Having My Own Blog

By Belle on 10 February 2006 in Blog

Hey there,

I’ve been talking with my friends about how good it is having your own blog and each time I’m asked how to create it and what’s involved.

So I thought I’d help out with a quick blog!

For me the value of having a blog is so I can communicate more readily and easily with my customers as well as introduce my work to a new and broader audience.

I found out about the benefits of having a blog through a seminar hosted by Austrade – Australia’s federal govenment’s trade team – and thought it was worth experimenting with.

I use www.blog.com to host my blog because they were recommended, easy to use and are plugged into all the search engines etc so I don’t have to worry about key words etc.

I’m using a bigger blog provider because they are well set up and they save me the time and effort of doing work behind the scenes – all I have to do is write the little entries.

To setup the blog I spent a rainy Sunday afternoon going through the simple wizard process. I wasn’t too concerned about getting the look and feel just right as I figured I’d learn more about it as I went and I could update it – which I did about a week later.

I wrote a starter entry and created the album of my designs and then went off to the movies with a friend – feeling like I’d achieved something.

I added more entries and explored the web more about blogging and learnt there were blog search directories so I submitted my blog and now I have a good visitor rating – so I’m happy.

The blog search engines wanted to make sure I had a few entries and was going to keep being online so it was probably about a fortnight after I’d launched the blog that I submitted it.

As I want to introduce people to my work through the blog I include images of pieces with each blog entry and links to my website. Sales are up as well as site traffic.

I find writing entries fairly easy because I’m a writer by trade but for those days that there isn’t much creative energy about I have created a collection of draft subjects so the idea is already there and I just write them up – keep it simple!

Also, keep entries short. This one is probably too long but there you go. Have a look at the various entries and figure out which ones you think are most successful. 🙂

Blogs are a great way to communicate. Enjoy and make it happen.