New Blog Creation Series: Conclusion
Welcome back! Last time, we discussed statistics packages, and monitoring your statistics. This time, well, I’ll conclude this series.
New Blog Creation Series: Statistics
Welcome back! Last time, we discussed drawing in traffic to your new blog. This time, we’ll discuss tracking your blog statistics. Let’s get started.
Procuring Statistics
There are literally hundreds of ways of tracking your blog stats. They range from the free and simple, to the expensive and complex. Right now, the cream of the free crop is Google Analytics. Analytics is the most in depth free stats package out there. Unfortunately, it is a little clunky to wade through. Mostly, you’re only going to be interested in certain things:
- Number of Hits Per Day
- Number of Hits in the Previous Day
- Number of Hits Per Week
- What links are being clicked
- Where people are coming from
- What search terms people are using to find your blog
- What page people are coming in on
- What entries are getting the most attention
- How your hits change, over time (week to week, month to month)
- How many unique hits per day vs. how many total hits per day
New Blog Creation Series: Traffic
Welcome back! Last time, we talked about writing the initial entries for your blog. This time, we’ll talk about getting traffic coming in to your new blog, and the steps I took with MindFyre. Let’s get started.
Search Engines
First and foremost, it’s important to get listed in search engines. If you signed up for Google SiteMaps, like I suggested in the Setting Up entry for this series, you’re already going to get listed in Google. Go ahead and take the time to submit your site to Yahoo, MSN, and DMOZ. Getting listed in those engines will be your best bet. Of course, if you’re getting links from other blogs, you’ll eventually get indexed into the search engines, anyway… but why wait?
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New Blog Creation Series: Initial Entries
Welcome back! Last time, we discussed adding monetization to your blog, including choosing ad units, placement, and colorization. This time, we’ll discuss your blog’s initial entries, including how to import them from another blog.
Initial Entries
First and foremost, before you ever begin to advertise, or link to, your new blog, you need to have a good amount of initial entries. The absolute bare minimum is ten solid entries. By solid entry, I mean an entry that is fairly in depth. Normally one that is several paragraphs long. Short entries, link entries, and general “stuff” entries do not count in that initial ten. Optimally, before “opening” your blog, you should have between fifteen and twenty entries of substance. It’s perfectly fine to write these entries within a very few days. The dates of the entries aren’t important, it’s the fact that they’re there and represent an active blog. Make certain, when you’re writing your initial entries, that they’re on topic with your blog. Eventually, you can post an occasional off-topic entry, but to begin with, your entries should be on topic and current.
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New Blog Creation Series: Adding Monetization
Welcome back! In our last conversation, we discussed various template tweaks, including SEO techniques, and general layout. This time, we’ll discuss implementing monetization on your new blog. Let’s get started.
When Should You Monetize?
There are several schools of thought on this subject. The general consensus seems to run like this: If you are already a successful blogger, and you’ll most likely have a decent amount of traffic coming in right off the bat, go ahead and set up at least some of your ads at the beginning. If you’re a new blogger, this is a new niche for you, or you don’t think you’ll have a decent amount of traffic almost immediately, then go ahead and sign up for and block out where you want your ad units to appear, but don’t actually insert them.
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New Blog Creation Series: Template Tweaks
Welcome back. In our last conversation, we discussed setting up the initial options, categories, etc… of your system. This time, we’ll talk about tweaking the template in a bit more detail. In some ways, this will simply be a refresher of things we’ve already discussed. Let’s get started.
General Layout Stuff
Don’t you love headings like that? Simply put, you need to look over your layout and see if anything sticks out like a sore thumb. When I started tweaking the template of MindSpeak, I found that the options at the end of each entry didn’t particularly agree with me, so I tried a couple of different layouts of that area, before I found the one I liked. I also changed the headers of my columns, and - for one column - changed the width. I then added in a few test entries, and looked at the way things appeared. I also checked the comments section, and decided I wanted to alternate background colors, and - using a plugin - designate which comments were from blog authors (primarily, myself). After tweaking the general layout for a bit, I finally settled on a semi-finished product. I had yet to insert all of my monetization codes, so I knew I still had a little bit left to do.
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New Blog Creation Series: Setting Up
Welcome back. In our last conversation, we discussed the choices involved in opening a new blog. In this conversation, we’ll talk about setting up your blog, including category creation, system options, plugins and syndication. As before, I’ll be using my blog, MindSpeak as an example. Let’s get started.
Setting Up
The first step in setting up is, of course, installing your blog software. Normally, this won’t take very long, and once it’s done, you’re pretty much ready to go. Keep in mind, however, that you need to ensure your blog is set up to work on your new domain (or subdomain, or sub-folder). Once the DNS has propogated, and you can access your blog by its web address, you’re ready to move on to specific setup options. Before doing so, however, spend a bit of time thinking about what you’ll be writing about, jotting down category ideas, and thinking about the general options you’ll need to set. Spending a few minutes thinking about these things before hand, can save you an hour of work, later.
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New Blog Creation Series: Initial Choices
Welcome to the New Blog Creation series. This particular series will concentrate on the steps taken (and neccesary) for starting any new blog. In this case, we’ll be using my recently started blog, MindSpeak (formerly known as MindFyre Politics) as an example. I will discuss the steps in went through in making choices for, and setting up, the new blog. As usual, this is a conversation, and I encourage comments, questions, suggestions, and even debate. Did you do something differently than I did (or would you have)? Let us know. Is there something you think I forgot? Let us know. As always, this is about you, and your process of learning to be an amateur blogger. Let’s get started.
Initial Choices
There are a lot of initial choices that go with starting a blog. Needless to say, the first decicion is that of actually starting the blog. In my case, I decided it was time to start MindSpeak when I was invited to join the Texas Progressive Alliance (TEXAdS). I realize, at that point, that I would be making more politically oriented posts. I decided that it was time to seperate that topic genre (or niche) from my main blog, which was concentrating primarily on blogging, tech, and web 2.0. It was then that I decided to begin MindSpeak.
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Blogging, Series: Coming Soon, New Series from MindFyre
With the success of the Amateur Blogging Series, I felt it was only right to continue a good trend. So, I decided to write another series (or two). In this case, I’ve written a series on blog creation.
The New Blog Creation Series will walk you through - step-by-step - setting up a new blog. In this series, I use my newest blog, MindSpeak, as an example, providing "real-world" looks at how I made certain choices in setting up the blog. This series is designed for both the first-time blogger, and the multi-blogger. Whether you’re setting up your first blog on blogger.com, or you’re creating another MoveableType blog on your existing server, you’ll benefit from this series.
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