For the final part of my Essential Advice for New Bloggers series we’re talking about how to take your blog to the next level.
Of course I need to start off this post with a BIG, HUGE, GIGANTIC disclaimer in which I tell you that I am still trying to take my blog to the [...]

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As part four of my Essential Advice for New Bloggers series we’re talking about balance. Specifically, how to balance blogging and the rest of your life.
You remember your life, right?  Come on, think really hard.  Oh yeah, that! 
It’s true, blogging has a way of creeping in, taking over, and destroying everything in its path. Sort [...]

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As part three of my Essential Advice for New Bloggers series we’re talking about establishing a readership.
So far we’ve covered networking and basic search engine optimization, which means you’ve got the tricks for getting people to your blog.  Now you need to know how to keep them there. 
It’s all about the content
The single most important [...]

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As part three of my Essential Advice for New Bloggers series we’re talking about establishing a readership. 
Last week we talked about networking, and today I’ll cover basic search engine optimization (often referred to as SEO).  Stay tuned for next week, when I show you how to convert one-time visitors to repeat readers. 
Search engines are in the [...]

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As part three of my Essential Advice for New Bloggers series we’re talking about establishing a readership. 
When it gets right down to it, blogging is all about the readers.
If that wasn’t true, we’d all be madly journaling in our spiral-bound notebooks.  But we’re not, are we?  Because we want readers!
Which is why the first question [...]

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As part two of my Essential Advice for New Bloggers series, we’re talking about Protecting yourself and your family.   Many mommy bloggers (myself included) start their blogs as a random, ‘hey! this could be fun’ whim.  There’s not an overall strategy… there’s not a whole lot of thought put into it.  Mainly there’s a couple of cute [...]

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As part one of my Essential Advice for New Bloggers series we’re talking about branding.  Last week we covered the importance of  picking the right name for your blog.  This week we’ll cover another critical component; your blog’s appearance.  Here’s why looks matter.
First impressions are largely based on appearances
When a reader comes to a blog for [...]

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As part one of my Essential Advice for New Bloggers series we’re talking about branding.  Perhaps the most basic form of branding is what you name your blog, which is what we’ll be discussing today.
Here are some basic guidelines to consider when coming up with a name for your blog.
Make it memorable and unique
If you start [...]

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Every so often I get an email from a reader who just started blogging and who wants my advice.  Which is funny, really, because I feel like I’m the one needing advice.
And yet, when I think about it, I have learned an awful lot in my short time blogging… much of it the hard way.  So I’ve [...]

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I recently got an email from someone who is thinking of starting a blog.  She wondered what advice I had.  And how long does blogging take, typically? 
While I have many, many thoughts on this topic, I also am curious to hear what YOU have to say.
So, how about it? 
What advice would you give to someone who [...]

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