Blogging 103Getting Published!

Publish your first Blog Post!

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.“

~Mark Twain

Brainstorming your first & future posts

Brainstorming your first & future posts

Brainstorming your first & future posts

• “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.“E.L. Doctorow

Brainstorming your first & future posts• Set yourself a strict five minute limit to scan through as many of your

favorite blog, news, or niche-focused websites as possible and scribble down as many posts or news items that really interest or call out to you. Then, take a second minute to select one of those posts that you’d like to tell your readers about with a line or more of your personal commentary.

• Take five minutes to write as much as you can about why you’ve decided to write a blog about X. This will be the basis for your introductory post.

• Take five minutes to introduce yourself, and let your audience know what you’ll be writing about.

• If none of those take your fancy, head over to Plinky.com, our site dedicated to giving you ideas for things to write about. That should get your ideas flowing.

Questions to ask yourself

• Does my idea give people a sense of the type of blog they’ll be reading?

• Does my idea give me a chance to really show off what I’m passionate about, and communicate something unique to me?

• If I were checking out a similar blog, would this make me want to read more in future?

Publishing your first post

• Log in to your WordPress.com dashboard

• Over on the left you’ll see a bunch of menu options. Click on the little arrow to the right of the word “Posts” and choose the “Add New” option.

Publishing your first post

• Write your title in the box up at the top, just like you would with an email. This is your blog’s title, like a headline. It’s important, so be sure to use your blog title as a way to captivate your readers by intriguing them with a fascinating, well-written headline. Verbs are important.

Publishing your first post

• Now, write the body of the post. This is what comes below the headline/title.

Publishing your first post

• Should you need additional formatting options, you can expand the editing toolbar by selecting the Kitchen Sink icon.

Publishing your first post

• Type in what you want here. You can save it at any time (without sharing it with the world) by hitting the “Save Draft” button.

• When you’re ready to share your content with the world, it’s as simple as hitting “Publish.”

• Once you’ve done that, click on “View Post” and you can check out exactly how your content looks to the rest of the world.

Congratulations!

• You’re a published author!

Resources

• http://learn.wordpress.com/• http://wordpress.org/support/• http://codex.wordpress.org/

New_To_WordPress_-_Where_to_Start• http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=499• http://wordpresshelp.org/

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Creative Commons License• This work is licensed under the

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0