Welcome to the second article in a series to help knitters start their own knitting blogs. We've written a few articles already and our latest one with simple instructions on how to start a knitting blog has already gotten a few comments with a few suggestions. Some people felt that this latest article with simple tips to start blogging now was too simplistic and had nothing of value to add to the conversation about blogging for knitters. However, I believe that sometimes people want the simplest steps to get them started and will explore further when you give them a chance. There will always be the opportunity to write another article to be more specific.

You see, I remember being a beginning knit blogger back in 2004 and wanting to be a part of the knitblogger community, but I had NO idea where to start and there were way fewer resources for new bloggers than there are now. Even now there are few blogging resources especially for knit bloggers. When I was starting, all I wanted to know was whether I needed to know HTML to blog, and how to get started ASAP, so hopefully I have provided new knit bloggers with the TL;DR version of how to start a knitting blog. However I promise that we will get a little more detailed in the later articles... like right now.

Which brings me to How to Name Your Knitting Blog.Yesterday I shared that I felt using a pun to title your knitting blog was a little overdone. I stick by that. Using a pun is a cute and clever way to name a blog (and a local yarn shop) and if you've already done it, I salute you. However, I've found that it's been done to excess and I feel that there are better ways for knitters to represent themselves in the way that they choose the title of their blog.

Why am I making such a big deal out of naming your blog? It is important and chosing something generic tells your potential audience nearly nothing about what they're going to read on your blog. Giving yourself an dynamic name empowers you with a perspective, which can inspire you to find something new to write about anytime.

First Off, What Makes a Great Name:

• Lets readers know what you're writing about in a simple way
• Easy to remember
• Creates an image in the mind
• Suggests a point of view
• Inspires you to keep writing

Figuring out the name of your blog

Get brainstorming!

Get out a piece of paper and a pen and just start writing words and phrases that you want to write about. Think about the following questions and a great knitting blog title may make itself known to you.

First, think about what you have to say about knitting

Write down why you love knitting, think about what it is about knitting that you want to share. Consider what parts of knitting are you good at? What kinds of yarns do you like to knit with? What makes you and your knitting special? Your knitting point of view is inherently special and just because thousands of other knitters have started knitting blogs doesn't mean that you don't have something interesting to say. Even if all you want to do is share your knitting progress over time, you can choose a title that reflects your particular knitting perspective.

Think about who you want to reach

You're going to be writing to an audience. Obviously, you're going to be writing with knitters and crafters in mind, but within knitting there are subsets of knitters. You have very experienced knitters, beginner knitters, knitters who like to knit lace, knitters who like to knit socks. Discover the audience you want to connect with and come up with a name that will appeal to them.

Consider why you want to write a knitting blog

We have a bunch of reasons why you should write a knitting blog, but what are the reasons that are meaningful to you? Are you looking to meet more knitters? Are you wanting to share your secret tips and tricks? Do you eventually want to publish your own knitting patterns? Are you trying to sell your hand dyed yarns? In the two latter cases, you can title your blog in the same way that you would title your business. You do want to maintain that branding so that you are able to build a relationship with your customers.

Visit some Knitting Blogs

If you're stuck, read some knitting blogs and see if they can give you some ideas. Obviously Yarn Harlot is taken.

What if I still can't come up with a name?

My default way of naming a knitting blog if there isn't any other idea is to find a creative way to describe your home, your town, or your region and add a knitting term.

Here are a few examples that I just made up:

• California Lace
• Country Socks
• Purls from Nebraska (ok, now that could be a good pun name for two girls knitting in Nebraska)
• Yarn Over Chicago
• Knitting in DC
• White Water Knitting
• Knit Camper
• Knit Traveller
• Knitting Nomad

What happens after I pick a name?

Make sure someone doesn't already have it

It's hard enough to find things on the internet without having to figure out which Wendy's Knits is the Wendy's Knits you want to read. Once you've picked a name do a google search. Be sure to read through a couple of pages of search results to be sure. Then check Ravelry to see if the name is already taken. If it is, it's not the end of the world on Ravelry, you can pick something else similar. However the blog title should be unique to you. You can compete on Ravelry, but it is hard to compete with google search results.

