Blogging Athlete

No matter where you blog, or what you decide to do with your blog, there are a couple of ‘must do’ steps.

Step one – make sure you’ve configured everything.  There’s nothing worse than having done 99% of the work, only to be let down by the final 1%.  To ensure you’ve got the best fighting chance to get the best attention for your blog, you should fill in everything that you can.
This includes any profile settings, and in the case of Wordpress, any plugins or other information that needs to be completed – many plugins and themes require some work to make them usable.
Step two – pick a theme and stick with it.  You’ll need to pick a theme that you like and upload it.  Making your blog stand out from the rest is a major step in retaining traffic.  More importantly, if you make it yours, the you’re more likely to work on it more often.
Adding a theme also makes you appear LESS like a spammer – most spammers don’t personalize their blogs – they stick with a couple of default themes and don’t add much personal information.
Step three – Write some content.  When you’re ready to upload the content, you should set it up to create a great archive.  Create at least five posts and upload them to your site.
Step four – Promote that content – once you’ve got a nice stock of content up start promoting your blog.  Consider using your posts on article sites, exchanges and more – you’ll get more traffic if you diversify, so remember to add your site to bookmarking sites – and, encourage your readers to do so too.
Step five – have fun!
Blogging, ultimately, is about connecting with readers and will give you a reader base to discuss your work with – but it will also allow you to express yourself, make friends, and spread your expertise over the web.  But most of all, blogging is enjoyable, so always keep it that way, and have fun!

Blogging Athlete

The two main hosted blog types, are Blogger and Wordpress – you’ll find that whenever a discussion about where its best to host your blog, if you’re not hosting it yourself, that these two are rated the highest.
So which of the two services is better?
Ultimately, both services will offer you a strong and solid base to blog from, but there are a couple of distinct differences between Blogger and Wordpress.

Wordpress
Wordpress hosted services are not designed to be used for commercial purposes – nevertheless, most people do.  You get a choice of themes (and without paying, you can’t design your own theme) and a choice of plugins.  You can ‘map’ your domain to the site, for a fee, giving you the appearance of  hosting it yourself.
Wordpress hosted (at http://wordpress.com) is almost identical to hosting it yourself, other than the obvious ‘bonus’ of not actually needing to look after your install.  But its disadvantages include being at the mercy of a third party site, and needing to pay for additional ’services’.  These still cost less than buying hosting and setting the blog up yourself.

Blogger
Blogger is owned by Google, and is designed around ease of use.  You can ‘ftp’ your blog onto your own site, or host at a  domain (yourblogname.blogspot.com) of your choice.  Blogger doesn’t use plugins, but does let you use your own theme, within certain limits.
A huge community has been built around Blogger, but unlike Wordpress.com they allow commercial based blogs as well as non commercial, which means they are more prone to spam.

In conclusion.  If you really can’t host your own blog at your own site, play with both Wordpress and Blogger, because ultimately, the main difference will be between which one your more comfortable with.  And that’s the one you should use.

Blogging Athlete