With the overall direction of your blog defined, the next step is
to take a little time and plan what you want to do with the blog
and how you are going to run it. This is something I didn't do with
my Internet marketing blog - I just launched it and hoped for the
best! The kinds of questions to ask when starting a new blog are:

- What will it be called?
- What topics will you discuss?
- How often will you post?
- What will your writing style be?

The Naming Game
---------------

My Internet Marketing blog is called "Caroline Middlebrook" and the
domain is at caroline-middlebrook.com. I agonised for ages over a
name - I was trying to think of something relating to making money
online but I couldn't think of anything that didn't sound cheesy so
I just plumped for my own name.

I had a feeling this would have repercussions later if I changed
direction. I am still very much involved in IM, but I might not be
forever so that could still come back to bite me further down the
road. If you are branding yourself with the intention of marketing
your personal services then naming your blog after yourself is a
great move as you will always be able to use it to promote what you
do but if you are building a blog around a specific topic which may
not be part of you long-term then you may be better off with a
niche-related name and domain.

Moral of the story - really think carefully about a name for your
blog. How long will you have this blog for?

Topic Selection
---------------

When I first started my Internet Marketing blog I had just quit a
day job as a software developer and my initial plans were to write
software and sell it over the internet so that's what I thought I
was going to be blogging about. However as the months passed I
found myself learning and blogging about topics I didn't know about
at the start, like niche marketing, social media, ebook creation,
list building and so on. Now one year on I find myself coming back
to my software roots!

Whether you are starting a blog from scratch or you have an
existing one, use what you thought about in the previous lesson to
think about what direction you are going to take your blog and
sketch out some of the specific topics you can cover.

When it comes to writing your posts you will be able to organise
them into categories which makes it much easier for new readers to
find your posts and its easy for them to see at a glance what your
blog is about. When you just post a mish-mash of posts on all sorts
of topics that are not really related then it can be more difficult
to turn a one-off visitor into a regular subscriber.

Re-do this exercise every time you change direction on your blog.

Posting Schedule
----------------

When I started my IM blog I posted every day, including weekends.
Many people advise you to blog every day when launching a new blog
with the theory being that the more you post the more people will
come to your blog. However as a blog reader I find that blogs that
post every day or even multiple times a day are simply too much - I
can't keep up with them. I eventually settled on a frequency of 3
main blog posts per week with perhaps something light at the
weekend.

Now I have to add that as time has gone on I rely less and less on
schedules. I prefer to write what comes to mind at the time but it
can be helpful to have some kind of schedule at the beginning until
you find your blogging groove.

One trend that I see with many blogs is that the blogger starts out
enthusiastically by posting every day or even many times per day
but over time he either loses steam, finds it too time consuming or
simply runs out of stuff to say and then the schedule starts to
slip and the posts become less frequent. This is noticeable to the

reader and it does not look good! On my own blog I felt awkward
having to post explanations as to why I was blogging less.

It is much better to start out with a much gentler blog schedule
and see how it goes for a few months rather than over-commit
yourself at the beginning and then burn out a few months down the
line. This is what I did when I started my second blog.

Moral: start as you mean to go on!

Posting Style
-------------

Some people suggest that you alter your blogging style to fit your
target audience but in my experience I find that it never works to
try to blog in a style that is not uniquely you. Your blog is a
reflection of you - your thoughts, your findings, your interests
and passions.

My advice is simply to blog in your own style, whatever that means!
Some people are very conservative, some people use very colourful
language, others like to be controversial, others are very dry and
matter-of-fact. Whatever you are, simply be who you are and write
as yourself.

Similarly, I see people asking questions such as, how long should
my posts be? This again is down to personal style. I have a
tendency to write long, verbose posts and other people post lots of
short, succinct posts. Each to their own!

It really doesn't matter what your style is because the readers who
like your style will stick around and subscribe and the ones who
don't, wont! Simple as that really! There is no way that any single
style is going to appeal to everybody so don't try! No matter what
your posting style is, there will be people who like it and some
who don't, but it never pays to try and be something that you are
not.

Start Blogging Today

I teach everyone free, how to Make Money with Free Blogs at my new website www.makemoneybanc.blogspot.com.