I have gotten the question over and over again from people, organizations and brands: “How do we start a blog the right way” – I’ve decided to put my advice into writing.

Some of you might think this post is unnecessary. Other people have written about this already. I thought so too until I started searching for good posts on how to set up a kick ass blog and learned most things written on the subject either covered the tool or the actual writing but not actually leading you to do it the right way I think there’s room for another post on the subject.

The purpose of this post is sort of a combination of two things that I hope will lead to the following:

1. Make sure agencies cannot charge big money for setting up your blog. Setting up your personal or branded blog is to me a democratic right and should be free and accessible for anyone who has something to share.
2. I think more people should start a blog. It’s good for you. It’s good for the democracy. It’s good for the world.

Here is the essential guide on how to start and configure a blog that will rock the world:

1. Buy a unique domain name for your blog and preferably do it at the same place where you intend to host the blog

Personally I’ve followed WordPress own recommendations and used Bluehost.com to buy my domain name and then installed a WordPress blog with their simple script functionality. It’s a 3 minute process from registering that domain until your blog is actually up and running and accessible from anywhere in the world. It’s a wow feeling!

Of course you can pick any hosting facility but if you’re not into setting up databases and shit – make sure they have some sort of simplified way of setting your blog up.

2. Why a WordPress blog?

The famous WordPress content management system

There’s of course different blog systems but if you want the best I’d say you should go with Matt Mullenweg’s WordPress. I think most professional bloggers today would agree with me and the stats speaks in favor of me. WordPress is the most used blogging platform (and in many cases content management system) in the world and as a result you cannot find any system that gives you more themes and more plugins.

Matt Cutts who’s responsible for Google’s search engine even says there’s no better tool in the world if you wanna make sure your website is being watched the right way by Google’s spiders.

3. Don’t design your blog. Find a theme that you think suits your needs and tweak it.

Theme is another word for design. WordPress separates functionality from form in the most beautiful way. Swapping between different designs is easier than saying hello in Swahili. What’s even better is the fact that there’s tons of great designs out there for free. However if you intend to turn into a mighty blogger you might look already now look into a paid theme. Woothemes and Themeforest has some sweet themes for any kind of business.

Personally however I prefer the Thesis theme by Brian Clark over at Copyblogger and Chris Pearson. The sweet thing with Thesis is that it can be customized into infinity with hooks and customized functionality. Another advantage with Thesis is the fact that it’s more or less perfectly prepared for Google and other search engines. Once you’ve decided on a theme – upload it with a FTP software of your choice and ad your own logo and style to it. Personally I use CSS Edit to tweak the style sheets but any old CSS tool will do.

4. Set up your WordPress blog right

Once you’ve set up your blog you can login to your domainname.com/wp-admin with your login information. Take some time to get acquainted to the left menu. Later when you start to write you will use the Post menu to start blogging. Of course you can set up a couple of pages too but the actual blogging will be done by adding posts.

5. Change the link structure

Setting the right permalink is one step closer to success

You don’t want to use the original set up in WordPress when you’re going live. This will decrease the Google traffic. Instead head into the menu settings called Permalinks found under ‘Settings’ and change the permalink structure from http://www.ronnestam.com/?p=123 to /%postname%/ . There are some different opinions out there which structure is the right one. But I’ve found over time that most people tend to recommend this one.

6. Make sure your blog pings the right blog search engines and portals

Google, Yahoo, Technorati, Swedish Knuff and a lot more sites out there are listing and indexing blogs. WordPress has got this sweet functionality that lets you automatically update these blogging portals once you’ve posted something new. There’s of course different ideas on how to do this. But I’ve decided to share my personal PING information here.

Just ad the ‘code’ below to start updating search engines etc

Copy this information below and enter it into your Update Services option that you’ll find under Settings/Writing

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://nyligen.se/ping/

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://rpc.twingly.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

Copy the ‘code’ above and paste it into the bottom field under the section Writing in settings. This way you’ll make sure your content is visible to the important search engines online.

7. Choose your title wisely

You’re almost done configuring the settings. The last thing you might wanna do is setting up the title of your blog. You’ll find that under General Settings.

Choose this one carefully as you shouldn’t change this one later. Once you’ve earned some page rank and you’re up to speed you don’t wanna make Google angry by messing with this one since it actually sits on ever single post from now on.

