2. Create your own blog and write something

Welcome to the second week of 23 Things. Your first task for this week is to create your own blog and write something in it.

'Blog' is short for 'web log'. It evolved from a 'web journal', like an online diary. Blogs serve different purposes. They are promotional tools, communication tools, social tools, or tools for sharing or commenting on news.

Why blog?

People blog because they want to share with others. They may share their opinions, rants on particular topics, or news from a holiday. They may even have a professional blog where they share views on their industry, or they may have a blog all about their cat.

When you're blogging, you can adopt any persona you like. One blogger adopted a persona they called Fake Steve Jobs and tried to write from the perspective of the co-founder of Apple.

Many companies have an 'official' blog, where they release news about the company and views about the industry. Some blogs are highly successful due to the personality of the blog's author. Some blogs have multiple authors

Your task

Create your own blog! Your blog is where you will be recording your thoughts, discoveries and exercises for the 23 Things program. You'll need to add an entry to it for each 23 Things task you complete.

To set up your blog, use Blogger.com, a popular free online bloghosting service that is extremely easy to use.

Creating a blog using Blogger takes just three steps:

1. Create an account
As Blogger is associated with Google, you can use your Google Groups username and password to set up your blog.
2. Name your blog
3. Select your template.

Blogger provide a useful video showing you how to set up a new blog:

Webjunction also have a really good step by step guide to signing up for a Blogger blog.

Important: Bookmark your blog!

Save your blog to your bookmarks or favourites folder so you can return to it quickly later.

Want to be anonymous?

If you prefer, you can create a blog under a pseudonym - you don't have to give your real name. The only people that will know whose blog it really is will be the 23 Things administration team. Besides, part of the fun is guessing which blog belongs to whom!

Have a blog already?

If you have a blog already, you're welcome to re-use it for 23 Things. However, part of 23 Things will involve blogging about the tasks you do throughout the 23 Things program. Therefore, if you're not comfortable adding entries about 23 Things to your existing blog, you may want to create a new blog at a free site.

Resources

Have a look at the links below for ideas on what to blog about, and why people blog.

Ten tips for writing a blog post

Alternate tools

Throughout 23 Things we will point out alternate tools with similar functionality that you may wish to try using instead.

Don't want to use Blogger? Try WordPress.com. For assistance, go through this online tutorial.