There are many steps to running a blog and the first step is to chose whether you are going to go the free rout and use a service such as Vox, Blogger or Wordpress(.com) or if you are going to have your own domain and host. the bonus of using a free online service is they already have a community setup and that allows more people to view your site and they are free. The only downsides are that you are restricted with in their software and you have to have a domain like Vox.username.com which sucks. If you chose to go the hosting rout you get your own domain and the choice of software such as Wordpress(.org), Movable Type, Symphony or Textpattern allowing you flexibility of what to do. The only bad bit is that you don’t have that community. I use Wordpress as my platform as I find it easy to use and the best featured of all.

So say you use Wordpress hosted on a server, this is what to do but if you don’t there are still some useful tips. After you have done this you must think of what you are going to put up is it a blog about dogs or computers and then how many post am I going to go do, I try to stick to 5 a week and weekends off.

Now you know what you are going to be doing with your blog you have to find a theme Wordpress have a site were they have a huge number of themes or you can use the same as me here you also have the choice of getting a theme done by someone or making it yourself this can be expensive and time consuming.

If you are going to use your blog for podcasts you can have a look around for plugins such as Podpress for Wordpress and there are many other plugins that are very helpful so have a look.

Now you have done all this we need to track our progress Wordpress has a built in tracker but I prefer to use Google analytics all you need to do is install the plugin.

Now you are done and all you need to do is keep putting content up on a regular basis this helps built a loyal readership. there are many free way to advertise your blog but none are very good what I say to do is to Digg your posts and then if you have Twitter,Jaiku or Pownce do a post and link to the Digg and your site to get hits and publishes your posts.

I hope this was helpful if you think I missed anything tell me and don’t forget to Digg it and use the ShareThis link bellow.