8. Download and install the following WordPress plugins

Find and learn how to use an FTP software. That’s important for anyone who wants to keep a website updated. For bloggers it’s essential since WordPress plugins and themes are the corner stones of a good blog. Others have written great stuff how to choose the right FTP for PC or Mac so I’ll leave that part to them.

The essential plugins that I think you need to install for your blog however – that I’ll share here. All your other needs can probably be catered for if you search for WP plugin and whatever you want either on Google or in the WordPress plugin library. Hell, you can even turn your blog into an E-commerce with the right setup.

These are the WordPress plugins I think you should make sure to start with:

Aksimet
Activate the Aksimet plugin to take care of SEO spammers, bots and trolls. No need to download this one – it’s inside WordPress and waiting for you!

Disqus or Intensedebate

The Disqus plugin let’s people join the conversation

Install a commenting system that treat your conversation right. This is what Disqus and Intensedebate does. On this blog I’ve had Disqus making sure visitors can interact the way the want. Lately however I’ve grown more fond of Intesedebate and only weeks ago I activated that on my Whisky blog in order to try it out. I think maybe I’ll switch on this blog too soon. One advantage with one of these plugins over how WordPress treats comments is the fact that you gain a small social spread over other networks. The biggest advantage however is that people can choose to login and comment with Facebook connect, OpenID, Twitter accounts and personal Disqus or Intense Debate accounts.

WP Super Cache
You’ll do fine without this plugin until the day you do something really really right. Let’s say for example that you end up on the first page of Digg.com, the online social newspaper, then tens of thousands people will swarm your blog for blood (your post that is) and only seconds later your server will crash. WP Super Cache takes care of this and turns every page in to static html pages that lets people ride rodeo over that blog of yours without falling off. You need WP Super Cache.

The All In One SEO Pack or the HeadSpace 2 SEO plugin
Same here. If you’ve gotten Thesis as your theme then move on to the next bullet. If not this plugin is essential. SEO is an art form many people have yet to master. But using the All In One SEO plugin will at least give you the right tools. [updated] Simon Sundén suggested I should ad the HeadSpace2 plugin as an alternative (in his mind better). So now I’ve done that. Thanks Simon!

Tweetmeme Retweet Button
The Tweetmeme retweet plugin is what places a small Tweet This button along every blog post. Just like the green little thing I’ve got on top of this post (press that one please). Sometimes you’ll write posts that people love. Then Tweeting that post is the fastest and simplest way for them to show their love. Other people that might land on your post will be more eager to read through your post if it has been tweeted many times. It’s like a quality mark. Make sure you’ve got an own Twitter account to go with this one since it will earn you followers over time if it’s your ID that is being retweeted.

WP FollowMe

By using the WP Follow Me plugin you’ll get a nice little bird watching over your blog
Make it easy for people to follow you on Twitter. This plugin places a badge to the right (or left if you want) on your blog that makes following you easy.

SexyBookmarks
In the bottom of every post on my blog you can see a set of buttons that lets you share my blog posts easily over your personally preferred social network.

I’ve decided to go with the plugin Sexy Bookmarks. I like the functionality and the tone of voice. However before I started using this one I had the plugin Share This taking care of business and it did a good job to so I’ll give that one a shout too.

PingPressFM
Allows you to spread your wonderful blog to 10+ social networks via Ping.fm.

Google XML Sitemaps
In order for Google to be able to list your blog the right way you should install this plugin. This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

WP DB Backup
Last but not least. If you keep on writing every week or maybe even every day you’ll sooner than later end up with some kick as quality inside your database. WordPress usually don’t break down but we all know of Mr Murphy. That’s why you need to perform a back up every now and then. Don’t rely on your hosting service, even these guys mess up (trust me I’ve been through it a couple of times) that’s why this is best done with WP DB Backup. Then make sure you got Dropbox or something to place your personal backup in the cloud since we all know Mr Murphy will probably put your computer on fire otherwise.

Redirection
Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors with this little plug.

WP Cforms
Make sure you don’t write that email of yours as it spells out since that will only award you with tons of spam. Instead write something like: nameATdomainDOTcom. Most people will get that. Also remember to inform people about your social presence on networks like Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan Pages (don’t use Groups), Skype, Slideshare, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and more. It’s also a good thing is always to post an extra page where you use the plugin WP Cforms to let people get in touch with you through a classical form. Personally I’ve also written my phone number on that contact page. Talking to people is after all very nice!

