The Internet is more important than it's ever been - and it's only going to grow in importance as the years march on. Nearly two and a half billion people - that's almost a full third of the planet's population; for scale, that's almost as much as the combined population of the three most populous nations on the planet (China, India, and the US, in that order) - use the net to browse news, information, entertainment, to communicate and write, and it cannot be ignored. Blogs have risen into public prominence as a way to spread messages and ideals, to promote businesses and break into freelancing, and having one which you frequently update with fresh and interesting content is vastly important to maintain any kind of public presence. You might be an aspiring writer or freelancer, someone working in industry who needs of an internet presence, someone working for a business and in need of something beyond a resume: a blog can benefit you, no matter who you are or what you need.
What Kind of Articles are Best?
You need to keep a few things in mind. First off, try and keep it somewhat short. Between 500 and 750 words is a good goal to have, but you should do your utter best to never break the 1000 mark; it's one thing if you have a strong following and occasionally publish a larger post, but in this case, brief is best. You can split up one topic across several posts if you can't say everything you need to say in 500 words, but what you want your audience to see is something easy to digest - something they can easily read during a lunch-break or on their phone while in transit.
How Can You Start a Blog?
There are countless services spread throughout the internet which you can use to start up your blog. First, there are free services like Tumblr or Blogspot. However, if you’re serious about blogging then it’s best to get your own domain and hosting account. If you’re just starting out you should go with a more affordable web host and compare them to see who’s a good fit. This
FatCow green hosting review and this
webhosting pad hosting review should get you started on the right track.
Don’t Forget Mobile & Tablets
Nearly two billion people across the globe use smart phones, and the chances of your potential audience lacking in time and screen-space has gone up and up.
Among a sea of option is Wordpress, and it's one that covers smart phone users; the site automatically detects how the reader is accessing the blog, be they on a desktop or on a mobile phone, and resizes to fit their needs so they don't have to deal with the pain and adversity posed by a poorly formatted site on a mobile device (and those problems are numerous, from slow-loading pictures to poorly formatted text).
So: what exactly do you need to start up a blog? The first is some sense of ambition. Nothing huge, but you want a desire to reach out and communicate with people: without that, you'll have trouble even wanting to write articles on a weekly basis.
Consistency is another goal: try and publish one piece of content every week, if not more frequently than that! You can write some articles in advance so if you ever hit a writing block or have to take a week off, you can still put up content.
The last is patience. You won't become famous overnight: be ready to settle in for the long haul and you'll eventually find that the denizens of the internet are coming right to you.