My Blog = My Life: building a foundation for your blog

Last week and this week, I'll be focusing on a few things you need to have setup if you want to attract as many long-term followers to your blog as possible. In my opinion, there are five major ways that people will subscribe to follow your blog. Neglecting any of these methods will leave a percentage of your potential followers behind since some people only follow via each of these methods. Last week, we discussed the importance of a Facebook Page for your Blog as well as the importance of Twitter when blogging.
The fourth "following platform" that every blogger should have setup is email subscription via Feedburner (or some other similar service) for their blog. There are some people who don't know anything about RSS, don't use Facebook or Twitter, and will only remember to follow if they get an email telling them you've posted something new. Others just prefer following via email even though they do use those other platforms. The latter often are people who never want to miss a post. Which is why having this available for your readers is crucial. Read & Comment >>

Last week and this week, I'll be focusing on a few things you need to have setup if you want to attract as many long-term followers to your blog as possible. In my opinion, there are five major ways that people will subscribe to follow your blog. Neglecting any of these methods will leave a percentage of your potential followers behind since some people only follow via each of these methods. Last week, we discussed the importance of a Facebook Page for your Blog as well as the importance of Twitter when blogging.
The third "following platform" that every blogger should have setup is Feedburner (or some other similar service) for their blog. Feedburner is a free RSS Feed Management system that gives you much more control over your blog's RSS feed as well as making it easy for your followers to follow. It also has some extra tools which we'll get into more on Wednesday. Read & Comment >>

This week and next week, I'll be focusing on a few things you need to have setup if you want to attract as many long-term followers to your blog as possible. In my opinion, there are five major ways that people will subscribe to follow your blog. Neglecting any of these methods will leave a percentage of your potential followers behind since some people only follow via each of these methods. On Monday, we discussed the importance of a Facebook Page for your Blog.

The second "following platform" that every blogger should have setup is a twitter Account for their blog. Signing up is simple. Just go to http://www.twitter.com, type in your name, email address, your password, and click "Sign Up." It really is that easy.
There is no doubt that a lot of the blogging world is connected on twitter. It's a crucial place to network with random people and goof around with other bloggers and your followers. I'll be blogging more about how to build a twitter following and how to even use twitter at all, but for now just make sure you have an account setup. For bonus points, upload a profile picture (gravatar) to make it personal.
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Over the next two weeks, I'll be focusing on a few things you need to have setup if you want to attract as many long-term followers to your blog as possible. In my opinion, there are five major ways that people will subscribe to follow your blog. Neglecting any of these methods will leave a percentage of your potential followers behind since some people only follow via each of these methods.

The first and most important "following platform" that every blogger should have setup is a Facebook Page for their blog. Setting up a Facebook Page is easy. Simply go to http://www.facebook.com/pages, then click the "Create Page" button in the top right corner.

For some reason, a lot of bloggers think that Twitter is the most important thing they can focus on when it comes to driving blog traffic, and we will cover that in the next post, but let me promise you this. If utilized consistently and correctly, nothing will bring you as much traffic as a solid Facebook Page.
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I'm going to put on my marketing hat today, and let's talk about blog templates for a moment. As I'm sure you are aware, there are a lot of generic and purchasable templates available for your blog. So, which one should you choose? And, does it really make a difference?

The answer is two-fold. If you have a blog for the sole purpose of writing your thoughts out, and you don't care if new people find you and follow you, and your family and friends will come read no matter what it looks like, then in all truth it doesn't matter at all. Pick something that makes you feel good and start typing!
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How often should you write and publish a new blog post? I guess that depends on how quickly you want your blog to grow.

When I sat down and wrote my very first post for Single Dad Laughing, I did so harboring the memory of at least two other blogs that I had started and never went very far with before losing interest or giving up. I didn't want to do that again, so I made a firm decision that I was going to post something new every day for an entire year at least.

As I've mentioned before, my goal when starting wasn't to build a big following. I just loved writing, and I made the goal because I saw the real life benefits that would come from turning it into a daily routine. I also knew that writing every day for a year would make the practice a deeply-rooted habit, and it was a habit I really wanted to have.
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Before we get too much into the nitty gritty of writing and building big blogs, we need to continue with a few more foundational posts. Today, I want to talk about the five most important goals you should have with your blog, and what you should be doing right now to reach those goals.

Single Dad Laughing is not some phenomenon that came from nothing. Though my original intention wasn't to turn it into a big blog, I certainly made being a big blogger my goal early on. With that goal came serious dedication to making it happen, whether that included time, investment, or picking up dog poop to bring in extra money. To reach my goal, I gave it my everything, I went about it logistically, and I set (and reached) lots, and lots, and lots of small goals all along the way.
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There are thousands of webpages and blogs telling you how you should blog, the vast majority of whom actually have no clue how to turn your blog into a big blog. Most of them have been started by people who, usually with good intentions, want to make a quick buck advertising, so they glom the content off of other blog building blogs, write quick generic blog posts, and hope for traffic. While there are a few very high quality, good sources out there, most of what you read on other "blog building" blogs must be taken with a grain of salt.

Now, I'm going to say something that might be hard to swallow. The truth to blogging is that there are no "rules." None. Zero. Zip. Nada.

But, here are a few of the ones going around, all of which you should immediately forget.

Rule #1. To make a blog big you have to come up with something completely different than any other blog.
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