The Brand Evangelist

“Never compare your beginning to anyone's middle.”

This was a tweet that came pass my Time line on twitter today and it contains some deep messages to me and folks who are starting on a journey (or who are contemplating starting a project).

Recently, I read a blog by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. He wrote about How to start, I would quote a few lines from what he wrote;

“It’s [STARTING] one of the most intimidating things. It’s the lack of starting that kills most tasks and projects. Procrastination is putting off the start. Your new venture gets put off because the START is too HARD.”

This is exactly the reason why I am writing this post. You can use the message here for other projects too, but I would be focusing on blogging and branding your business on the social web.

It’s possible you have thought of starting a blog. then you went straight too Google.com to search, and bbbannng))))) you got  results. You know some of the best bloggers always come first in search and it takes you to copyblogger or problogger or some other popular blogs.

You relax to digest the contents, beautifully written by experienced bloggers who have spent some time sharpening their skills and moving up the ladder of blogging. Suddenly you become overwhelmed and you wonder how can you START? When would you become like these people?

That is not all. they go on to give you different advices of how you need to have a self hosted blog, your own domain and a cool name. Beautiful design with a theme installed (when I read it then, I never knew what a theme was, I know now but I have never invested in any yet, though I would). By the time you consume all this information you are already crippled, and just as Leo said above, you put of STARTING because it is too HARD. Let me help you to break it down, if you do not have much at the beginning.

Blogging is very simple

To START blogging is simple. In fact you can START with limited skills of writing, lean cash and your PASSION.

But if you are looking to make money from blogging almost immediately, then it is like a child who tries to walk from the first day s(he) was born. Either you have money to invest in blogging to get the training and get a good design or not. It would still take you some time before you start making money from your blog. Moving away from the making money aspect to how brain dead simple it is to start blogging, I would list a few tools and skills you need to start.

Tool Box for STARTING now

* Access to internet and a computing system (you can blog from a smart phone too, though what you can do is limited. More on that in the future)

* Free blogging platform (wordpress.com, blogger.com, posterous.com  and a host of others)

* Ability to write (Even if you are not a superb write, but you update your Facebook status and you tweet, you are good enough to START.

* Reading blogs written by pros.

* Even if you don’t have readers yet, Just START (you already won by starting)

This is where it is vital you put to heart the words I used at the open of this post; “Never compare your beginning to anyone's middle.” There is no need to compare your success to that of those who have been blogging a while or who may have had some sort of training in it. ( I am assuming you want to start on your own with what you have)

Can you see that it is brain dead simple. nothing is stopping you from starting. In fact I think we all should blog. There are time people want to say a series of things on twitter and they keep tweeting a long list of stuff. It is common to see people tell them, “Please can you blog about it, I like what you have twitted.” Tweets keep the messages for a while and after a few weeks we don’t have access to them again. Not so with blogging.

Everyone starts somewhere, the more you do it, the better you get. I am proud to tell you than it has been challenging for me too, to keep going, but each time I see the growth and improvement that is happening to my writing and that I am leaning, I keep on. Soon, I would Lunch my new website, but I am still here.

Go ahead and start your blog. tweet me the link or mail me the link. I would check it out and provide support for you.

If you have any question or comment, you can write it below. 

P.S. In future post I would explain a few details about how Newbies can find their bearing in blogging and how to Choose a niche to focus on. However, don’t wait for that, just go ahead and START.

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