I will ask you to forgive my ignorance of social media and blogging.  I work for a company that sells social media and seo programs as well as websites, and I feel a bit like a novice when it comes right down to doing this. 

I will tell you that I have some personal passions for helping people, and I would like to begin to develop a strategy for not only writing blogs, but developing into a writer.  I figure that connecting with people and learning to blog will help me tremendously.

So my question is … is there a Blog / Social Media Strategy 101 Plan out there that may help me.  I want to begin to blog and to write about the topics that are close to my heart, but I want to have a plan or strategy laid out through which I can do this.

Any advice on preparing before jumping right in (or beginning with the end in mind) would be very appreciated.  I would love to have tips or even some “editors” who would like to help someone get started in this!  Thank you.

Thank you so much @kristi-hines .  I have printed out these, and I am about to read them.  I appreciate you so much!  If you know of any others who could advise or help, I’d love to hear from them too.

Thank you so much  @dcoville001!  I’m really trying to think through what I want to do and how blogging can fit into my strategy. I really appreciate the suggestions here and look forward to blogging soon!

Writing is the best thing you can do. The hardest part of blogging is continuing to do it. If you can make it a part of your regular schedule you will have more success. I am at my blogging best when I write every day, but how often you write is up to you. But it is kind of like exercise, the more you do of it, the easier it will be and the better you will be.

I thank you for your encouragements and guidance @swrightboucher @bradfordshimp @beeorganized.  I’m glad to be journeying together on this!

@kristi-hines  For starters … perfect timing.  I literally got on Wordpress this morning and was poking around in there trying to figure out what all to do and what all I could do with it. that looks like a slightly longer read that may take some time, effort and energy to really get what I need out of it, but I am a little bit OCD so I am very excited to have that level of information available to me.

My company actually builds websites for a living, and our Chief Web Architect just finished writing a book actually called Do I Right – A CEO’s Guide to Web Strategy.  He builds all of our websites in Drupal, so I will be very interested to see how WordPress is compared to Drupal in your article.

Thank you so much for remembering me and letting me know about this article. 

@beeorganized
Glenda,

I see you like to “bee organized,” so if writing feels uncomfortable to you, perhaps you could get a Google Voice account, call up a friend or yourself even, and talk about what you are most passionate about. Talk your blog post into the phone and onto your page without writing. Google Voice will record your voice and transcribe it. Take the transcription, edit it, and voila, you’ve just created your first blog post without writing! Pretty sweet, huh?

If you find you like doing that and want to invest a little bit of money into doing that better, look at Dragon speech recognition software. A friend uses it to talk and record his product listings and descriptions on eBay. All with only a bit of editing and no creative writing involved.

Here’s the link (not affiliate link):
http://nuance.com/dragon/index.htm

Robin,Thank you so much for your suggestion! I think that might be a viable option for getting my ideas down and then editing “with some help” . It makes the process much less intimidating!With appreciation,Glenda

@kristi-hines Thanks for being a great club leader!

@kristi-hines You are on vacation, you need to concentrate on you and we will still be here when you get back!  Have a great vacation!

@deairby I have to agree this is the best networking site around, and I have to give you props for helping some one else out, wish you were around when I first started!