Ready to start blogging? Unsure where to begin?

Opening thought. Just Blog.

I was told i needed to start a prayer group. I'll skip the longer background story and fast forward to about 7 years ago when I was told I had to start a prayer group in order to get Young Life (a ministry to teens) going in my city. Find other ministry minded adults, who care for lost youth, and pray for 6 months. So I set up the first prayer meeting. Invited people to my house. And then decided I needed to call my pastor Dave Haney and find out "how in the world do I do a prayer group".

His answer: just pray. Don't spend an hour talking about praying. Don't discuss different ways of praying. Just pray.

He did go on to offer some tips, but his key message and the one I remember to this day was to get started. Just do it.

Thus my encouragement to my church leadership friends out there (aka the blogging timid) is to get started. Just blog.

With that said, gently I hope, here is how to get started.

1. Platform. Blogger and WordPress seem to be two of the biggest and best free blog platforms. For more, see Get Started in 5 minutes. There are also fee based services like TypePad that have some extra features (unnecessary for most pastors). If you have tech skills, you can also set up and host your own or have your ministry IT people do it for you (eg. we run Drupal).
2. Writing. For some interesting tips on blog writing see Mary Jaksch's post or ProBlogger.
3. Engage. Make blogging a part of your weekly habits. Read, comment and engage with other bloggers on their sites. Become part of the community. Blog rolls on the sides of blogs (see Brain Food on the right) are great places to begin.

Bonus: Five questions to think about (you might want to write out the answers).

1. What will you blog about? Need help? - see 10 Ministry Blog Ideas.
2. How often will you blog? In general 3-4 times a week is a good goal.
3. Who is your audience? You might try thinking of 2 or 3 specific people as you write to help you stay on target.
4. How will you handle comments? No comments? Allow anyone to comment (and say anything)? I'd recommend allowing comments, but require approval. This puts a little extra work on you to moderate the comments (review and then publish) but helps facilitate the dialog with your readers.
5. Sample? You might think about writing a couple of sample posts in Word (or email yourself) to get a feel for style and the effort required (time budgeting).

• What exactly is a blog? (background information)
• Blogging Code of Conduct

I hope this helps (please let me know).

Just blog.

This post is part of a series:

• 10 Ministry Blog Ideas
• Should Pastors Be Blogging?