What do you need to get started with a blog?
In my blogging and learning adventure, I'm always trying to help out people. My regular readers know already what's under the hood of this website, how it all started with my first article back in 2008 and how this website has become one of the Top virtualization blogs out there. With my post which has been published about two weeks earlier – a post How do I manage WordPress blog on daily basis – I already gave you some ideas on how this website is running and which plug-ins I'm using to make my life easier. But that's only the technical part….
No matter how good technically your blog can be, if you don't have any traffic, you'll probably get discouraged very fast. If your blog posts have no readers, it's like sailing without a wind… That's why a little marketing and brand building is necessary. First thing to think about is domain name. The best way is to have a very short domain name of your own, not like the www.somedomain.com/your_blog … It cost few dollars a year and you can start building on it.
The daily work as an IT consultant and virtualization engineer consist of many daily taks. One of them is testing new software, new tools etc… but also to market your brand. Your company. There is several ways to “market” yourself. The term marketing might not be the best one, but for now let's stick with it. Marketing for an individual is nothing to be scared about, since I'm just telling people who I am and what I do through my blog. So people are aware that I exist, that I do have some knowledge and I'm able to solve their problems or teach them new stuff.
So which are the ways that an Individual (or company) can do to market himself ? Social media, links exchange, guest posting, forums, paid advertisement on blogs and online magazines, printed publications … there are many. Last but not least a retailer engagement which is basically a retailer’s willingness to market on behalf of a brand they sell.
As you can see, the “marketing” is a waste topic, which can be done by simple individual as I am. Wodpress as an OpenSource CMS is one of the tools for the job. With the multitude of plugins that are available, is possible to reach milions of people.
What might be difficult for people which would like to start a blog?
You have to have something to say – If you blog about your cat, people might not be as interested as you would like.. -:). So the blogging niche you choose should be the topic you master and you're an expert….
You need to be consistent in your work – post frequently (daily) and make quality posts. I do have best experience with how-to posts. They are getting a lot of traffic, but they are also hard to reproduce, since I must first test the how-to in my lab before I blog about it. (yes, I'm serious)
You must be crazy about the topic that you choose to blog – virtualization has transformed my life. Is that enough to start blogging about that? What do you say…? Yes, the topic you choose to blog about must be unique (no copy paste), because at the end of the day, you blog for your readers first, right? And at the same time you make yourself pleasure too…
But think, with over 200 blogs about virtualization, you think that you got your chance? Yes sure, but it's harder than 3 years ago where they was 10 times less blogs… So in my humble opinion, if someone ask me the question – Should I start a Virtualization blog today? – I would answer yes, but…. highly specialized, or highly targeted.
It depends of course on everyone's skills, but for example building Storage Blog oriented for Virtualization could be even more deeper specialized.
For example: Storage, Shared Storage, Flash Storage, Entreprise SAN storage, SMB and NAS storage… You got the picture. It's up to you to choose which one best fits your needs and your knowledge.
This has been just a few ideas for this Sunday's blog post. Excuse me for any errors in this article. You might have your own idea about it and want to share it with others. In this case don't hesitate to comment… -:). Blogging is about interacting as well…
Enjoy… -:)
