Here we are at the end of New Bloggers Fortnight and I have snuck in a blogger that we cannot really use the 'new blogger' label on but she is a friend of all bloggers and the ultra helpful Nickie of Typecast is here to help point you in the right direction...
With one finger on the pulse and the other on the keyboard, Nickie is not afraid to say it as she sees it. She works hard, is a true procrastinator, drinks wine, is occasionally published and is a Nana in her spare time. In the words of Raymond Babbitt: “She’s all sparkly. She looks like a holiday.”
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So, you’ve got a blog, you’ve written a few posts, started to receive some comments, managed to take a great picture for one of the popular weekly photo memes but you want to go one step further and start adding bits and pieces to your blog like everyone else seems to have. But where to start?
Have no fear! The best way to get to know the ‘inner workings’ of your blog is to do it yourself. If you’re going to use online media you might as well know how it works. I’ve written some handy little tutorials to help you out - they’ve got step-by-step instructions which have been generated through my own trial and error. And I’ll let you into a little secret... I have a ‘spare blog’ for trying things out on. No-one else knows the address, it gets no hits whatsoever, but I can throw a bit of HTML in there, click ‘SAVE’ and see if it work. It saves breaking my real blog but also gives me that boost of confidence if it actually does work!
But lets get back to basics a little. How do people find out about the blogger behind the blog? You write an “About Me” page, of course! This doesn’t have to contain your vital statistics and your postal address, obviously, but maybe a few fun facts about yourself and a contact email address. You’ll need a static page for your About Me page and I’ve got a great little post explaining how to create a static page on Blogger.
Moving on to the next step - you want to generate a bit of an online identity; something to make people remember you. What do you think of when you see a circle with a V and a W inside it? I say “Nike” and already you’re imagining a big swishy ‘tick’. It’s all about the branding and the logos and it’s easy for bloggers to create their own imagery too. Find yourself an image (a free image from an online source - DON’T STEAL OTHER PEOPLE’S WORK) or get a mate to sketch you something, save it to your computer and create a blog header/banner and a button/avatar from that. There’s a great three-step tutorial on how to create a button for your blog over at mine that loads of bloggers have already used. You can easily adapt this to create a header too. When done, use your button all over your social media networks so that people associate the image with the blog/ger.
And when you’re feeling a little bit more confident there are more ways in which you can promote your blog by using Facebook or StumbleUpon. Both of these “top tips” posts explain how to use free tools to get your blog out there a bit more. After all, the majority of us are wanting our content to be read, aren’t we?
But do you know what the best thing to do is? Become part of the community (forums, twitter, facebook groups) and start talking to people. Anyone! Ask questions, butt into conversations, share experiences and just be yourself. Don’t let blogging become a chore and enjoy the ride.
See you around the blogosphere.
Cheers Nickie, I do recommend Nickie's tutorials, she has a really straight forward and easy way of exaplaining how to do things.
So that is it, the last guest post for New Bloggers Fortnight. Join me tomorrow for the final round up.
