, short readings, and interactive exercises which you can take over a week or so, taking perhaps a total of two hours.  During this time, you’ll discover:

- how easy it is to blog

- what the basic lingo (vocabulary) is

- some basics about online safety

- whether blogging is something for you or not

Don’t let a lack of knowledge intimidate you from starting a blog or even taking a blog writing course. We’ve laid out all the basics for you in our free course. And, if you complete the course and decide that you really want to do more than think about writing your own blog, we have a subscription-based, 8-week follow up course, Blogging 101,  that will guide you every step of the way through setting up a new blog, writing quality posts, and drawing traffic to your blog.

If you have something to say to the world, don’t settle for being a blog reader.  Now is your time to sound off and share your voice with the rest of the world!  Time to start blogging!!

Social networking fascinates me.  In fact, I’m not sure if I even like social networking so much as I am absolutely captivated by it. I certainly find randomly updating the world with little tidbits about my own life to be an incredibly boring prospect…so I would honestly rather find something more meaningful to do on a social network.  Cue…

Google Plus. Or Google+. Or even just G+ as I feel sure it will be soon lovingly nicknamed.

If you have been following all the “Buzz” (their word, not mine) about G+ you realize that it is WAY more than just another Facebook.  It is a catch-all communication tool between a human being and all the other human beings on the planet. (okay…maybe just the ones who happen to have a computer and an internet connection and a clue about how to use those two things…but you get the gist)  With G+ you aren’t limited by who is and isn’t “on” a specific social network.  You get to pick exactly what info to share, exactly who to share it with, and exactly how you want it shared. 

And the fact that you get to choose what you want to share also means you aren’t limited to 140 characters or even ANY number of characters.  Which leads you to realize that G+ might just be your new blogging outlet!  I mean, think about it…

1. you want to write a blog
2. you take a blog writing course to teach you what to say in that blog and how to say it
3. you register for a Google Plus account
4. you start blogging…simply by creating a status update in the form of a blog post
5. you have a built in audience…those circles you’ve created in your Google Plus network
6. you get immediate feedback on your blog
7. the world keeps spinning and you are now a bona fide blogger

Could it be any simpler? Or easier? 

Like I said…fascinating.

One of the most daunting parts of the blog creation process – - and the point in the process where many a man or woman have thrown up their hands and given up – - is the choosing of the THEME or TEMPLATE. 

One of the problems is that there are simply too many choices.  Whether you go with WordPress, Blogger, or even a simple generic blog writing program, there are often hundreds, if not thousands, of backgrounds, fonts, sidebars, color schemes, and headers to consider.  The single most important thing to remember in order to keep your anxiety level low at this stage in the game is that your choices are NOT permanent.  In fact, it is almost certain that you will change your theme once you start writing and discover that the template you’ve chosen doesn’t really mesh with where you are going with your blog.

But it never hurts to have a few tried and true guidelines to follow when first faced with that intimidating “themes” page….

Cost

Depending on what you really want out of your blog, and whether or not you envision a strong future for it, you must choose between the free or premium template options. Those blogs out there that all look alike?  They have chosen a default theme provided by their blog host.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with using a free blog theme, though, and it might even be a smart choice for those who are unsure about how much energy they really want to put into their blog.

For those who crave customization and individuality, however, a paid, or “premium” blog template may be a wiser choice.  There are thousands of premium themes available for under $100 which can be simply imported into your blog, OR you can pay different amounts to have your blog specifically customized for you.

Features

If you are brand new to blogging and are creating your first ever blog, it is very difficult to know exactly what features you will want a blog to have.  It is hard to predict whether you will need more than one sidebar, the ability to add specific widgets, or how much customization of fonts you prefer until you’ve actually been blogging for a while.  But don’t be afraid to experiment with some completely different themes and test out their specific feature-set during the first few weeks you are writing your blog.  And definitely try out several free blog templates with various features before settling on a premium one so that you can be sure you will have exactly the right mix.

Appearance

Although less important than features, the “look” of your blog makes a big impression on visitors.  Therefore, it’s especially important to choose a theme that has plenty of eye-appeal and a pleasant color-scheme.  Your header is usually completely customizable, and isn’t necessarily theme-dependent, but even so, you want to make sure that your header and your blog theme complement each other well.

Don’t hesitate to inquire with blog owners about their design if you come across one that you like.  Find out if theirs is a theme you can use, or if they had their blog custom designed, ask them for their designers contact info.  Blog design is a lot like house design…sometimes you don’t know what you want for yourself until you see it done well somewhere else!

For more info on blog design and creation and all the other important aspects of creating and writing a new blog, sign up today for our eight-week Blogging 101 course!