My First Steps

I decided to blog for several reasons as mentioned in my previous post. One thing I had to do when I made up my mind to start was to figure out how. I did a simple Google Search on "how to start a blog" and read the first few web sites that came up on the subject. Below I will write out the basics.

1. Ask yourself the Why question. You need to know why you want to blog. Once you know that, the next question is, what do you want to blog about? The what part of the question is going to be impacted greatly by the Why. 
2. Next you will want to come up with a name that will reflect and capture what you plan on blogging about. The name for my blog may not have been the greatest but I felt it reflected the general feel of what I was going to blog about, writing seven days a week. 
3. How will you host your blog? There are several ways to do so. I had to decide if I wanted to pay for my own domain and use a blog format that you have to pay for or to use a free one. Free is free but it comes with a price. If you go the free direction you have less control over what you can do and more importantly you don't really own your blog. Now that being said I still went the free way. This is my first blog and I don't really need to have sophisticated options. Nor do I think I'm going to change the world or do something earth shattering with my first attempt at blogging.
4. Now you need to generate original content in keeping with the theme of your site. 
5. Invite your friends and family to become "followers" of your blog.

Specifically what I did was this. Once I decided that I was going to blog I did some reading on the subject. I then asked myself the why question and then the what question. Once I had the idea in my head I created my blog by using a free blog service through Google called Blogger. The site is www.blogger.com. I could run you through a how to step by step but I'm not going to. If you decide to go this route, they have a pretty good system that will run you through a step by step on how to get going. Its fairly intuitive and has a great support forum / help page along with a lot of tutorials.

If you need additional help or have any questions feel free to drop me a line.  One of my hopes in starting a blog was to start a conversation. A friend of mine mentioned the value of asking questions. So here are a few that may help get one going.

Have you ever thought about blogging? Why would you like to blog and what would you blog about? If you currently blog, what got you started? What advise do you have on the subject?

I look forward to learning with you and going on this adventure together. Lets do what we love and help each other to do so