Aussie Bloggers

When I first got introduced to blogging it was on behalf of a client. I’d been asked to investigate what it was all about and whether it was a suitable medium for my client to gain more activity for her business.

Being the dutiful assistant I am, I not only started researching, but also set up a blog of my own so I could spend my own time practising this new art and perfect the new skill I was about to deliver to my client.

Well, I merrily wrote a few posts here and there for about six months, blissfully unaware that an addiction was just around the corner. I decided to set up a family blog that Christmas to replace my annual family Christmas newsletter and sent the link to family members around the country. And then one of our cats went missing so I blogged about that and when he showed up again 4 days later (it was an intense hot summer that year here in Australia), I posted photos of our injured and dehydrated cat for family members to see after he’d come home from the vet.

What happened then took me by surprise. I had people from the other side of the world post comments about my poor cat and a conversation began to take place in the comments of my family blog. How did that happen?

I was unaware at the time how quickly search engines pick up blog posts and didn’t really understand about Technorati tags at that time, although I had been using them and exploring this new world of blogging.

Suddenly I found out what the real attraction was about blogging and I began to write much more regularly to both my blogs. I wanted more people to come talk to me!

A couple of months later I was listening to a speaker at my church and he mentioned a word which appealed to me so I wrote it down, thinking I could write about it sometime (did I mention I’m a writer too? ) but before the service had finished I realised there was more than one article inside me on that topic and I rushed home to buy a new domain and set up a new blog. Enter number three…

Over the next year I had purchased several more domains and set up several new blogs and each began to develop their own following. I had become addicted and it happened without noticing.

At least, I didn’t notice but I think my family did. Now my family tell me I’m a ‘domain junkie’, and a ‘blogging addict’ amongst other names. Me, I just like to think I’m interested in lots of things and it would appear there are readers for each thing as well so I’m not alone in my interests. Perhaps it’s just because I like an audience but they can’t see me so it’s kind of done anonymously… well, almost because I do use my name.

So, if you’re wondering what this blogging bug is all about and how to get started, what should you do?

• Well, join our Aussie Bloggers for a start. You’ll get to meet a bunch of people as crazy as me and some not so crazy.
• Then you need to decide on a blogging platform. I started with Blogger.com which is owned by Google by the way, but shifted to Wordpress because I wanted to have control. Control over the hosting, control over the domain name, and I wanted ownership – they were mine, mine, mine!
• Then you need to start writing and publishing your posts. It’s as simple as that.

But after awhile and after visiting heaps of other blogs you’ll notice different templates, and things they call widgets and plugins and heaps of extras and suddenly your plain ole blog will be just that – plain but perhaps not quite so ‘ole’. Don’t worry, you’ll get heaps of advice about that too and pretty soon you’ll be like the rest of us and you’ll have to join Bloggers Anonymous because we’re pretty much beyond help! So why not come and join the fun?