How to find Blogs to Read

Since it is so easy to blog lots and lots of people are starting blogs on different topics. How do you find the ones that YOU want to read?

A blog can be a great way to find out things that you want to know about ANYTHING. There are cooking blogs, shopping blogs, DIY blogs, sports blogs, travel blogs and on and on.

There are several places to look for blogs. I always first try a google search. I use the terms "best _____ blogs" and I always get thousands of results.

Two websites that keep track of blogs and rank them:


Technorati uses authority ranking to evaluate which blogs have the most influence. You can search here by topic to find the  most influential blogs in each area.

BlogRank uses 20 factors to evaluate which are the best blogs. You can also search by topics using this website.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Rather than going out and searching for what you want all of the time you may want to subscribe to the blogs you like. When you subscribe you will only need to go to ONE place to look at all of the blogs you are interested in. Even if you  have not looked for many days the content that has been posted since you last looked will be there. You can scan through them easily and just read the interesting ones.

How do you subscribe?  Start an account with Google Reader or Bloglines. There are many other blogreaders that you can sign in with that will collect blogs that you are interested in reading.

Now when you find a blog you like just look for the icons above in order to subscribe. Subscriptions are often called RSS feeds. That means that this blog will be put through a program so that it can be accessed by your blog reader.

When you do that a window will open up that asks you which reader you want to subscribe with. You should be able to find the one you signed up for and click on it. There are lots of choices. Sometimes you can even just copy the URL and paste it into the page that comes up and it will start your subscription.

All About Blogs

Since you are reading this I assume that you know what a blog is, but you may wonder how people make them or how they add videos, links or photos to them. In a way I hate to write this post because it will show you how easy this is and you will not be amazed at what I can do anymore.

I comfort myself with the thought that you will now be able to make your own blog and impress your friends and family.

STEP 1
Decide 
You should have an idea that you would like to write about and choose a title.  This is probably the hardest part! Think about who your audience will be and the purpose for the blog. It could be to share a life event or vacation or to talk about something you are interested in and want to share.

STEP 2
Sign up
There are several places that you can go to right now to sign up for your own FREE blog. These are online programs that provide you with an easy way to create a blog and store them for you. Remember "the cloud"? Well all of the blogs that you write will be stored on the cloud somewhere. Here are some links to places where you can go to start your own blog:


BLOGGER - This is the one that I am using. It is owned by Google, so you sign up with your Google account if you have one.

WEEBLY - You can make a website or a blog with Weebly and it is all done by drag and drop.

WORDPRESS -  This is another easy place that you can go to sign up for a blog.


There are many other places that you can make a blog. To find them type blog creators into a google search. You will have to look at them to find the one you like.

STEP 3
Design
Blog programs all have built in editors that help you to choose what you want your blog to look like. Each of them has templates that are already designed that you can choose from. If you want to do your own design you can do that also.

STEP 4

Write 

You can write as often or as little as you would like. The more often you write the more readers you will be likely to have. If your blog does not change much people can easily forget about it. Some people write often and have discussions with their readers in the comment section at the end of the blog. Other people write for themselves or to tell about a specific thing like a trip. They do not expect comments and the blog becomes a log of something to remember.

More in this series:

• How to put pictures, video and links into blogs
• How to find blogs you would like to read and subscribe to them
• How to add comments to blogs