Ask yourself a few questions first.
Blogs are sites, but a special type and templates are available so you don't have to design them from scratch. I will let some more experienced bloggers give you their experienced based preferences, but there are a couple of underlying issues for you to decide for yourself.
Blogger.com is a free way to go that you can set up quickly (they say five minutes). Wordpress is more complicated, especially if you put it on your own site. Most people probably go the easy route first, then make the change later; I usually take time to learn the skills, spend a little more money , and take the long term approach IF I know I am going to stay with it for the long haul. Your options are greater with your own hosting, but a lot of people seem happy with blogger. Either way is ok, but you need to choose your own approach based on the way you prefer to work, not so much on recommendations.
There are a lot of ways to attract readers, but your statement ("I'm more concerned with improving my writing, finding a voice, and getting out my message") shows the most important is in your mind already. Nothing else matters if your content isn't good, so I would just focus on producing good content for a while. When you get a good handle on that, then look at some of the posts on this site for advice on increasing traffic.
|