9 tips to know before creating a blog

Creating your own blog is very exciting. There is so much help available online for anyone who wants to write a blog. That is wonderful news to anyone who plans to start their own blog, but feels technologically challenged. Even with all these resources, you will still face challenges getting your blog up and running. This article is designed to help reduce the difficulties you may encounter.
1. Get clear about what you want to say on your blog .If you are unclear, your readers will be even more confused and will not come back. Research your topic, write down one sentence to describe the message you want to give. The topics are unlimited and can be for fun, for a limited audience, to promote a million dollar business, to give a political message, to inform, and more. They say there is one book in every person. There is probably one blog in every person as well. Just make sure that if you are a five blog person you do not try and fit them all into one blog!
2. Decide how much time you have available to create, and manage your blog. Do you want to put in time learning the skills necessary to create a blog, or do you simply want to have a blog? Do you want to manage your blog, and put in your own articles, photos and videos, or do you want someone else to do that? Do you want to write your own articles, or do you want to get a ghost writer?
3. How do you want your blog to give out your message? Through written articles, through photos or pictures, or through videos? Do you want your blog to have a lot of links and/or advertising either as the main subject of your blog, or as a means of monetizing? In other words, are you going to write about your favorite travel destinations to encourage people to use your travel agency, or are you going to promote your business with each of your articles promoting the business, giving testimonials, offering freebies all encouraging people to buy your product.
4. Choose your blog platform, or find a web designer to create your blog. If you have properly answered the questions in points 1, 2, and 3 you will know whether you want to create your own blog or find someone else to do it for you.
5. If you are going to ask someone else to create your blog, tell them what you want. Ask them to give you some examples of their work. If you are going to create your own blog, do a search online for "create a blog" and find sites that assist you to create a blog. Go through their Site Tour and see what they have to offer, read the forum, look for examples of blogs created through the site and see what others have done. Have a look for blogs that you really like online and see what you like about the blog. Search online for "blog awards" and see what the best blogs are doing.
6. Whether you are creating your own blog, or having it done for you, get a bit technical. You will see that there are common layouts on many blogs with a main section, and one or two side panels, also headers which show all your articles, links and advertising. Do you want a very busy home page, or a simple one leading through to your other articles? How do you want to welcome people, what do you want them to see first? Do you want to be formal or bright and happy or calming? Look at the use of colors, shapes and font.
7. If you are creating your own blog, you could do a test run for ease of setup, support, forum help, and get a feel for the site. It is important to be clear about what you want to achieve, early in the process as it can take a lot of time to make changes, and move everything around later. It is also very frustrating and time consuming.
8. Make sure it is legal. If you add content that is not your own, add it legally. Why risk losing your wonderful blog because someone complains about your use of their copyrighted property.
9. Keep a copy of your blog on your computer (plus the backup copy we all have hmm hmm). If you do this, you will be able to start again easily if you decide to move to another blog site for any reason.
Having a blog can be very satisfying, but some of the fun can be taken out of it when you are struggling to get your blog set up and successfully online. Proper preparation before you start can make all the difference getting your blog successfully launched.