Recently I heard from a friend who had questions about starting a blog. As their questions were not personal in nature, and could benefit others as well as them, I have decided to respond in an appropriate manner, in an open blog post. Here are the questions and my responses.

Q – How did you come up with the name of your blog?

A – The name “The Hot Iron” is a play on the term “strike while the iron is hot” and is something I had thought of a few years before I actually started the blog. The idea for the name being I would write about not only topical items but would write while something was fresh in my mind.

I registered the domain name thehotiron.com right away, and it was ready for me to use when I decided to start blogging.

Q – What are the top 3 things I need to think about as a new blogger?

A – Audience, promotion and time.

Where you could be simply writing a personal journal out in the open, ideally you are writing for the benefit of others as well. Keeping in mind your audience, not only as you start but on-going, will help you focus on what topics to write and how to present the information.

If you write it, people may not necessarily come and read it. You will need to spend time to promote your blog. Whether it’s emailing all your friends, getting links to other sites or any other method, you will need to spend some time to do so.

And as you can guess, writing for and managing a blog take some time. However much you decide to spend on it is up to you, but keep this in mind with everything else you have going on.

Q – Are there any mistakes you made that you learned from when you were just starting out that you would pass on to a new blogger?

A – Are you asking about mistakes I made in the past, or continue to make?!

Whenever you start a blog, you have energy and excitement. Over time, this can change, and usually will decrease. You will need to motivate yourself to maintain a consistent blogging schedule.

You may also write something that will tick off someone, as I have done before. They may contact you offline to make a change to what you wrote. Don’t do it. I have made a couple of small tweaks to posts over time, showing goodwill to these people and in return asked them to comment on my posts, but they never did. A cease and desist letter form a lawyer is one thing, but in general your blog is your opinion, and you should be true to your convictions.

Q – Do you think there is a life span to a blog?

A – As someone said to me moments before he got married, “nothing is forever!” Everything has a lifecycle, and a blog could as well. When you get to the point where you think it’s over, you may have options to either shut it down or transfer or sell to someone else. But you’re just getting started now, so nothing to worry about regarding this now. Oh, and that guy has been married for almost 20 years now.

Q – What are your suggestions for evaluating hosts?

A – As I build blogs for a living, I recommend hiring my Web consulting firm Dunkirk Systems, LLC to build your, including offering and managing your hosting! However, there are many options out there. You could have your own hosting and then manage your own installation of a blog platform, like WordPress or ExpressionEngine. Or you could go with a hosted platform, like WordPress.com or Blogger.com.

However you go, I strongly recommend you do 2 things. The first is use your own domain name for the blog, and not use the default URL that may come with the host or hosted solution. Also, use Google Feedburner to manage your blog feed and not the default feed URLs that come with either. By doing these, you have flexibility to move to a new platform or host and not lose users or feed subscribers with a new URL for each.

Q – What blogs do you read regularly and would send me to view as I begin this process?

A – I subscribe to the feeds of over 200 blogs. This does not mean I read all of them, in some cases I simply skim the headlines or titles. I recommend setting up a Google Reader account, and then begin subscribing to the RSS feeds of various blogs, from ones in the same vertical of which you are planning for your own blog, to news services or blogs in different categories. Some blogs do all things well, many do some a few things well, and some do most everything poorly.

One blog I will recommend is ProBlogger – it is a tremendous resource for blogging, whether for someone new like yourself or a seasoned blogger like myself.

Good Luck

Good luck with the launch of your blog! As I wrote these questions out in the open, I welcome anyone to comment on these, and make any recommendations they may have for getting started with blogging.

Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.

Blogging • Business • Strategize • (2) Comments • Permalink

the3six5 is a story of the year 2010, told daily by a different person. It falls under the category of a crowdsourced piece. It is the mastermind of Daniel Honigman and Len Kendall, 2 people who work in social media and the Internet in Chicago with whom I have the honor to know.

Last Thursday, August 19, I contributed “my day” to the project. Below is what I submitted. If you are not following the3six5 I highly recommend you do. It is a unique perspective on the year told my a wide variety of people.

Taking my little girl to daycare every day allows me to somewhat recreate Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, where he plays out in his mind’s eye how his next moves will take place. Of course I say somewhat, for as much as I would like, the day of a Web consultant can sometimes be unpredictable. Then again, this is part of why I do what I do.

After I drop her off and watch her bounding into her class (and once again wondering how she does it without the 3 cups of coffee that didn’t allow me to keep up with her) I continue out my role as Holmes, but with a Patriots jersey on, as it’s a gameday. In between client calls, development and some blogging, my mind wanders back to the date – August 19.

When I chose this day to share my day with you, I knew it would fall on the date, 6 years later, when I arrived in the Windy City. I wasn’t quite sure if it would be a big day, or just another day, or where I would even be this day. I also wasn’t sure if I would be reminiscing about what’s transpired over the years. As it turns out, though there have been some lows, the highs have trumped them, and I am pretty positive about where I am right now. Ok, the photos of my family and pictures of some of the Web sites I have build which surround me may have some influence on that, not to mention not following the news today!

