kuro5hin: How To Start Your Very Own Blog In Fifty-One Easy Steps!

kuro5hin has a hilarious send-up on "How To Start Your Very Own Blog In Fifty-One Easy Steps!"

Anyone who's started a blog will recognize some of the situations. Among my favorites:
2. Register a catchy yet philosophically deep name for your new blog: "lifesucks"; "All Things Me"; "Lifehacker"; "Playing With Matches"; "The Internet Slacker", "I Stalk David Hasselhoff".

18. Come up with a touching yet funny childhood memory you can write about, like when you and all the other fat kids in the neighborhood used to take down the ice cream man not unlike a pack of lions ravaging a wounded gazelle.

The steps in the article are funny, but they hold much truth. Blogging is not for everyone and my hair gets even curlier every time I see some pundit suggest that every company needs a blog. Here are some of the caveats:

. There simply is no such thing as a perfect marketing tool—or an effortless way to build traffic to any site, including blogs.

. It takes time, effort and skillful promotion to build an audience for a blog. Just as with a newsletter, report, Web site or e-book, driving traffic to a blog requires marketing.

. Blogging is daily journalism, which is writing and time intensive.

. A blog that isn't well-written and frequently updated will simply be ignored.