I recently posted about Choosing a suitable Blogging platform according to your needs and Starting a new Blog with Blogger. What Next?. I want to guide you through out the whole process of blogging. Therefore I am writing all the posts sequentially as you do.
The most common mistake that most bloggers do is that they start a blog and they start writing about their own topics before some preparation . You should first set up a nice environment for yourself before you start writing. So, What are the things you need to do after you launch a blog? I have noted down some important points that you must do. Read ahead.
Before Writing My First Post . . .
1.Be in a POSITIVE FRAME OF MIND and BE OPTIMISTIC about your new blog
This is very important for a new blogger. I am sure that you will have started your blog with some hopes and expectations,right? Feel inside yourself that “You are going to succeed and your expectations will come true”. Before starting a blog, Remember that blogging is not a easy task and you have to spend considerate amount of time for your blog. I would suggest you to kick off your blog at weekends or when you get long holidays, because once you start it, its a time consuming process. After you have set your blog on the right track, you can relax as you only have to write quality content after that.
2.Choose the Right Template for your Blog
Assume that you have started writing posts before customising the templates, You tell your friends about your blog and they start visiting your blog. They can read the content that you have presented, but they will not have a good impression about your blog. Remember a saying ? : “First Impression is the best impression”. So first impression of a visitor is very important. Everyone hates to read a blog which is not well designed, isn't it ? So First step is to customise the given template or choose a third party template as I am using. Customised template does not mean a flashy, dark coloured, ugly designed template. Choose a simple template that suits your niche the best. Suppose you are blogging about travel or places, you would choose a template accordingly. I would suggest the themes at www.btemplates.com to be better than custom blogger templates. Google for templates and you will find tons of them. So, find a nice template out there and get a new look for your blog. Don’t forget to tweak the themes according to the instructions provided.
3.Design a Logo and a Header for your blog.
This is also pretty important to attract you first time readers and get them a nice impression in their view. You dont have to be a photoshop pro in order to design a header and a logo. Its pretty simple if you are a regular computer user. Collect some copyright free images from the web and start editing and adding your own colours to it. You can use a simple editor like GIMP for such purposes. Upload them and look at your own blog again, Does it look professional ?
4.Add All the essential widgets that are useful for your blog.
This is very much self explanatory. If you have logged into blogger for atleast for one time, you will know what widgets are? Do place the right widgets at the right places so that nothing in your blog looks weird. You can refer to Blogger support here for the answer.
5.Register Yourself for feedburner feed service.
A newbie might not know what feedburner or a feed is? You can simply understand that it’s a service through which readers can subscribe to your blog. Subscribers are very important for good reputation for a blog. So go to www.feedburner.com and register yourself for the free service. Refer Here for more . . .
6.Add A Favicon for your Blog.
Favicon is that little icon that appears at the top on the menu bar of the browser. Notice a custom blogger favicon for my blog. I have not changed it since I blog about blogger tricks and I prefer not to change. But for you, adding a favicon is good as it looks really nice. Read more about favicon and usage of it here.This is pretty much OK for good looks and design. Now you are ready to GO!, Start writing your first post!
7.Introduce Yourself to readers in your first Post
Remember a old saying? “A Good start is half the job done” . I would suggest to have a nice little celebration at the launch of your blog. What I mean is, don't start writing straight away for your chosen niche. Have a nice post title like “Launch of ‘so and so blog’ – An Introduction” and introduce yourselves to people. Look at my first post. Just tell them why are you writing about ‘so and so topic’ . Tell what your ambitions are? Request them to share your blog. This will make the readers more excited about your next post because they have heard about you, your experience and your introduction, right?
8. Tell your friends about your blog
After you have introduced and you have written about your new blogging passion, you want people to read your first post , right? So, tell your friends about your new blog, Let them read it and spread it among more people. This part of paragraph is self explanatory, so I would not write more about this.
After Your First Post . . .
9.Submit your blog to Search engines
Well, Here comes the actual part which i am supposed to tell. You have your blog and don't you want to inform search engines about it? It will help search engines find you blog and crawl the index of your site and that’s why I said write a good first post. Write your second post completely related to your blog title and description. Include some keywords with which you have described your blog so that search engines find some related and quality content. Even good impression to search engines is Important! Here are the pages where you have to submit you blog URL to: (After your second post)
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
These many search engines are enough for your two posts.
10.Install Google Analytics Tracker To your blog
After Visitors start visiting your blog, don't you want to know where your visitors are from? There are a lot more uses of installing Google Analytics. I will cover them in coming posts. For now, just install the tracker code. Go Here –> http://www.google.com/analytics/.
Don’t neglect any of the points that I have listed. I have listed them with much of research and from my own experience. The list is not yet over. Do add your own tips if I have missed any. Happy Blogging 
and bye bye till my next post. Next article will be on some more things that you have to do after you start posting.
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