Welcome to beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.blooger.me. If you are new to blogging and you don’t know how to start, I am about four weeks ahead of you. How about learning how to blog with me, together? This is my first blog post about blogging. Actually, it’s not quite my first blog post but it is the first one that I have written for publication – and it’s the first one about blogging. The others were just (very) short test posts, which I published to test my capabilities. To be honest, I haven’t done this stuff before, so whilst I am not quite making it up as I go along, I am having to learn just about everything from scratch.
I have set up beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.blooger.me as a resource for those just starting out, a resource for budding bloggers. I am essentially going to be learning and documenting my own journey but I am hoping that the journey will be interactive, giving and taking in equal measures and adding value to all. There are going to be discussion rooms and question and answer sessions, and I shall be providing some detailed checklists that will include project plans and a useful work breakdown. I want to help make those initial steps easier than trying to follow the 7-point plans that are littered across the internet. This is not going to be a 7-point plan exercise. I am going to be learning by experience, and I am going to be sharing that experience, and so far my experience is telling me that there are a lot more than 7 points. If I am going to be sharing my experiences with you, I am hoping that you will share your experiences with me. To kick this off, I have created a subscription page that will get the ball rolling. If you are interested in blogging but you are not sure where to begin, join in now and receive the checklists and project plans and a step-by-step guide to the gotchas.
Let’s do this …
Beginning the Blogging Journey
I began this journey at home whilst wondering where my life was going to take me and what I should do next. After spending lots of years developing clever and complex IT systems from “back of a fag packet” ideas, I am finding myself looking for another challenge as it is becoming increasingly clear that no one is looking to challenge me – I do hope it’s not an age thing! So, I did some research, I looked into some e-commerce schemes, I built a drop-shipping site … and then it began to dawn on me that I had only just begun to scratch the surface.
The 7-point Blogging plan is a good starting point. Most 7-point blogging plans follow the same 7-point approach because, essentially, that’s what is needed. The sequence of events can be reordered a little, but all seven points are required. My journey has taken me to through the early stages, I am now at point number 6 and it’s taken me around three weeks.
There was so much that I didn’t know, but I had started to learn! I learned about Search Engine Optimisation, I learned about Marketing Funnels, I learned about Backlinks and I learned that the world was full of experts.
Click here for a checklist based on what we have achieved so far, including a breakdown of the work and a project plan.
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I looked, there is a load of information out there in the blogosphere about blogging. Blogs about blogging are ten a penny, but most of them, even the ones aimed at beginners, are not really aimed at beginners. Have a look – you’ll see. I may be expecting too much but I have just spent three weeks building a framework blogging site … if you want some idea of what you can expect to build in three weeks, click on the link: you can see it right here.
Do the research
I have done some reading and I have done some watching and I am now of the opinion that there are a lot of gotchas out there that beginners do not know about, and no one is telling them. Right now, I am one of those beginners. I can hear people telling me it’s easy but as we all know, the devil is in the detail and they are not telling me that. I have to say, at this point, that I have been here before and because of that, I recognise the situation. Do the research yourself … I now have a heap of post-it notes on my wall, if you can have a heap of post-it notes on your wall. Anyway, each post-it note represents something about blogging that I need to know more about. More importantly, each post-it note represents a chunk of stuff that you, as a blogging beginner, should know about … and to think that all that I wanted to do was write a blog.
Make a Blogging Plan
I have built many systems over many years. I have written many plans but so far, even though I am planning to blog, I haven’t yet written a blogging plan. Even so, time and again when I have been developing non-blogging plans, I have found the devil to be in the detail and I don’t believe that building a blogging system is going to be any different. The 7-point blogging plan on the beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.blooger.me whiteboard is simple and straightforward, it follows a logical course and it is easy to understand. The 7-point blogging plan is going to be the framework for future blogging on beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.blooger.me.
