Many writers have found the fun and promotion opportunites of blogging. As a published author, blogging keeps your fans engaged and keeps your name in the forefront of their minds. As an unpublished author, you can keep your writing skills sharp and as you gain readers you’ll have a great place to announce your new publishing contract.

Beginning a blog is easy. Just pick a blogging software, decide on your angle and go! There are several software solutions to choose from. Blogger is free and very popular. Typepad is a pay service which is very solid and used by several authors I read. Another alternative (the one I use) is WordPress. It’s similar to Typepad, but actually lives on my server. There are pre-made templates, called themes in Typepad, you can use to give your blog a little personality.

The reason I like Typepad is because it does live on my server. I can use my own domain name as opposed to having a hard-to-remember URI like blogprovider.com.nameofmyblog.

No matter which blogging solution you choose, you’ll need to promote it. Make sure you have your blog address in your signature line when you post on email lists, visit other blogs and comment, link from your main site (or better yet, build it in to you main site like I did with Rachel Butler’s site).

Next time we’ll discuss RSS feeds…yet another way to keep your blog in front of your readers.