I am also looking ahead to the next few weeks – this weekend I was invited by Nokia to a beach house in Huntington Beach, CA to try out a new mobile device, which will be followed by some quality time-off with the family, followed by kicking off a great Web project. Some days the glass is half full and some days it isn’t half full, rather shattered on the floor and liquid splattered. Then again, I probably have followed the news too much those days.

Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.

Announcements • Blogging • (1) Comments • Permalink

A special hello to new readers of The Hot Iron, especially those who came here after reading the latest edition of the “Out of Date Newsletter” by Christopher S. Penn. I was mentioned in the newsletter which arrived in my inbox yesterday, and I appreciate the kind words!

Apparently I am returning the favor, as mentions from me in social media drove traffic to his newsletter. Of course you can only find out this information from analytics, which I have talked about quite a bit here. If you’re not already reading his newsletter or his blog, visit ChristopherSPenn.com and do so, not to mention the amazing marketing podcast Marketing Over Coffee he does with my good friend John Wall.

The Power Of The Last Post And Tweet

If you are new or a regular reader, you may have noticed I haven’t posted to The Hot Iron in a couple of weeks. I won’t get into any excuses as that is not important. But if you did subscribe, thank you, as many may not have found something relevant as of late and may not have chosen to. Also, if you read my Twitter stream yesterday, you may have seen more mentions of my wedding anniversary than anything business-related, as I took yesterday off. If you are following my tweets, again, thank you!

In a 24/7 world where attention spans are short, where we last left off is sometimes all people see from us. In social media and blogging, this is something to always be aware of. But then again, it is no different than a Web site with minimal or outdated content. You never know who will read, and when, and hopefully what they see is of interest to them. This is why on the Web pages of The Hot Iron I just have a link to my Twitter page, as sometimes the last one I leave is not always the best one.

Any Press Is Good Press

Despite this, I am thrilled to have the mention, especially as not everyone reads an email newsletter the day it is delivered. In my case, it was the next day – I was of course monitoring my email during the day and saw it in my inbox, but did not read it in full until today. Plus I subscribe to Donald Trump’s mantra that “any press is good press” as people are talking about you, and where you can’t control the message all the time, you can have an impact from what you say yourself.

Be on the watch for new thoughts and commentary coming from me here at The Hot Iron. Seriously.

Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.

Announcements • Blogging • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink

The next Chicago ExpressionEngine Meetup will be on Tuesday, May 18, at OfficePort Chicago in the Loop. During the first Meetup the idea of "opening the books" and sharing our work in EE was discussed. We now have our first volunteer for what will certainly be a lively discussion and learning experience for all.

Eryan Cobham of Cobwebs Consulting will be subjecting himself to a "code review" by the group for a site he is currently building using EE, and facilitating a discussion on the proper way to do accomplish certain functions in EE. Some topics may include: using extensions, URL segments, and any other questions that people may interest people.

View the details on this event and RSVP on the Meetup site. For more information and to join the group, visit the Chicago ExpressionEngine Meetup at Meetup.com.

Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.

Announcements • Blogging • Build • Technology • Web Development • (0) Comments • Permalink

If you read The Hot Iron yesterday, you may have noticed my post for Thursday, April 1, 2010 was an outright April Fools joke. The idea that Google can predict what you want to search on is surely one of debate, but the connection between your brain and the browser is not quite there yet, at least at a consumer level.

After gauging the response to the post, as well as general commentary I saw around social media about April Fools Day and blogging, the question presents itself, “should you blog a joke on April 1?”

Analysis Paralysis

There is no shortage of opinion out there, and that can also relate to your blog as a whole as well as its individual post. When thinking about reactions to such a post of your own, there’s many angles to look at from. Some say you should ignore anything posted on April 1 in general, as it is a waste of time to sort through the jokes to find what is real. Others say your attempt at humor may not get through to an existing reader or a new reader, which could turn them off and away from your blog. Then others say that in a world where things are too serious, why not have some comic relief?

So summing it up, blogging on April 1 may be a no-win situation. But thinking about it more, isn’t that true for the other 364 days of the year as well?

Be True To Your Blog

My recommendation is to be true to the mission of your blog. By consistently writing relevant content and engaging with your community you should be in good shape. Over the long term, you should have increased readership – both in page hits and subscribers. Watching hits and activities on a day-to-day basis may not be relevant for you, as for whatever reason you may get people unsubscribing or a decrease in the number of hits. But like the stock market, you may have bumps along the road but over the long term you should gain.

Keeping true to The Hot Iron, I never try to take myself too seriously, so every once in a while snarky comments may come out, and yesterday that was in the form of an entire post. I will continue to strive to educate and engage in conversation, and hopefully you the reader will enjoy it as much as I do.

Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.

Blogging • Business • Strategize • (0) Comments • Permalink