How to adapt to blogs: a lesson from our baby robins

If you are new to blogs and feel overwhelmed, don't panic. If robins can learn everything to survive in five days, you can learn how to blog like an expert.

I've never seen baby birds up close until this week. Sad I know, especially coming from someone who grew up in rural America. After this week, however, I understand why I haven't seen baby birds before. They grow up fast!

• On Sunday, they were in their nest.
• On Tuesday, they were out of their nest. They could fly short distances (about 6 ft) and hop.
• On Wednesday, they could fly at least 50 yards.
• Today, they could feed themselves and had learned to walk instead of hop, stamping their feet to trick worms into moving.

That's everything a bird needs to do to survive, fly and eat, in five days. Pretty impressive.

A baby robin's approach to the internet:

• Sunday and Monday: Read a few blogs on topics you enjoy to get a feel for the formats and styles of blogs.
• Tuesday: Create your own blog and write a couple of posts (Blogger and WordPress are free, Typepad is free for 30 days).
• Wednesday: Learn to use an RSS reader to collect enough items to write about to keep you busy for the next 10 years (I use GreatNews).
• Thursday: Learn how to tag for Technorati, get dugg, get furled, Q your posts, and ProBlog for traffic and money.

That's everything you need to survive in the blog world in five days. Of course, once you've learned, you can always get better. But then the robins get better at flying too.

Tags: robins, learning to blog, learn to blog, greatnews, great news, technorati, digg, furl, qumana, problogger, blogging guide

Comments

[Katie]

Great post - love the robin analogy!

[Brian Brown]

Thanks Katie. I thought it might be a bit of a stretch, but I wanted to share my experience with the robins somehow. They have been fascinating me all week.

Cheers.