By Elsie Whitelock - blogging, digital and social media marketing and Web designing 

Ready to start blogging? Not sure what is involved? Here are some guidelines and tips.

Just what is a blog?
In its simplest form, a blog is your personal diary used to collaborate and share your experiences and other things that you find interesting. Blogging allows you to connect and interact with anyone who reads your stuff. However many businesses are using blogging to help their customers and prospects do business with them more easily by enabling immediate engagement. Well what does that mean? I think it means being actively interested in participating in the online community and being actively interested in helping others out. Sound like a good idea; sharing and helping? It does to me.

You can use blogs to share experiences, share new and product/service information, tell what you are doing, share tips and tricks, help solve problems, to name just a few. But the real important thing is to engage others.

So who can read/comment on your blog?
With blogging, you can control who can read and write on your blog. For example if you wanted to have just a family blog where you share personal family stories, events, etc. and photos, you can do that via controls so that only that specific group has access. Or you can make your blog available to the whole world; of course that means anyone with Internet access.

How do I actually blog?

From a technical view, it is really a website where you write and post your stuff on an ongoing basis. (Here at the Small Business Centre, we use a system called 'Joomla'.) However there are 2 blogging web sites out there where you can get started quickly and at no cost except for your time.
Blogger (part of Google) and Wordpress. So check them out. (No recommendation from this corner.)

A little history: The blog web site ‘Blogger’ was launched in 1999 at height of the dot.com boom or right before the bust, depending upon your point of view and number of stocks that you held. So blogging has been around for awhile.

So how do you figure out what to write and how to write your blog; at the end of the day CONTENT IS KING! Good blog content comes from your passion and research on particular subjects and is likely related to your work experience or to your hobby.
So blog about a niche that you are really excited about and will continue learning about so you will have content to write for months to come.

Tip 1 - good topic
◊ Need a good topic and of course great content. Try to think about your content in the way that your prospective readers would. Is it useful? Is it entertaining? Is it short enough and to the point?

Tip 2 - domain name
◊ Need a great domain name (remember, we covered this in my previous post)

Tip 3 - getting found on the web
◊ Learn how to do keyword research. (Keywords are part of your content and are what your friends, clients, prospects or customers use to find you and your blog. e.g. small business help Quinte, blogging how to, movies Belleville Kingston, NASCAR)

Tip 4 - search engines
◊ Spend a little time to learn the basics of how GOOGLE crawls web sites. You likely use Google or another search engine each time you search for something on the web. Being ranked high in Google is good. This is referred to as Search Engine Optimization or SEO ( a topic for another blog post).  However make note that the search engines are now using more of your online presence specifically Facebook and blogging to find and rank you.

Tip 5 - write often
◊ Write regularly. At least once a week or twice a month to start.

Tip 6 - social media
◊ Use Social Media to promote your blog. Post your blog link on your Facebook page, your LinkedIn page, via Twitter (if you are using these, if not perhaps it is time to get started)

Tip 7 - remember to network
◊ Actually network. Spend one a day a week on your networking activities both online and real time. This can help you promote your blog and your business.

Hope this information was helpful.