How To Quickly and Easily Setup Your First Blog
One of the fastest and easiest ways to get online and begin a marketing venture is through the use of blogging. A blog, or weblog, is nothing more than an online journal or diary of a Webmaster. Blogs have been around for many years, but have only become popular as a marketing strategy in the past couple of years.
A blog, or weblog, is a site that can be updated “on the fly”, allows other registered users to add their own comments and content if allowed by the blog owner, and is overall interactive. Google tends to index blogs quickly, and usually a blog that is being updated on a regular basis can expect to get indexed within a few weeks. This makes it especially attractive for the new marketer, because they do not need to spend months and months attempting to get indexed and start their rise in the search engine results pages with a regular website. Also, such services as RSS can be added to the blog that will automatically update the content of a blog without any interaction from the Webmaster, making it run virtually on autopilot.
There are many venues for the beginning blogger from which to choose. One very popular site is http://blogger.com. Registration is free, and you can set up as many blogs on Blooger as you wish. On this site, owned by Google, you can put up a blog in a manner of minutes, as opposed to hours spent on a conventional website. Blogger uses different templates to make it easy for the marketer to build a good blog that suits their taste and meets their marketing needs. With Blogger, there are no hosting fees or maintenance to worry about.
The downside of Blogger is this - you have little control if for some reason Blooger decides to eliminate your blog, and you can’t check metrics, such as traffic or visitors. However, anyone new to blogging can really benefit from this service.
Another fine blogging platform is WordPress. WordPress is an ideal platform for the new marketer to use to build a blog that will be very beneficial in their efforts to market to the web. Many programmers have seen the potential of WP, and have developed a lot of plugins for the platform that really enhances any efforts made to make it marketable. Many different WP themes have been developed to suit any taste or marketing endeavor. There is even an “AdsMinded” theme that has been developed that is strictly for marketers.
There are plugins available that will manage your Google Adsense ads, plugins that will redefine the WP header so that it is more attractive to the search engines, and plugins developed to integrate your blog with tags that are popular with the bloggers site Technorati. By using Technorati, whenever you post to your blog a “ping” is sent to Technorati, telling them that your site has been updated. By paying close attention to the top tags on Technorati, you can build your blog posts around the most popular tags, and you will always have a position on Technorati that people will view whenever they search for a particular tag.
Many new marketers will shy away from using WordPress, because they feel it is just too technical and hard to install. Nothing could be further from the truth!
All that is needed are basic skills using FTP, and the ability to create a MYSql database, and the WP blog can be up and running very quickly. WP even brags about its famous “5 minute install”, and this is indeed the case. Nothing could be simpler to set up.
It only makes good sense to uitilize the power of blogging in your marketing endeavors. They are very easy to set up, can be instantly updated, and are highly customizable. Many plugins are available for blogs to enhance marketing efforts, and content can be added within minutes. Making blogging a part of your marketing efforts will go a long way in increasing your chances of success.