Starting a blog

mjeanae125

Hey ya'll

My little sis and I would like to start a blog. We both started our weight loss journey on December 27, 2010
Since then we both lost a combined total of 381 lbs. Every where we go a lot of people wanted to know how did we lose weight? So, without further ado, ANY SUGGESTIONS??

scrapjen

I just started one a day or so ago too *Ü* ... mine will be mostly for me, but it will be a place I can share if others are interested. You can do a blog here on MFP, but it isn't that user friendly. I would recommend blogspot - it's really easy and free. I've kept a family blog there for a few years now.

welly5

I've been blogging for a few years and it's also become part of my job. I started using Typepad's free platform but eventually upgraded to account that costs money (once I started making $$ from ad revenue).

I love Typepad so I would say check them out, it's really straightforward to set up, especially the free blog they offer.

Some suggestions for starting out:

1. Read a lot of similar blogs to yours, leave comments (and not just a comment with a link to your own blog, but something relevant to the blog post you just read), and eventually those people will find their way over to your blog and check it out

2. Use photos. ONLY your own photos. You can pay for stock pictures but don't think that photos you find on google are yours for the taking. Lots of new bloggers make that mistake and have the owners of the photos either come after them or report them to their webserver

3. Come up with a posting schedule, I find once a week works perfectly for me, some people post more though

4. Have fun with your posts! Pinterest and Stumbleupon are great ways to promote your blog, but don't get caught up in worrying what will be popular there. Just post about what is relevant to you

Good luck! Blogging is so fun and really rewarding once you get a handle on how you want your blog to sound and look

welly5

oops. Thought of three more relevant to when you are juuust starting out

- Put up 3 - 5 posts before you start promoting/linking/sharing your blog. It gives readers a bit more content to look through and get a feel for your blog. That way they keep coming back and checking for new posts

- When you are first starting to blog your 'About Me' page is really important. People usually want to see a real photo of you (everyone loves to have an mental image of who is writing the blog) along with some facts about yourself (where you live, what you love) and either WHY you are writing the blog, or WHAT the blog is about

-Edit your posts a few times before putting them up. It only takes a couple extra minutes but makes a huge difference to how polished your posts come across

labeachgirl

Consider starting a youtube channel and talk about different topics - workouts you love, what foods to eat, what workout clothes are good, etc and incorporate that into your blog. It's a good way to stand out from other blogs and people love to actually "know" the person behind the words.