Here We Go (Again)

It’s been a while since I’ve set up a blog from scratch.

Nowadays, there is a lot to do before you can post the first post.

The blog world has changed a lot in recent times. Now one of the first things I do put up the legal pages. Today, a blogger needs to protect themselves, even a mom blogger writing about cupcakes needs to have a privacy policy page. Having a Terms of Service is also a good idea and if you are or might someday want to monetize the site in anyway, then you have to have a Disclosure Page.

Then presumably since you’re writing a blog, you’d like someone to read it. That means they need to be able to find you so then you need to get involved to some extent with SEO. On page SEO, off page SEO, setting up feeds and xml maps. Google wants a Contact page so you need that too, but better use a contact form because if you put email address on it your inbox will be filled with spam (better do something about comment spam while you at it).

There are also two other big changes in the past couple of years.

The first is Social Media. There’s a blog, and Twitter, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, and, and, and…They just keep on coming. For the important sites, you need to cross link the blog with them.

The other big change is the move to mobile platforms. The blog has to look good on a vastly smaller screen. While you might be able to display the full blog on a smart phone, it’s going to be hard to use. So in addition to a traditional display, you need small and medium size version. You also need to optimize what’s presented to cut down on the amount of data sent since the connection might be significantly slower than we’ve been used to.

So what’s a blogger to do? You handle it the same way you eat an elephant…

One ‘Byte’ At A Time