Check to see if you can register the domain

Go on godaddy or another domain name registrar and see if you can get your blog title as a domain name. Even if you end up using blogger if you want to take you knit blogging seriously down the line you want to make sure that the domain name you want is available. If you know you want to use it, buy it. It's inexpensive. You can get 5 years of a domain name for $50.

How did you come up with the name of your blog? Was it easy? Do you have advice for new knit bloggers? Be sure to share in the comments.

Stay tuned for more of our posts coming soon. Be sure to like our Facebook page, follow us on twitter, and pinterest and get alerted to our newest posts.

While knitting is a solitary endeavor, you don't have to knit alone and you don't even have to join a knitting circle to be a social knitter. These days you can find many knitters online sharing their projects on ravelry and on their own personal blogs. Having a knitting blog is a great way to track your progress over the years and to show your friends what you've been up to. But where to begin? How do you start a knitting blog?

While it may seen that blogging could be quite complicated, but really you don't need to know any code to get started. Follow these simple steps and you'll be well on your way to your first knitting blog.

The Five Quick and Easy Steps to Starting Your Knitting Blog:

1) Choose a blogging platform

Blogger is cheap, customizeable and relatively easy to use. You can have a blog started in an hour. Use that. A lot of people use more complicated software that you can get if you buy your own domain name and purchase web hosting, but it's not crucial. Get used to blogging the cheap and easy way and come back here to learn how to create a custom knitting blog (coming soon) for yourself when you're ready.

2) Choose a name for your blog.

Do yourself a favor and don't use a pun. It's been done a million times before. Choose a name that reflects the goal of your blog and your own interests. Read more about Great Knitting Blog Names (coming soon)

3) Write your first post.

Do a little introduction and mention what you hope to achieve on your blog. Visit here to learn more about what makes a great knitting blog post (coming soon).

See how you like it. Did you like that? Did anybody comment? No? Not yet, don't worry they will.

4) Read other knitting blogs -and comment.

It's no fun talking to yourself. The easiest way to get new readers is to read other peoples blogs and to comment on them. Be sure to return the favor whenever somebody comments on your blog.

5) Keep writing

The best knitting blogs are updated regularly. If you're crazy you can update them every day, but 3 times a week is very effective at generating a regular audience.

This is just the beginning of our guides for beginning knit bloggers. Stay tuned for more of our posts coming soon. Be sure to like our Facebook page, follow us on twitter, and pinterest and get alerted to our newest posts.

One of my frustrations as a knit blogger is the lack of authority or content offering advice and ideas for knit bloggers. That's why I've created Blogging For Knitters, a catagory here at Knit Luck to inspire knit bloggers to take the blogs to the next level. This summer I'm going to have a series of posts helping new knitting bloggers pick a domain name, buy a domain name, find a host, choose an independent blogging software solution, get your blog customized, optimize for google and install analytics. How do I know all this stuff? I worked for three years as a small web agency project manager. I have been building my own web sites since 2009 and blogging since 2004.

One of the reasons I'm announcing this is to help with a little accountability. I've been wanting to write this content for a long time because I know it will help people. There are so many great knit bloggers out there who are writing amazing posts who are not getting an audience. I want to show knit bloggers how to expand their reach and even earn money from blogging. However, I'm also writing content for my other websites and blogs and raising babies so it's hard to prioritize things. But now, announcing this intent to you now I am making a commitment to bring Blogging for Knitters to fruition.

So we're starting today, announcing our participation in Eskimimi's Knit and Crochet Blog Week at the end of April. We did this last year and had amazing fun. It certainly improved my blogging skills. If you're looking to reach more people with your blog, if you're looking to stretch your blogging muscles you must join Eskimimi's Knit and Crochet Blog Week.

If you do one thing this year to improve your blog, joining Eskimimi's Knit and Crochet Week will make you a more confident knit blogger, will connect you with other knit bloggers and will inspire better content from you. It starts April 22, go check it out!

Keep checking back in the coming weeks for Blogging for Knitters posts or join our Facebook Page and sign up for our newsletter (on the right sidebar) to get the news sent to you!

How long have you been knit blogging? What would make you a better knit blogger? Let me know in the comments!

So you have a knitting blog. You're writing posts regularly, have connected your posts to Facebook and Twitter, joined Pinterest but you're still struggling to increase traffic to your knitting blog. How do you organically bring more people to your knitting blog? Everyone knows that commenting on other knitting blogs can encourage other bloggers to visit your website, but how do you find the right blogs to comment on? What is the right blog for you to comment on anyway?

