3 Lessons Learned From A Blogging Virgin

This week I helped a good friend lose his blogging virginity by setting him up on WordPress and the Thesis Theme for WordPress (affiliate link). If you're interested take a look at some of the great work he's done already.As a designer, his content is primarily images so far. His goal for the blog's look and feel is very visually appealing. It's refreshing to see his approach. There are some key lessons to learn or at least be reminded of:

• Blog as though the world is reading. Each post will live forever and eventually the world may get around to reading each of them. So even though you may have no readers, you will one day and those first posts will still be there. So they need to be written for today's and tomorrow's audiences. Your content does not go out with the recycling.

• My friend knows nearly nothing about SEO and it shows. But that's OK. Today he needs to create content and lots of it. For his readers and the search engines. Getting hung up on the details of SEO will slow down that natural creation process. Pick it up later and work it into the process. The search engines are looking for relevant content. Give it to them.

• He's found his voice. Many folks, myself included, start off not knowing our voice, our message and goal. While it's better to start and change than to not start at all, it's important to remember that you need to eventually find your voice and target it. Your readers will reward you for that by returning and spreading the word. You will become more than your person when you can create a new persona online that reaches people consistently.

Keep up the good work, Mike. And thanks for the lessons, accidental or not.

http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js