Learn something new about your industry.

By taking the time to sit down regularly and write about a certain aspect of your industry you are bound to begin to learn new things. In taking the time to research you posts you’ll be opened to a whole world of other people’s thoughts.

Learn something new about yourself

I’m a firm believer that by having to actually think through what you think you know, you learn a lot more about what you actually think. By putting words down on a page you are forced to spend time examining what you believe, learning a lot about yourself in the process

Learn from being criticised

If there’s one thing that’s true of the Internet is that if you put somrthing online, someone, somewhere will disagree with it. And this is a good thing. Blogging allows you to share your ideas with the world, but it also allows the world to reply with what it thinks. It may be that your new idea stinks, or that it’s a completely new way of looking at things. But without sharing it with other people it’s difficult to know.

Demonstrate thought leadership – don’t just be a sheep

Everyone has at some point read something or heard someone say something that they disagree with, or seen something that they think they can do better. But very few people actually take the time to put their thoughts down on paper and put it out there for all to see. If you don’t want to be just another sheep it’s time to be bold, and for you speak up with your own thoughts and ideas. And all it takes is a blog.

Be part of the community

Similarly, by sharing your ideas online you become part of the community instead of one of the countless spectators. Blogging gives you a voice online, it allows you to interact with your peers from all over the world and engage with new and interesting people, all the while adding value to your network

Be transparent and authentic

Whilst blogging gives you the opportunity to belong, it can also help you stand out. What better way to demonstrate your transparency and authenticity and differentiate yourself than by sharing your thoughts or position on a certain topic, or by giving readers greater insight into your opinion.

Use your free time constructively.

Sure there are times when you want to watch your favourite TV show, or go out with friends, but there are also those days where you realise you have done nothing at all, and feel like you have wasted your free time. Why not use this time to learn something new and share it with your peers?

Create a movement

Do you have an idea that you think will change things for the better? Do you think that things should be done differently? The Internet has dramatically changed the way we share ideas. Blogging connects us to people who share similar thoughts and beliefs as us from all over the world, a platform that would be almost impossible in the offline world. Blogging is the best solution to find people who are like you and getting your movement off the ground.

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So what are landing pages?

It’s simple really; it’s a certain page that is created for new visitors from specific areas such as the link from your Twitter profile. This guide focuses on creating a Twitter landing page, but the principle can be applied to visitors from other areas. The content will probably largely overlap, but it can be nice to have a note or specific content for users from different locations, such as people clicking on one of your ads, your facebook profile or your youtube channel, dig, reddit etc.

NOTE: a landing page is more than just an about page. Actually, in many senses, it’s less. The landing page is meant to give the visitor a very brief understanding of who you are and what you do. About pages tend to be longer and more detailed, with some authors describing each major character and story arch. This isn’t necessary for a landing page.

What should I put on my landing page?

• A brief bio of yourself. Nothing major, a few lines will suffice
• A description of your blog. This can be more detailed than your personal bio, but don’t spend too long on. Try to make it as concise as possible, and it goes without saying; make the blog sound awesome
• Links to other stuff you do. Do you have another blog? A facebook page? A vlog? Link to them!
• Finally, a link back to Twitter (Facebook, YouTube etc) with a suggestion for the visitor to follow you!

The most important rule is to keep it short. People have come to your site from Twitter to find out a little more about you, not your whole life story. Put too much and people will get bored and leave.

Why should I bother?

The book metaphor wasn’t enough? Okay, I’ll extend it. Imagine that after you’ve opened the book there is a personal note in there just for people who have bought the book from a specific shop. Won’t those people feel special? And loved? And at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. Making people feel loved.

Also, it doesn’t take more than 5 minutes so you really have no excuse not to.

What can help is a rough plan of where you are going, or what you are going to do next. It could range to some sketches to just a few words, but having a direction will really help you in posting updates regularly. I personally have an ideas book, jotting down several ideas per page, sometimes diagram sketches, sometimes bullets, and occasionally just a word or two to trigger a memory.

If you have trouble meeting your schedule you may benefit from a more strict approach, bordering on a posting regime. Make a list of what you need to get done for the week or month, making it as detailed as you feel you need. Some people tend to do their work in blocks, doing a bunch of outlines at once, and then, at a later date going back and writing all the full posts all at once. Others like to get each post finished before starting another. How you work is up to you, but making sure you do the work is the key.

Effectively having a set of instructions can really help motivate a person, having a schedule can help a person to focus, and get on with the work. But everyone is different, there is no perfect, one size fits all schedule. Some people like to take the weekends off, preferring to work during the week. Some people like to get as much done as possible on the weekend so that they can take it easy during the week. You need to get a schedule that works for you. If you find yourself rushing to get a post out Sunday evening because you haven’t updated all week then perhaps you should either start earlier (duh!) or consider writing less posts. Not everyone has the time to do a daily, or even a bi weekly. I also don’t advocate writing just for the sake of writing – if you don’t have a subject to write about, then you shouldn’t write. [Writer’s block is a post for another time.]

Once you have a comfortable schedule sorted out, and a rough plan of where you’re going, making sure the updates come on time should be easier.

But whether or not all of them get read, I still think it is important to read other peoples’ blogs. Obviously you can continue to write a blog without ever seeing somebody else’s posts, though I think you’d obviously be missing out. For one thing, you miss out on one of the best parts of blogs, the amazing community. By not reading any other blogs you are cutting yourself off from this community.

However, more importantly, by not experiencing other people’s work you loose out as a writer and you fall behind in the conversations happening in your community. Speaking from experience, reading the many posts on subjects that interest me with each having a slightly different view pushed me to write my own thoughts on those topics. And by regularly reading other blogs I find myself more intone with what is happening in my areas of interest, which not only helps to challenge my existing ideas but also helps me to form new ones.

So, how many blogs do you read?

And the best things are free right? Well, no. Sure you save a few bucks in the short term, but in the long term you lose our big time. What happens when you no longer want to be hosted on someone else’s site and you want to move to your own server? Or if the site that hosts your blog collapses. Or, if you’ve been naughty, if they kick you off. At this point you will have to buy a domain, but now, people’s bookmarks, the links back to your comic; they’re all pointing at the wrong place! Buy registering your own domain name you’ll be able to change hosting services whenever you want meaning you won’t be tied down to a slow, ad filled environment, or forced to stay on a site that has terrible downtime.

Also, yourblog.com just looks so much better than yourblog.someone-elses-site.com. It shows a level of professionalism, it shows your audience you’re taking it seriously. Looking at long winded subdomains isn’t fun, and they are hard to remember. If you register your own domain you get to choose something short, snappy, and most importantly, memorable.

The only con is that you will have to pay for the domain. But, seriously, these days you can get a domain for 10 dollars a year. Trust me; it’s defiantly worth it in the long run. If you don’t want to invest the minimal fee of $10 you may need to rethink how much you really care about your blog.