What to look for in choosing a blog to comment on:

1. Number of commenters

2. Relevance to your content

3. Relevance to your point of view

How to find the right knitting blogs

Now you know what you're looking for, but how do you find it? Just searching for blogs using google's blog search comes up with too many results that take too long to vet. Sure there are a ton of knitting blogs, but with each click you may find only blogs that haven't been updated in months. This is where Blog Alongs come in.

Blog Alongs

What's a Blog Along? It's an organized group of blogs that all choose to blog about a certain thing at a certain time. They link with each other so that they can all read each other's blogs by putting a linked badge on their websites.

Yarn Along

For instance, there is Yarn Along which is run by Ginny at Small Things. On Wednesdays, you can blog with Yarn Along about what you're knitting and reading. Then you visit Ginny's website and add yourself to the list of blogs that are participating in Yarn Along. Yarn Along has almost 200 participants every week. By visiting the other participants, you can be sure that you're connecting with other engaged craft bloggers. Commenting on these blogs means that you will get a little more exposure than just commenting on a random blog (especially those blogs that already get hundreds of comments). Furthermore these bloggers are more likely to reciprocate and comment on your blog.

Eskimimi's Knit and Crochet Blog Week

Eskimimi hosts a Knit and Crochet Blog Week. She provides a list of blog topics, one of each day of the week and provides prizes for the best posts. This is a great opportunity to hone your blogging skills. Eskimimi's topics expand your ideas about blogging and get you thinking outside of your comfort zone. The topics embrace creative photography, video blogs, podcasts and encourage you to explore these other ways to blog. Participating in Knit and Crochet Week not only strengthens your blogging skills, but also encourages new traffic to your blog. It's coming up soon (late April) so go over there now and see if you want to join!

I've joined a Blog Along, now what?

You've written a relevant post, connected it to your blog along. How do you make the most of your participation?

Visit the other bloggers

1. Comment on the blogs you like
2. Subscribe to the blogs you like
3. Revisit the blogs at a later date and continue to comment.

This last one is really important because if you follow these blogs and comment consistently, you will be doing something very important: building relationships. As you get to know your fellow bloggers and they get to know you they will come to anticipate your blog posts and will look forward to engaging with you, making for lasting increased traffic down the line.

Let's continue the conversation

What do you do to reach out to other blogs? How do you find other craft blogs? Are there other blog alongs that I'm missing? Let me know in the comments.

Every now and then I encounter a knitblogger who has such excellent site design and fabulous patterns that I stop in my tracks and must. post. now. Today, that knitblogger is Neoknits!

The font used on her website has a ball of yarn in the "o"s. It must be custom designed. Even better than that, she has a new knitting pattern available: The Idylwylde Cardigan, which is made with madeline tosh sock yarn and quite lovely.

Click. Added to Google Reader.

It's once again time for some KnitLuck blogging tips. This series is meant to help you connect with other knitbloggers and get more traffic to your site. There are some simple things you can do which I've talked about before, such as commenting on other blogs,  and following these tips to writing a good knitting blog. Today I'm talking about trackbacks.

You may have heard about trackback. It's a way to tell another website that you have linked to it (or tracking back). You may have seen some blogs with trackback. They'll have a link that says "click here for the trackback link". Clicking on this link is rather confusing b/c it takes you to the same page that you were just on. As such, it's not inherently obvious how to make it work or what it can do for you. So let me tell you.

Say you found something really cool that you wanted to link to your blog. Check to see if that blog has a trackback link. Instead of clicking on the link, mouse over it, right click and choose "copy this link". The link will then be copied to your clipboard, ready for you to paste into your blog.

Some blocks allow you to "create a trackback link". This is a little easier to understand. Simply click on that link and a new window will open and will give you a trackback link for you to copy.

Anyhoo, so when you're ready to link to this cool stuff on your blog, paste the trackback link into your blog editor link instead of a regular link. When you publish your blog, your trackback link will tell the website you've linked to that you've linked to them.

The cool thing about this is that Google picks up these connections as additional traffic to your site, which in turn raises your rankings and makes your site easier to find.

Here are some great links to help you understand Trackbacks.
Wikipedia.
Cruftbox
Optiniche