I'm on a Virtual book tour of blogs featured in "The Everything Blogging Book" (Adams Media). A list of participating blogs appear below with links so you can stop by and "see" my appearance (guest posts, Q&A, etc.).

If you would like me to make an appearance on your blog as part of this tour, please contact me (via the email link on this lens), and I'll add your blog to the tour! (You don't have to be featured in the book to participate).

1. To publish your opinions, to be heard.

2. To improve communications with (Fill in the Blank).

3. To build a community around an issue.

4. To increase visibility for yourself, your company, your product.

5. To gain clients or customers.

6. To share personal experiences or knowledge in order to help others.

7. To make money.

8. To grab some of your 15 minutes of fame!

As you visit blog after blog, you'll notice some repeating themes in the layout of the posts, images, links and other elements. Blog layouts do remain somewhat consistent. For example, a blog title or name appears at the top of the page and the body of text generally in the center of the page. There are usually navigation links and lists of links on the left, right or on both sides of the page.

The two most common layout choices for blogs are the two-column and the three-column layouts. Two columns display a wider column for blog posts and a narrower column for blog elements and links either on the left or right side of the page. The blog posts appear in a space that takes up about two-thirds to three-fourths of the page while the navigation links, list of links and other elements make up the difference of one-third or one-fourth the width of the page.

In a three-column layout, blog posts appear down the middle of the page, taking up about half the width of the entire page. Then there are columns down both the left and right sides of the page, each taking up about a fourth of the width of the page. Dimensions of columns can vary and often there are colored borders along the edges of either side of the blog page as part of the design, reducing the width of all of the columns.

An available but less common layout is a one-column layout where posts are published across the entire width of the page with blog elements and links at the bottom of the page. The main reason this layout is less common is because readers are forced to scroll down the entire page in order to be able to navigate.

Some blog publishing tools also offer multimedia options for layouts. Typepad, for example, has five mixed media templates to better combine photos, videos, and audio clips in addition to text. The Artists layout spotlights the most recent photograph or art graphic with thumbnails of previous graphics clickable below the larger image and space for additional text and information to the left of the large image. The Calendar layout automatically uploads the current month's worth of photos on the right side of the blog page and posts, lists and other elements on the left.

There are 3-column and even 4-column layouts, too. On the 3-column layout, posts are displayed down the middle of the blog with the most recent photos as thumbnails and clickable on the right. Lists and other blog elements appear on the left.

Most other blog publishing tools offer similar layouts.

One of the biggest creative barriers to building a blog is to know how to generate content and to decide how often you will post content to your blog. Many bloggers post daily or at least several times a week. Once you establish a schedule, people who are following your blog begin to expect a consistency in posting.

What happens if you don't stick to a regular schedule? In some cases, visitors actually will comment or e-mail you to see if you are all right, especially if a bond has formed between blogger and visitors. In other cases, visitors might stop checking your blog if there isn't any new content. Some visitors might sign up for a free blog service such as Bloglines to be notified by e-mail when a new post appears on your blog.

When determining your posting schedule, be realistic by looking at the rest of your time commitments. If you first figure out how long a post usually takes for you to compose, you can then see where you can spare that fifteen minutes, forty-five minutes or hour and a half or anything in between.

Keep in mind that some posts might take a few minutes to write while others could take over an hour as you mull over what you want to say and read and reread your post to make sure it makes sense, flows and that there are no grammatical or spelling errors. Allotting an hour a day to your blog is helpful but if you can only spare thirty minutes, you could still make it work.

Another thing you should consider is the time of day you are can spare for posting on your blog. Just because you can squeeze in a half hour in the morning before heading to work doesn't mean you'll be inspired at that time. If your blog content consists of commenting on the day's headline news, then waiting until the end of the day might be a better timeframe. If you are a stay-at-home mom blogging about motherhood, you may end up having to take advantage of whatever natural break occurs during your day such as nap-time.

Here are several blog posting styles that can save you time on your blog posting duties:

1. Narrative content - This is an essay-style post that can be either long or short but often takes longer to compose so can be time-consuming.

2. Compiled content - By excerpting and properly citing sources for the experts, you can quote other blogs or content online or offline. Excerpting less than 200 words of source material can help prevent copyright infringement. Using links to lead visitors to sources that you cite is another good idea.

3. Linked content - This involves linking to other content that can be read to supplement your own post content. The trick is to be able to easily create links in HTML in your posts. There can be less narrative in linked content posts.

4. Link lists - The original weblogs were lists of links to other sites with a minimum of commentary. As long as you know how to create a link, this style of post can be a time-saver in terms of text but could take a while to locate and organize the links.

5. Collaborative content - Sharing the posting load with others and alternating posting schedules. In blog terms, this is often called a multi-author or multi-user blog.