Blogging: A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide (updated)

This blogging beginner's guide is intended for people who want to incorporate blogs into their organization’s social media efforts but aren’t sure where or how to begin. Individuals interested in blogging for personal/career management reasons, as well as folks aspiring to be professional bloggers, may also find the guide useful in helping them get started. The guide focuses on external blogs, but many of the concepts apply to internal blogs as well. This guide updates and extends the original blog post published in May 2011.

To many professionals blogging is still a foreign concept. Although virtually everyone has read them and some may even comment and subscribe, when it comes to thinking about how to leverage the tool themselves, people often freeze. They feel intimidated because they think their writing skills are not good enough, pressured by the prospect of having to create fresh content on a regular basis, and/or uncertain of how they are going to manage the time commitment.

Cyberspace is full of blogging “best practices,” rules and tips. Many of these guides are great, but they are not necessarily comprehensive and/or designed for people who are just getting started. Therefore, I thought I would create my own guide based on my interactions with social media rookies over the past few years, as well as my own experience as a relatively new blogger (since March 2010). The guide was originally published as a (long!) blog post in May 2011. The updated version updates and extends the content, in addition to presenting it in a more polished format.

You can view the guide through the embedded link below or directly via SlideShare.

As always, I welcome feedback. If you disagree with one of my recommendations, have a tip to add, and/or feel something was unclear, please do not hesitate to add a comment or question to the blog post or SlideShare page, or send an email to blogtips@sminorgs.net. Thanks!

- Courtney Hunt

 

Blogging: A Comprehensive Beginner's Guide

View more documents from Courtney Hunt

Comments

[Dave Morrison]

Good information in this. Would be handy to have in a book!

My efforts are limited to creating a personalised diary of my efforts! This can be improved I am sure?

http://midlife-gapcrisis.blogspot.com/

[Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD]

Thanks, Dave. I know it's not exactly a book, but I created the guide on SlideShare so folks could download it and/or print it off.

[Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD]

Here's an ebook that complements my guide:

http://www.businessesgrow.com/ebooks/