9. Time to start writing that blog post of yours?

I wont tell you what, how and why to write something. Other people have given great guidelines on that before me, both on style and SEO parameters. My only advice would be – find your own voice. Writing like other people will never get you anywhere.

However, once you’ve written that post of yours remember a few things:

Tag your content with relevant keywords.
Keywords will serve both Google and your readers with information. On top of this there’s some sweet tag clouds you can use to make people crawl your blog for more.

Ad the post not only to one category but to many.
By creating a set of categories that is relevant to your blog (not more than 15 though) you’ll help your readers to find the right posts later when your blog is filled with wisdom.

Remember to make use of that added SEO functionality
You’ve got a set of tools that came along with Thesis or The All In Once SEO Plugin. Use them! This means writing a specific header for Google. One that will earn you more readers (hopefully). Don’t worry – it won’t show up in your post.

Edit the URL of the blog post.
Make sure it’s relevant, SEO optimized and not to long.

Preview before posting!

Post at a good time of day.
I’ve written a longer post on the Social Viral Spiral that covers this subject.

10. Spread the love

Pick a series of social networks where you spread that love of yours further. Facebook and Twitter being the obvious ones. But don’t forget about all the rest. Think about what your content is all about and where people might be interested to read it – seed it there!

On top of this you should also remember to change the RSS feed into something like Feedburner for example. It gives you more control over it and you’ll be able to track your engagement.

I know tons of people link like crazy to other blogs in order to get higher rankings on different blogging portals. Personally I hate this. You should of course link to content that is of great importance to your blog. But linking to tons of blog posts only to gain traffic – that’s spam according to me.

11. How do you know your blog is doing good?

People tend to set up blogs and then they’re tracking the stats while wondering why nothing happens. Here’s a few pointers that might help you on the path to blogging heaven.

Comments and trackbacks
Once you’ve pressed publish your post is out there. This means it’s all out there. The entire world can now interact with you. Since you’ve opened up for comments (blogs are all about conversation) you’ll have to be prepared to actually respond to what people are saying about your brand. Trackbacks will also show you other blogs and sites linking to your content. Make sure you follow them to interact and praise fans or defend your standpoint.

Statistics
Ever blog should have a Google analytics account set up. That’s sort of hygiene. It will teach you a lot about your online presences and turn you into a professional blogger.

However for daily and even hourly stat reads I’m using Mint. It’s not free but at a low cost you’re getting a quick overview of where people are coming from and what they’re engaging. Seeing that traffic build up only minutes after a blog post turns you on – I promise. That’s the energy you need to keep on writing.

Is your content engaging?
Personally I’ve set up a Postrank analytics account that gives me a good idea of whats actually happening after I press that publish button. Postrank is a tool that measures the online engagement with your content. No engagement = not a good post (or at least no one else thinks so) Lots of engagement = you did something right.

Track your brand online!
Last but not least – remember to track your brand online in order to engage if people pick up and comment/debate that post of yours. I’ve written that guide on how monitor your brand online before.

Now it’s all up to you – I’m looking forward to reading your posts!

You might be one of the lucky ones finding yourself logged into your brand new Google Wave account? Then you, just like me, might also think something must be wrong with you since you’re not getting what all the hype is about.

Google themselves has launched a couple of videos showcasing the possibilities with the Wave but now when it’s for real the tool just doesn’t live up to the promises. The video from Epipheo Studio might be a better alternative but it’s still just a short video raising expectations without really teaching you how to do stuff for real.

Don’t worry! Here comes The Complete Guide to Google Wave!

Gina Trapani and Adam Pash has launched The Complete Guide to Google Wave for free online. And soon you’ll be able to buy the PDF or a Book. I know I’ll mail one of those to my Kindle for sure.

The website features 10 sections and I especially like that they’ve also outlines what the Wave cannot do. This is according to my experience one of the main problems with many guides – you’re not getting the negatives. And usually when you don’t find the instructions to how something is done it’s due to the fact that it cannot be done, only no one tells you that so you keep searching for ever.

