Intro to Blogging: Steps to take before you get started

What do you need to do BEFORE you register and get started blogging? This is the handout I sent along to tomorrow’s workshop participants and which I will be using with my college students next week. Let me know how it helped you!

Blogging 101: Intro to Blogging—From Your Head to the Web
with Writing Coach Gwendolyn Alley
June 19, 2010 * Bell Arts Factory
Thanks to Tea By the Sea for beverages!

Thank you for joining us June 19 at Bell Arts Factory! We will be meeting in the “house” part of Bell Arts Factory (432 N. Ventura Ave 93001) upstairs in Josh Addison’s office. It’s located above Tea by the Sea and near the patio by MB’s studio. You should find parking easily in the lot or on a nearby street.

Please arrive between 9:45 and 9:55am so you can get registered, have a cup of tea, and get settled in and online. The workshop will start promptly at 10am and continue for 99 minutes! (Note: if you need childcare, BAF is offering a free wonderful mask-making workshop that morning for 10am-noon for school age children).

NOTE: You will need a credit card to apply $14.97 of your registration to upgrade your site from the url http://YOU.wordpress.com to http://YOU.com

Part 1: Before the workshop–Gather materials

Gather and bring materials for your new site. These may include written text documents, jpgs, and youtube videos. Collect everything including links you think you might want to put on your website to tell the story you want to share.  If you have a business plan, bring that.  I recommend you put everything you think you might use onto a portable drive or a folder on your desktop.

You’ll want to prepare and bring a mission statement about your business or about the purpose of your blog plus a brief biographical statement about yourself written in third person (don’t use “I”).  If you already have a website, you will be able to get material from it (and link it to your blog).

We will do the following two steps during the workshop, but I recommend you take a few minutes to do this beforehand.

Step 1: Research your URL

Use Google and other search engines to see if anyone has “your” proposed name and variations of it online.  As you search, note what else comes up.

Step 2: Go to http://wordpress.com

At WordPress.com, explore some of the “freshly pressed” sites.  Take a few notes on how they are organized. I suggest you wait until the workshop to register as a user and to register your blog.

–Which ones do you respond to positively?
–What don’t you like about some sites?
–Which names catch your attention?
–“Theme” names (at the bottom)

If you’d like some guidance to get you going and you can’t come tomorrow, I’ll be offering workshops July 3 and 31.