Blog advice needed....noob ex globetrotter in need of mental stimulation!

Jack_Reacher9

Hi Boards.ie,

Apologies if this is in the wrong section, it seems logical that it be in the blog section but I am not an expert. (first time poster actually – be nice)

So I am back from an 8 mth trip around the world taking in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South America and culminating in a 2 month swashbuckling tour of the States by land, sea and air!

Truth be told I am in limbo - I am currently between jobs and need something to keep my mask of sanity from slipping. I feel that a retrospective travel blog would be a good idea and would give me incentive to put down all the experiences I have had be they good, bad or indifferent; and if I help someone along the way, brilliant.

I suppose the Crux is:

1). How do I get started?
2). How do I get readers?
3). Any tips on how to make it stand out from the rest?

To be honest I have been threatening to write a novel for years and even have bits n' pieces of it completed so this may be the project that keeps me writing for decades to come so I really hope you can help me.

Thanks in advance Boards.ie,
Jack.

Mrs OBumble

1 To get started:

Define your objectives.
If it's simply to preserve your sanity, then questions 2 and 3 aren't really valid - so I guess you must have some other goals.
Write 'em down, and come back here and tell us. Then we can give better advice.

Choose a platform.
There are lots of alternative. Wordpress disciples will tell you that WP is The Only Way (with a glazed look in their eyes). Personally, I think that Blogger is good-enough to get started with - and there are ways to change to Wordpress later on if you want to put the work into learning it.

Do some basic setup.
One guide to what this involves with Blogger is here: http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/05/getting-started-with-blogger.html There are others too - Google 'em.

Start writing some posts. Write 10 of them. Put cross-links between them.


2 How to get readers:
Email a link to your mum.
Put a link in your boards.ie signature.
Share your posts on Google+ (even if you just share to Public - it seems to make a difference)
Contribute to some forums / bulletin boards where you can put links to specific posts as part of an answer. (Like I did above) I really do mean contribute. Your other content should vastly outweigh your self-links, or they'll just see you as a spammer.
Set up a Twitter account for the blog, and do the same thing.
Set up a Facebook page. Invite all your friends to like it. Every time you post to the blog, post a link to it on the FB page too.


3 How to make it stand out from the rest.
Be controversial or outrageous in what you write. (But make sure you have the stomach and the stamina for this: you will get abusive comments - and writing 2 witty posts is easy, keeping it up for 10 or 100 posts is a lot harder)
choose a niche that no one else has written about. Or one that others have covered, but go for a different angle - eg if everyone else has described how they partied through New Zealand on the Magic Bus, you focus on how befriended pensioners as you crawled through Taranaki on the Intercity bus travelling only one town a day. Or something.
Spend some time googling possible niches before you start. But don't get caught in the trap of forever researching and never writing.
Read some other blogs in similar niches, notice what they do which is successful, and try to do something similar. (Not the same, just cheating and won't work. Just similar)
Prepare your posts in private, then publish when they're pristine. No one wants to read your typos.
Include the best of your photos. In fact, if you don't have a photo to go with something, don't bother blogging about it.




That's a start.

There are about 537,234,345 million similar articles on the internet, so if you need more suggestions, Google is your friend. Happy hunting.

Jack_Reacher9

Thanks a lot - this is really helpful!!

I just wanted to avoid googling everything and ending up as you say writing nothing.

This is a good start and has focused me.

Cheers;)

robbiegleeson

If you're looking for somewhere to post your blog I'm starting a blogging section of my website I'd be happy to post it.

I've just shy of 1000 likes on Facebook. Not much i know but every little helps. DM me and I'll send you link

Rob