Lot’s of techie posts lately by the way. Soon I’ll switch to love and emotions!

This post is probably most stupid post one can write since CEO’s and board members seems to have decided to stay behind with the dinosaurs while the rest of us look for new ground where we can thrive and prosper. Basically on average they read three local newspapers of their own choice, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and watch a couple of TV channels. They haven’t got a clue about blogs, feed readers and social networks. But I’ll give it a go anyway.

Dear CEO and board member. In most cases you’re probably +40 years old. You have a wife, two kids and live in a house that cost above average. Two cars in the garage and a country-side home. You spend weekends together with other CEO’s and board members in order to secure your position in the hierarchical ladder of success (or at least what you define as a success). Vacations are chosen based on where you’re supposed to be rather than where you would like to go.

Or as Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and chief executive officer (obviously an exception) of WPP puts it 13 minutes into this very insightful video below:

“Clients, mediaowners and agencies tend to be run by older people. They’ve got to the top of companies. Change is the last thing they’re really interested in. You want a quiet life, travel around the world and making sure everything’s ok”

It’s your life we’re talking about and I understand you don’t want to rock the boat. That could of course lead to you having to sell your boat, spend your vacation in another place and replace some of those expensive wine bottles of yours with cheaper ones. So sitting tight along with the rest and not challenge the establishment is probably the right thing to do. After all, in 10-20 years there’s another generation coming along – let them change things.

No! Nee! ????! Ne! Ei! ?! Nein! ??! Nei! Nej!

There is no time for that! You have to start changing things now before your company gets run over by a couple of teenagers sitting in a coffee shop disrupting your business. (Not that I don’t love that idea). The world is in a state of change. Companies and brands all over the world are falling behind due to slow leadership.

Since I’m trying to not to be one of those persons who’s all about yelling I’d also like to provide you with a couple of guidelines you may wanna follow:

Every company can and should become an e-Business.

Make everyone in your company think, eat, shit the E. That’s how the military would have said it. And it suits this post pretty good. The digital world turn things upside down in a way we’ve never seen before so you’ve gotta make sure everyone is on the boat.

A common problem is that a few people in the marketing department might have a clue about what goes on. But, without support from you – the board of directors, the CEO, CTO and CFO they’re screwed. Far too many companies sees the internet as yet another business area. But the internet does in fact change every little bit of your company.

The internet cuts horizontally through every part of your business so your future marketing and communication strategy has to do the same.

Communication of tomorrow is not about new formats or channels it’s about a whole new way of thinking about your business.

This new digital order calls for a totally new way of thinking and I don’t believe many traditional advertising agencies know shit about it. The fault is not really theirs, it’s yours. You have to integrate marketing into your product development. On top of that you have to make sure that marketing competence knows all about digital and traditional marketing cause the problem is more complex that dividing things into digital and traditional advertising.

Today we have categorized consultants into categories – Advertising, Internet consultants, PR, Event, Mobile, Direct Marketing, Guerrilla and so on. Tomorrow you will have to get all of those brains into a single one. Of course, your Advertising agency might suggest you put together some sort of workshop with people from each category – THIS IS WRONG.

The problem with such a setup is that it’s a compromise. You can never reach a satisfactory result by having a lead agency that knows traditional communication and then a group of other consultants. You simply have to get it all into one brain cause that single advertising idea has to take every category into account when you develop and launch ideas.

Look at Garmin for example. They develop among other things GPS running watches. The watch syncs my runs via Bluetooth with an online community that shows me where I’ve been running on a Google map. My information is then automatically uploaded to Facebook so that I can share my training data with friends.

Is this social advertising, a product, service or crm?

Ask yourselves – What is marketing, what is product and what is business development.

I say It’s all tied together in a way we’ve never seen before and most of you CEO’s, board members and top management don’t get the full picture.

Of course Garmin advertise their products today, but tomorrow they might rely on viral traffic from Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that is more or less injected into their entire business.

The future mix of communication and advertising is so tied together with business and product development so in order for us communication consultants to deliver a work well done and on brief we have to get new kind of briefs with new kind of objectives. Communication and advertising has to move up the ladder and we have to look beyond advertising. Instead we have to rethink how companies develop and launch products, how companies are organized in order to sell, how the people in a company can be more involved on every level and how a CEO can learn what the digital world can do for his company.

