Planning to start a blog? Don’t plan it, just blog it!

Some advice blogs about blogging often give to their readers is to plan in advance, to research and to analyze the situation in their field before starting a blog.

That might be wise advice but I see many cases where the new blogger takes that advice a bit too far.

Some spend weeks on research, on planning, on the WordPress design and other small details.  Weeks without writing, without marketing, without connecting to the audience, without building a name.

Don’t plan your blog, just do it

The best advice I can give you when starting a blog, is just do it! If you have a passion for something, if you feel like blogging about that passion, just start doing it. Get a domain name that you feel fits best, install WordPress.org blogging software, and start writing the best articles you can with the most valuable advice you can give.

That great blog design, that cool header logo, it is not important at the point in time when you are just starting your blog and when you have no content and visitors. When I started this blog back in  late October 2008, I just did it without much planning. It did take me couple of hours to find a perfect domain name but other than that there was not much time spent on analyzing or researching.

Start simple and build from there

I started very basic, very simple. I got the domain name, I installed WordPress and I used a free WordPress theme without any manual customization and I also just used the header image that came with the free theme. I did not think too much about the small details. I just wrote, wrote and wrote even more. And of course, I went to StumbleUpon, I went to Twitter, I commented on other blogs, in hope of actively getting some visitors to my new blog.

There will be time to make your blog look cool and unique. My switch to the premium WordPress Thesis theme, the customization of my blog design, and my blog logo header image… that just started coming along the road some two months after I started the blog. All that happened while I blogged and it happened naturally with the progression of the blog.

Forget all the details, just blog it

So what my point is, forget all the details now, get the basics setup and start writing content and get the message about your blog out there. After a while, if your blog grows, the natural progression will be to improve the design and the technical part of the blog.

Dreaming about building a large blog readership, dreaming about building a name for yourself is not enough. To give life to your blogging dreams, you must start doing it now!

Image by Hamed Saber