I started out this morning to outline some top blogging personalities, to present at a how-to course coming up in January, but I got happily detoured because I found a repository of basic tips and resources compiled by blogger and author Sheila Ann Manuel Coggins and hosted by About.com, a Website now owned by the New York Times.

The About.com site was instructive in many ways starting with how it was organized. Each entry is brief requiring probably five minutes reading time if you don’t follow links or click on ads. Each entry in the blogging series includes a menu with related topic on the same theme. Consider this an object lesson in information design — chop up big topics into small bits and link them with a menu. From a considerable array of offerings I’ve selected a subset that seem most useful to novices or beginners. Obviously you can explore on your own once you see the menu.

All of the following are titles from Sheila’s compilation, with a brief comment by me and the necessary link to About.com.

One
7 Tips and Ideas for Your First Weblog Entry : Duh! What better way to begin than at the beginning.

Two
Profile Page Template : How to tell people about yourself, and how much to tell them depending on whether your blog will be personal and professional.

Three
6 Tips for Beginners : A primer on where the blog resides (electronically), thoughts about how and why to choose a theme, and how to create a community around your blog.

Four
How to Be a Good Blogger : Sheila offers 12 tips but perhaps the most important is to update your blog regularly. If there’s nothing new, why would anyone visit?

Five
6 Time Management Tips for Bloggers : Unless you were completely unoccupied before you took up blogging you’ll have to build time into a busy schedule, especially if you want to blog regularly.

Six
Top 10 Tips on Promoting Your Blog: Once you’ve got it why not — if not flaunt it, at least try to increase your visibility among the audience or audiences to which you would like to appeal.

Finally, a professional acquaintance, knowledge management specialist Darlene Fichter, recently pointed me to an astonishingly concise and yet insightful list, created by a thinker named David Pollard, that I urge you to read and print out and clip by your workspace. The list is entitled What the Blogosphere Needs More of (Update).

Tom Abate
MiniMediaGuy
‘Cause if you ain’t Mass Media, you’re Mini Media