The Blog of Lisa Morosky

I’ve always been very into music (of all genres). Growing up, a lot of times I didn’t really know how to express myself or feel things. Music often spoke for me and said what I couldn’t say and helped me feel things with more clarity.

So, you guys get to see a little bit of my musical, emotional side today. Lucky. You.

We’re going to take a trip through R & B land and learn more about blogging, from Ne-Yo. The song in question is “Make It Work”.

Here’s the song (a random video someone put together):

And here are the lyrics of the song.

The part of the song that I think can teach us something (or at least remind us) about blogging, is this part:

“This can only be as good as we both make it. I guess sometimes it’s gonna hurt. We can be as happy as we want to be girl. But we gotta make it work.”

Here’s what I pull out of this for you to take with you in your blogging endeavors:

• Your blog is only ever going to be as good as you make it, and as good as your audience makes it. You have to do your part by providing interesting content, and your audience has to do their part and talk to you. But, here’s the kicker, if you’re not doing your part, the audience won’t be doing theirs. Just like in a relationship.
• And you betcha, sometimes blogging is going to hurt. Whether it’s the comment that cuts you down, or the lack of participation by your readers, sometimes blogging is going to suck. But it’s how you turn this situation around that defines you and defines your blog.
• The sky is the limit with your blog. Want to earn more? The only thing stopping you is you. Want more readers? The only thing stopping you is you.
• But you have to want it. Building up a blog takes so much work (much more than people know). So you have to have the passion and the drive to make it work.

So there’s your obscure blogging advice for the day.

Next time you listen to your favorite song, see if you can extract some tips or advice to share with your readers. It sure makes it more interesting than just listing things.

I had a client ask me the other day what all he needs to have before he launches his blog. I see this question asked all the time over at the ProBlogger.com forums as well. It’s a great question because all of the details can be kind of overwhelming when you’re planning a blog launch (trust me, I know, I’m in the middle of it right now and I’m barely scraping by with my sanity).

The short answer to this question is…it depends. It depends on what your goals are. It depends on what your market is. It depends on what you’re trying to do.

With that said, here is a list of things that most likely apply to almost everyone.

By the way, this list is geared towards launching a blog for business purposes (not hobby blogs). And also, I’m assuming that you’ve done the “thinking” already (market research, studied other bloggers, thought about how you’re going to monetize, etc). We’re going to get right into the “doing”.

1. A domain name and hosting account. I go through BlueHost for both, but I have experience with HostGator and GoDaddy as well. All are good options.
2. A blogging platform. Obviously, I recommend WordPress.
3. A nice-looking, customized theme. “Nice-looking” and “customized” are the key here. I honestly don’t think it matters if you use a free theme or a premium theme, as long as it looks good, functions well, and is customized to look unique.
4. Some essential plugins. I recommend using what’s on my resources page.
5. A mailing list solution and an ethical bribe to get people to sign up. I think you should go with AWeber, but you can use one of the other ones too. Don’t wait to start a mailing list! Create a short PDF report to give away as an incentive to get people to sign up for your list.
6. Some way to track stats. I’d recommend Google Analytics as a good place to start.
7. About two weeks worth of pillar content. Don’t launch an empty blog. That’s just dumb. Make sure you introduce yourself with some really awesome content so they’ll keep coming back.
8. A stockpile of a week or so of content. This takes the pressure off while you’re ironing out any bugs that come up after you launch.
9. Blog outposts out the wazoo. Set up your social media profiles, get your blog RSS feed out there, etc.

Really, I think that’s all you need to successfully get started.

Am I forgetting anything?