It's natural to be apprehensive about starting a blog. When you first begin, it may feel like being on stage without a script or a view of the audience. Don't worry, feedback will come soon enough. Remember, there's no right or wrong way to blog. The only rule is your target audience must find something worthwhile.
One way to ease into blogging is to start with a temporary blog at #www.Blogger.com#, where you can set up a free practice blog in five minutes. Take a dry run for a week or two, then make your blog public when you're ready.
Good blogs are addictive, which is one reason they're so effective for authors. Many book buyers must be exposed to a title six or seven times before deciding to buy. With a good blog, getting repeated exposure won't be a problem.
A lively blog is like a focus group and writing laboratory rolled into one: It provides you with constant feedback, criticism and new ideas. Your blog readers will pepper you with comments and e-mails. When you've struck a chord, you'll know immediately from the response. When you lay an egg, you'll know that, too, from the silence.
Just as theater companies try out new productions in the hinterlands before storming Broadway, authors can fine-tune their material on their blog, says technology writer Clive Thompson:
Ask writers who blog regularly--like me--and they'll tell you how exciting it is to be wired in directly to your audience. They correspond with you, pass you tips, correct your factual blunders, and introduce you to brilliant new ideas and people. The Internet isn't just an audience, it's an auxiliary brain. But you have to turn it on, and it takes work. You can't fake participation and authenticity online.
Indeed, the true power of blogging is the momentum created by your audience. Once your blog has 100 frequent readers, it has critical mass. It may take six months or a year to get there, but from there it's all downhill. Members of your core audience begin competing to hand you the most useful, compelling ideas by writing comments on your blog and e-mailing you directly. That's when your blog becomes electric, a magnet attracting new readers. Your core audience swells as word of mouth goes viral. #Blog comments: pros and cons#
Most blogs include space below the author's posts for readers to add their own views. These comments can take the conversation in a totally new direction, and become the most interesting material on your blog, thanks purely to your readers' efforts.
For the blogger, comments bring three key benefits:
Instant feedback on your ideas and writing, and a sense of what your audience finds valuable.
Feeling of participation and loyalty among your audience.
Adding valuable keyword density to your site, making it much more visible in search-engine results.
Like any tool, however, comments can be abused. It's not unusual to see rude or off-topic comments on some blogs, and even "spam comments" written solely to plant links back to the spammer's site. The worst spammers even use software robots, which scour the Web for target blogs and insert their junk links. Spam comments are usually along the lines of, "Hey, great blog. Come see us at #www.Cheap-Viagra.com#."
Fortunately, most problem comments can be prevented by using countermeasures like _ comment moderation_: you review and approve new comments before they appear on your blog. Another option is to allow readers to post comments immediately, and you review them later. The advantage is your readers get immediate gratification in seeing their comments posted as they submit them.
Most spam comments can be prevented by using word verification, requiring comment writers to type a short series of characters displayed in an image. This stops spam comments from software robots.
To be sure, some popular authors don't allow blog comments at all, such as marketing guru Seth Godin. Simply because they're well known, famous writers attract a certain number of crackpots and sycophants, and perhaps it's easier to avoid them by allowing no comments.