Blogging For Babies - Part I

Writing, plus marketing yourself and your writing, is enough for a small volunteer army. Blogging need not be so intense and complicated for the uninitiated. I‘ve been in basic training for a few weeks so, from a rookie to a newbie:

1. Save any text such as your blog description and your profile on your computer and removable media. Perform the same backup for your template.

2. Compose profile sections and posts in your word processor, then add to your blog. This will help you catch mistakes. Reading posts aloud also helps.

3. Create and post at least three to four posts before trying to create traffic. You’ll get practice and have time to fine-tune your blog and its description. When visitors come, they’ll see several posts and your format will be more static.

4. Each post's title and labels are the keywords and phrases used by search engines. Also, what you post as comments on other blogs and in Groups can be found during internet searches.

5. Read The Ten Commandments For Bloggers.

6. Submit to the main search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and MSN Live Search. If asked, select the “add meta tag” option, it’s easier. The latest search engine is Megaglobe.

7. Pinging is like an insect landing on a spider’s web. When you ping, the search engine spiders come to your site to see what new information you have on the web. Sign up for automatic pinging at Autopinger.com. This will ping dozens of search engines automatically at intervals or you can ping them each time you post by going to Autopinger.com and quickly pinging all sites at once.

8. Feed item footer text can be found during internet searches and is attached to the end of each post once you setup your RSS feed. My feed item footer includes blog description, copyright notice and feed URL. Subscribe to this blog in the sidebar to see an example.

9. Setup your RSS feed at Feedburner.com and then subscribe to your own feed to see what other are seeing.

10. Subscribe to Blogger Tips and Tricks and Dummies’ Guide To Google Blogger.

Finally, for now, add your blog’s URL to your email signature and join me in the wading pool of the World Wide Web. Jump in blog first!

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beginners, blogging, newbie, tips and tricks