So, integrate advertising, marketing and communication straight into your business development. And if you as a CEO don’t understand these different formats you’ve got nothing there to do!

I call for a new category – let’s call it entrepreneurial advertising. An entrepreneur would never go on with any kind of communication that didn’t deliver. It’s time for you to care about your company in that way too!

You might wanna head back and read one of my older posts: ‘Seduce us or excuse us – 11 ways to bring your brand up to date‘ that broadens my point of view even further.

What’s your business doing there when it should be here

We are out there waiting but we’re not only in front of the TV anymore.

Think about your business. You’ve probably got tons of content waiting to be spread. Catalogues, photos, movies, texts, ads, business systems and so on. Well, what are you waiting for? Put it out there. And out there doesn’t mean you should publish it on your own platforms or one that matches your own ideals. Let it loose.

A common mistake is choosing between different social platforms. People ask me – “If I am to publish video online, should I choose YouTube or Vimeo?” I answer every time – “Choose them all!” There is no cost involved. People spend time on different sites. And the more content you have out there, the more traffic you’ll get in return. If you spread content on outside platforms you will in the end receive traffic back to your brand in one way or another. If it’s done by the book it will do wonders for your SEO work.

In order to get the best possible performance from your products and services. Think about what you can do best and work your ass off in order to make your brand the nr 1 source for people enjoying your product category. If you’re in the business of building cars, think, do you build cars for transportation, for fun or for some other purpose. If you think it’s about transportation. Let’s say families. Then do everything in your power to become the brand that makes transportation more efficient, more safe and more fun.

The conversation prism by Brian Solis

So, think about how you can distribute your brand all over the digital world the same way you distribute it in the offline world. The only difference is that distribution online is for free once you’ve turned your content production and communication process around.

Connect not collect

People don’t want to connect to your products or services. They wanna connect to values, beliefs, emotions, passion and personality. Like when I wrote about Telco’s earlier this year: “We are in the entertainment business – let’s act as such”.

The brands that invite people to a conversation, listen to them, show them respect and show that they value people for being people and not potential money – those brands will be the winners.

Creative excellence

I’m not gonna write about this one again since I’ve outline it a post before. But I suggest you read that one once you’re done reading this post.

Get your own fan club

In order for your business to be virally spread. Get fans and let them break the rule.
A problem today is that most things spreading like wildfire on the net tend to break a couple of rules. As a legal business you have a disadvantage against the everyday consumer. However, if you get the everyday consumer on board, let him or her do the dirty work. If they like you they’ll be more than happy to stand on the barricades.

Have a look at Zappos for example. Their CEO has got 1,356,038 followers on Twitter! How many have you got?

Get all your employees on board or actually off board. Seriously, if your employees are reachable with land lines or email. Then why shouldn’t I be able to follow them on twitter or become friends with them on Facebook?

The media 180° turn

Yesterday – we all got communicated to when we were in front of the TV or reading a magazine at a certain time on a certain day. This meant brands had to spend quite a lot of time and money to hit a consumer with their message.

Tomorrow – your message must be on 24/7 standby so that when your potential target searches for whatever you’re selling you hit that consumer one time – and that time you’ve gotta hit on your first shot. Everything that stands in your way will lead to a misfire.

Read all the news not only the filtered stuff

I opened up this post with critique pointed towards the fact that most people read only a few sources of information on a daily basis. That was all ok when leading media companies still had monopoly on information. However today most news you read in for example Wall Street Journal has already been out there for a couple of days and the diversity is not broad enough. That’s what you’ve gotta create your own customized news desk based on what you need to know in order to run your company. I would say you have to move from reading 5-10 sources to 50-100 a day.

Last year I tipped about my own source of information – tons of RSS feeds read through Netvibes that I also use to track my brand. Why not start by following some of the channels I personally follow and then slowly remodel that interface to fit your own needs. Read the post I wrote about it for more information.

To sum things up!

As always there’s tons of more things to do. But that would require me to write a book and there’s just not enough time to do that this weekend. Sooner or later I’ll publish that one as well and then I promise I’ll give each and every board member of a Swedish listed company a copy for free!

Finally before I end this post I’d also recommend you to browse through this presentation that I held last week about 10 trends on future communication. It might light up the path for you even more.

See you on the other side!