Blogging for Beginners: What Slice of the Pie Do You Want?

So you’ve decided to start blogging and — as I suggested last week — you downloaded and installed a copy of Flock. Now what?

Well before we start playing with the new toy we have a decision to make. It’s the most important decision you make as a blogger.  What slice of the pie do you want?

If you look at any popular blog site you know which slice of the audience pie they are after, which theme their blog posts revolve around. Pick any of your favorite blogs and see if I’m not right. Let me pick one for you — Over at the Otherworld Diner they deliver their goal as bloggers on page one:

Our staff is a collection of paranormal romance authors with one thing in common (besides a love for pie) — we dish up our paranormal with a sprinkle, a splash, or a heaping helpin’ of humor and wit. Come in and have a seat. The coffee’s hot and the blue plate special is out of this world!

The Otherworld Diner

A recent theme on pie was an excellent example of blogging around a theme. Each contributor posted their own take on the subject of pie and some aspect of writing:

What if the hero is a shape shifter? What if he shape shifts into a black bird? What if the story takes place in the Middle Ages? What if your heroine is a baker? What if she bakes him in a pie? Dang it, she cooked the hero. Not good. OK, so the birds are supposed to survive the “baking” process but the hero will still not be a happy camper when he breaks free of that crust. Moral of this story . . . be careful who you bake in a pie, you could end up eating love of your life. *G*

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Same theme different take:

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So take time and think about what is important to you, what you are good at, what ideas you are so passionate about that you can blog about them week after week, through all the craziness that is your life. Then think of a creative way to share that passion. Not all blogging themes need to be as out of this world as Otherworld’s. There can be a mingling of interets. Gemma@Greyscale weaves her love of Australia, poetry, and photography into every post. Writers  Alice Audrey and Kelly Jamieson post blogs according to a schedule of themes readers can expect to see discussed on specific days.

I know you’re all psyched up about the Flock browser I discussed last week. You’re sitting there with your finger poised above the mouse button,  anxious to launch into your blogging. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for.  You’ve picked a theme and planned your post. It’s time to  click the little blue quill pen in the browser toolbar (over to the left under between the clipboard symbol and the arrow pointing up) and start writing your first post.You configure the editor with your blog host’s settings by clicking the tools (wrench and screwdriver) menu.

Write your post in the editor portion of the blogging screen. When you have everything just the way you want it, you can either save the draft, or hit the publish button (right side bottom of window) and your new article will post. Leave us a link in the comments and we’ll all drop by to see what you’ve done.

All the quotes and sources I included in today’s post were made using Flock’s one-click “blog this” feature. No geek skills required. More on quoting and linking(as essential to blogging as veins to a circulatory system) next week.