Without a doubt – and a simple Google search will confirm this – the 7-point blogging plan is a good starting point. Seven must be a magic number because there are loads of them, and they all say pretty much the same thing. I am guessing that the 7-point plan must work because another bit of research tells me that there are new blogging sites springing up every day and more blog posts than you can shake a stick at. I am not knocking any of them but when I tried to use them, and I had to start somewhere, I found the general direction to be clear enough but the detail to be lacking.
Let me introduce you to the devil. Everywhere I turn there are post-it notes. The post-it notes are home to the questions and the questions just kept on popping up.
Blogging and Project Management
I was looking for a guide that guides first-time bloggers through the blogging swamp. The experts are pointing me in the right direction but they are not helping me to reach my blogging goal. Building a blogging site is a project and I need some project management. There are plenty of websites and YouTube videos that can teach project management and project planning techniques, you only have to look. If you do and you are serious about applying project management principles to building a blogging site and then to blogging, there are loads of Project Management courses available. I will have a look at these and report back at a later date.
When I have finished this post, I shall be taking the post-its and developing the beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.blooger.me framework. A work breakdown structure defines all the stuff a project needs to accomplish its goals, organised into levels and displayed graphically. I shall be providing one free for subscribers. A project plan defines what stuff needs to be done and when it needs to be done by, it describes how tasks relate to each other and the impact to the project of any delay. I shall be providing an outline project plan, free for subscribers.
It’s not for nothing that we say that we all learn by our mistakes – over the years, I’ve learned loads!
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Signing up for a beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.beginner.blooger.me subscription will get you a free “Build a Blogging Site” project plan and a breakdown of all the tasks that you will need to complete … before you publish your first blog.
Blogging for the First Time
When I started thinking about blogging, I knew that I wanted to write a blog but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write a blog about. I began to think: I have a background in the Social Sciences, I am interested in electronics and the Raspberry Pi, I like learning new stuff and I have spent much of my working life – so far – turning little ideas into big computer systems. I remembered that Google is my friend so off I went, with my friend, to look for ideas.
Blogging ’bout Blogging
It became clear to me – fairly quickly I suppose because of my background – that starting a blog wasn’t going to be quite as easy as the 12-year old millionaires on YouTube would have me believe. They are telling me that it’s easy, that I can set up a blog in ten minutes and that I can be earning money from it before I have finished my lunch. They must be right because they are enthusiastic – and they believe! I am enthusiastic, I might just say here and now that I have enthusiasm coming out of my ears. I will say it: I have enthusiasm coming out of my ears … but I don’t believe!
Blogging ’bout Blogging is about filling in the gaps. It is about using the experience gained through building this blogsite, the experience of my friend who is building a blogsite based on this blog, and the experience of subscribers building their own blogsites, asking questions along the way and providing solutions.
Blogging ’bout Blogging is about helping each other through similar experiences and a mutual interest, and a mutual understanding.
Learning about Blogging … together!
This is not a blog about writing a blog, that would be a diary … but I did keep a diary for the first three weeks since there was no blogging to be had. The diary and the experience of the first three weeks form the basis of the free checklist. If you want to set up a blog, this is what you will need to do – subscribe for a head start.
This is a blog about writing a blog about writing a blog. Think about it …
If you know what you are doing, sort of, you can trawl the internet for the bits of information that you need, learning and building a blog as you go. If you are not sure what you are doing, and I think this could be most people looking to do a bit of blogging, you start with one of the 7-point plans and then you wing it – essentially, you’re on your own.
I have used the 7-point blogging plan to build a blog and I can confirm that the 7-point blogging plan works. Click here for the evidence.
I have used the experience I have gained putting together a blog to put together a blog, a blog about putting together a blog, and it’s for people who want to put together a blog. I think that I have done reasonably well in three weeks, what do you think? In hindsight, I think that if I had been provided with a checklist and a plan, I could probably have done it all in a week. Whatever time I might have been able to save, I do know that there is no way that I could have done it in a couple of hours!
You want to spend your time writing
First, you need a platform