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Welcome to the first in a series of posts about beginning blogging for journalists. Want more? View the entire beginning blogging for journalists series. Great image by Kris Hoet on Flickr!

Have you or someone you know been asked to blog? Many journalists face the task of starting to blog for their newspaper website, but most haven’t been taught how to do it.

I’m an avid blog reader and blog strategy student. Rather than dropping tips here and there, I’ve created a series of posts for journalists looking to blog and news producers charged with teaching reporters how to blog.

Many of my tips will be step-by-step checklists for beginning a new blog and teaching those unfamiliar with blogs what some of the best practices are. Please leave me any thoughts for improving my list.

GETTING STARTED!

KNOW YOUR NICHE
Just like in print, writers should know their audience. But in blogging, the rules are a little different. New bloggers should also know their competitors fellow writers in their niche. Here’s a few steps for picking your niche:

• Recognize your interests. Many new bloggers depend on their beats for blogging material. This can be great, but it doesn’t have to be what you blog about. Make a list of 10 interests you have, then whittle that list down to five that you’re most interested in. One of these will become your niche.
• Subscribe to the RSS feed of top bloggers in the niches you are interested in. To find those blogs, use Google Blog Search. You can also use Technorati and follow blogrolls once you find some bloggers in your niche. Use Google Reader to keep up with the feeds.
• Read what others are saying. You can join a conversation more effectively if you know what people are talking about and what they are interested in. Blogging is a conversation – Join in!
• Comment on blogs in your niche. You can build authority within a niche by participating in the conversation. That means, comment on blogs in your niche. You could even write response posts on your blog to engage other bloggers.
• Decide which niche is right for you. After doing some research and narrowing down your interests, you’ve likely found an online community you can join and interact with. That’s your niche.

Look forward to more blogging guides soon, including tips for writing for the web.

Soon-to-be-published guides include: How to format to raise visibility, How to increase traffic to past content and How to be an expert for your readers.

Did I miss anything? Want to share your experiences with starting to blog? Comment here or direct message @shawnsmith on Twitter!