This post, from Maria Schneider, originally appeared on her Editor Unleashed site on 5/28/09.
The “should I start a blog” topic popped up on the forum yesterday, and I want to offer my answer to this question once and for all: Yes, of course you should start a blog!
Why wouldn’t you take advantage of this fabulous, free opportunity to not only practice your craft, but also start actively building your readership.
Every writer circa 2009 should have a blog. It’s free and the technology is accessible to all. Don’t worry yourself over things like SEO and RSS or HTML. You don’t need to know any of that to start a blog, although your knowledge of these things will naturally grow as you become more comfortable with blogging.
I’ve written many posts on website building and blogging. I highly recommend starting out with a simple WordPress.com account for the most user-friendly, free service. Then, when you’re ready to expand into a full-fledged multi-page website, it’s easy to transfer those files onto WordPress.org, which is a more flexible and powerful platform.
The most important thing is to start and stick with it. That puts you ahead of the pack in more ways than you realize.
Here, I’ve assembled a number of the posts I’ve written on blogging/website building in one handy post. If you’re just starting a blog, this will be more information than you need, so you may want to skim the information and come back to specific topics when you’re ready.
Choosing a Domain
Since I’m a writer and no techno-wiz, I’ve just gotten past a steep learning curve to build my website from scratch, and I wanted to share what I learned in a weeklong series here on Editor Unleashed.
I’m going to start from the very beginning, because I wished several weeks ago for one reliable resource to take me through all of the steps in a very basic way. Read more…
Website Software and Hosting
OK, so you’ve got your domain registered and you’re ready for the next big step in building your website. Now it’s time to figure out software options and hook up with a Web Host (aka server).
Read the rest of the post on Editor Unleashed.