When I started blogging I knew nothing about it, nothing about html codes, nothing about social networking, literally…NOTHING! My blog, Free Sample Freak, has been around for almost a year now and I receive over 200,000 page views monthly, have over 6,000 subscribers and it continues to grow everyday! There is a lot to learn about blogging and it is definitely not as easy as I thought it would be. I absolutely love what I do though and I believe that is the most important thing about being a blogging. I hope to follow up with more detailed articles here on BlogU, until then, I will start with the essential keys that have helped me become a successful blogger.

1. Content/Name/Design:

* Blog Content: You first need to figure out what you would like your blog to be about. Do you want to write about your life, entertainment, your kids, shopping deals, etc.
* Pick a catchy name for your blog, something that is going to stick in someone’s mind.
* Pick a template/logo/slogan. You can search for free templates, there are many out for Blogger, Wordpress, etc. You can apply it all to your blog yourself or pay a small fee to have someone design it for you. There are some great blogging designers out there! You want your blog to be attractive, clean, and easy to navigate.
* Also, don’t forget to submit your site to Google, Yahoo, etc. This will help your site be found by search engines.

2. Subscriptions:

* There are several places for your to set up your blog feed. I use Feed Burner, it is easy simple add the code to your site. What does this do? Feedburner makes it easy for you to get your blog content to your blog readers. Your readers can subscribe to your blog by a reader (Google Reader, etc.) or even email! For example: I write several posts each day on my blog and I have one newsletter that goes out to my email subscribers automatically when there is new content. If someone subscribes in a reader they will receive each new post individually.

3. Site Analytics: StatCounter, SiteMeter, GoogleAnalytics, etc. These are sites that will let you know how many people are visiting your site, what content they are viewing, where they came from, what keywords they searched to find your site, etc.

4. Social Media/Blogger Networking: These are just a few ways that help you get your blog your “known” to more people.

* WOM (Word of Mouth)- tell everyone you know! Word of mouth marketing/networking can be extremely powerful!
* Join and set up a profile on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.
* Network with other Bloggers: Try to connect with other bloggers who blog about similar things that you do. It is great to have a group of blogging friends. You can join forums to meet other bloggers or simply contact a few bloggers in the “blogosphere”. You can link to each others sites, guest post for one another, exchange text links on a blogroll. This is a way for bloggers to benefit from one another and hopefully you’ll each get new readers out of it. It’s a win-win situation.

There are many more tools and suggestions to help you grow your blog, but this is a great start! =)

blog:  http://www.freesamplefreak.com