To Blog or Not To Blog

I'm definitely a newbie at blogging. I've been told that when authors come out with a new book, especially unknown authors like myself, a blog is an absolute necessity to attract BUZZ to the new book in question.

Just in case you didn't know, I've written a book, "Read Between the Lines: A Humorous Guide to Texting with Simplicity and Style" that's been published, and is about to be released in just a few weeks.

So, I've been spending the last week educating myself on "How in the heck does a blog really work?"

It's totally unimaginable as to the amount of "stuff" you need to be aware of to achieve blog success.

Lets start with just the basics like RSS, CSS, Back-Linking, Code-to-Text Ratios, HTML Validations, Wikipedia Edits, Google Everything, Digg, Hubspot, Ping-o-Matic, Key Words, Meta Tags, and Search Engine Optimization just to name a few.

Now don't get me wrong; I've definitely heard about most of these tools, and have used some of them over the years. But, I never really knew the internal workings of any of them, like of how to edit properly within Wikepedia, or how an RSS feed actually works. I'm more of the kind of person that just wants things to work the way they're suppose to, without actually knowing any of the nitty-gritty details.

As my eyes were turning cross-eyed today working with RBTL's website designer Torrey, (who BTW is doing a great job) I had to ask myself "is all of this really worth it or is blogging one of the necessary evils of being an unknown author that I must endure?" After all, if I was "well known" I would have "people" that would just make all of the nitty-gritty details become completely invisible and perfectly operational, leaving me only to the writing and hitting the "publish post" button.

That would be amazing, but this is not my reality.

While I realize it's probably not that difficult to learn all this cool stuff, it's still not easy to jump into the deep, dark and scary unknown of a new anything. That being said, I've decided that learning to do something new like blogging is worth it.

I'm thinking it's kind of like the day I had to show my mom how to text. I'm sure she was thinking "OMG I can't possibly learn how to text at my age of 63!" (sorry mom to mention your age). But after she learned in just a few short minutes, then put what she learned into practice, texting became second nature to her. In fact, she texts everyone she knows who will text her back! Officially, she has become a texpert. Go mom!

Maybe there's hope for me. Maybe I'll (hopefully sooner rather than later) begin to understand the technology behind what makes a blog a blog, and soon I'll be the resident expert on RSS Feeds and Back-Linking.

However, I'm positive that won't be the case for me anytime soon. I'm also pretty sure my wonderful assistant Jesse is about ready to jump off a cliff, which means he and I better get this whole "blog" thing figured out now!

So please, bare with me, I should get it right by next week. And, if you have any wonderful words of wisdom, by all means, feel free to comment, tweet, or post an update my way.