web pulp 2.0

This is a guest post by Abhigyan Banerjee, who is a student, tech-junkie, and author of tech blog Technokracy.

Blogs have taken over the Internet like wildfire. Every second website you visit these days is/has a blog. While the original purpose of a blog (or Weblog for the traditionalist) was to act as an online diary of sorts, blogs today are major money-minting machines. If you are passionate about something, or feel that you are an authority in your niche, getting online is just as easy as ABC. And we are here to tell you exactly that!

• On the Internet, access is everything. It can make or break your blog. Just having quality content is not enough. You need to present that content in a manner that is accessible to all and sundry. Keep in mind the following points while starting out with a new blog:
• Register a domain name: This is one of the more important aspects of a blog. The name of your blog should, simply put, stand out in a horde of blogs. Decide on something catchy, yet unobnoxious, that captures the spirit of what you want to write. Also make sure that you choose the correct host. You don’t want to register with a webhost that can’t even guarantee the security/integrity of your blog during downtime.
• Spread the word: You have a totally droolworthy domain. It means zilch if you can’t promote it correctly. Once you have the blog up and running, spend time to tell the world about it. The more you concentrate on spreading the word about your blog, the more people will actually visit it. Use online and offline networking to make the blog reach your target audience.

You have a great idea, you have a great domain name. Now is the time to decide what platform you will use to blog. There are a myriad of choices available. Just based on sheer numbers, I’ll talk about the top three here:

• Blogger: Also known as Blogspot, Blogger was THE one service that kicked it off. Owned by Google, Blogger provides a very clean and simple interface to get your blog going. Here’s some advantages of using Blogger:

• Posterous: Posterous burst onto the blogging scene around last year, and provided the easiest way to start a blog. Many, many established and upcoming bloggers moved to Posterous because of the easy and smooth user experience. All you need to do to get a blog on Posterous is send an email to post@posterous.com (try it out!) with your content.

• Wordpress: Wordpress is by far the leading blogging platform on the web today. It offers two variants. While Wordpress.com provides a free service to host your blog on Wordpress servers, it is very limited in its functionality. Wordpress.org on the other hand, is a solution that can be downloaded and installed on your blog, on your own domain and allows zillions of customization options (Themes, Plugins, etc.).

Make sure you make an informed choice about the platform you use to create your blog. Weigh the pros and cons of each one before you set your sights on one.

Blogs and Web 2.0 Apps are all about interaction with your users/readers. Make sure you enable commenting on your blog. By encouraging comments, you are effectively persuading your readers to engage in conversations. This interactivity is what will make many readers want to come back to your time and again.

Also, make sure you encourage your readers to comment about your blog on other websites. This leads to the valuable backlinks that are oh-so-important in terms of search engine rankings.

As long as you have these basics covered, you can expect to have a good (i.e. relatively smooth) start to your blog. Do remember though, that this is only the start of a big effort towards making your blog the next big thing on the Internet.

I wish you all the best with your blogging endeavours.