A Wombat By Any Other Name

I really enjoy your blog and want to try starting my own. The biggest trick is… what do I NAME it!! How did you come up with yours? Do you have any pointers on starting up a blog?

– Curious Carol

First, allow me to sincerely apologize for the lengthy wait you’ve endured for this answer. I experienced some long-overdue life changes recently that have caused a bit of an upheavable to my usual routine.

Auspiciously enough, however, that leads us to the subject of new beginnings – specifically, the beginning of a new blog. 

Having only very recently started decorating my own little corner of the intarwebs, I can’t look back and provide well-tempered advice seasoned by the trial-and-error of time’s ever-forward progress from my lofty position of near-infinite experience. I can’t tell you how to interpret your blog’s viewing statistics page and use the numbers there to figure out what time of day is best to publish new posts. I can’t say anything intelligent-sounding on the subject of search engine optimization without making most of it up. I can’t advise you not to get so caught up in amusing yourself by playing with the way words fit together that you end up shamelessly posting long, run-on paragraphs with incredibly pretentious phrases like “well-tempered advice seasoned by the trial-and-error of time’s ever-forward progress.”

However, there are basically infinite posts written by much better bloggers than me who can go into all of that stuff with you, and I think there’s a certain sort of value in my lack of experience that allows me to relate with your own newness a little better than even – or perhaps especially – the pillars of the writing community, sort of like how the TA can see things from the students’ perspective more easily than the professor, even if they don’t know as much on the academic subject.

Because, let’s be real here, none of that other stuff matters. Not right now, anyway. All of the usual things you’ll read about in pointers for starting a new blog, like SEO and analytics and content mangement and building a reader base and – yes – finding the perfect name? They all have their place, and they’ll all be super critical things later on down the line, but right now, when you’re still in the “thinking about starting a blog” stage? Forget them.

If you want to start a blog, then the only thing that matters for you to do right now is to start your blog. Seriously. Open a new tab right this second, go to the WordPress starter page, or Blogger.com, or just start a search for any other blogging platform, pick one, and go there. It doesn’t matter which. Then leave that tab open and come back here to finish reading, so it will still be there when you’re done.

When you go back to that tab later, just jump right in and start your blog. Pick whichever visual theme jumps out at you. Name it the first thing that pops into your head. That’s what I did – Platypus the Wombat is literally named after the first thing I saw when I decided to start a blog, because I have a stuffed wombat named Platypus who happened to be sitting on the coffee table at the time. Do whatever you want to when you start your blog, and if you don’t know what you want, do the first thing you think of.

Why dive in with such reckless abandon? Because, right here, right now, the absolute paramount thing is that you’re doing something, anything at all. Articles like this one will tell you that you need to strategize everything before you even begin, because a wrong move at the start can become a roadblock later on, but I have to respectfully disagree. There is genuinely nothing about your blog that you can’t change later on if you decide it doesn’t work for you. That’s the beauty of this medium.

Is ‘Platypus the Wombat’ kind of a weird, dumb name that doesn’t really mean anything and doesn’t optimally introduce my readers to what my blog is about? Sure, it is. Will I change it later on? Maybe. Maybe I’ll think of a better name. Maybe I’ll keep the weird, meaningless one. Maybe I’ll grow into it, and bestow it with meaning. After all, there was a time not all that long ago when nearly everyone who wasn’t a mathematician would assume you were using baby-talk if you said the word “Google” to them.

If your name doesn’t represent your blog’s identity, then change it once your blog has an identity. If your theme doesn’t showcase your content in a valuable way, change it once you have content. If your platform doesn’t have the features you want, move to a new one once you’ve worked with the one you started with long enough to know what it lacks and what you’re looking for instead. Nothing has to be perfect, because everything can grow out of where it began and into something new. Treat your blog as organic, living thing that you can shape and develop as it grows, not as a perfect, polished product that you bring into the world whole-cloth and ready for branding.

Doing is the most efficient path to learning. There are dozens of intro tutorials and starter tips out there for blogging, and I’m sure many of them are quite good, but you could spend your time reading about mine or anyone else’s experiences, or you could spend it building your own. Go back to that tab you opened, find whichever button says “Go” or “Start” or “Sign Up” or “DO THIS NOW,” and just hit the gas pedal. Create. Tinker. Play. Treat your blog as your sandbox. Make castles and knock them over again. Draw rude words and then kick sand over them when your mom notices, then blame your sister when you didn’t hide them fast enough.

Just keep creating, scrap what doesn’t work, learn from it, and create some more. I’m still doing it. Everyone is, in one way or another, whatever stage of experience they’re in. The only pointer you need for your blog right now it just to start it, and to start it today. Everything else you can figure out as you go.

 

 

Oh, and let me know when you’ve started! I’d love to become your first Follower!