It takes more written words than it’s worth, so here we go with videos from people who have more talent than me and have taken the time.

…with Blogger, which has become a great platform for casual blogging nowadays, and is certainly the easiest place to start, much under-rated…

and WordPress — much slower, deeper video, but a much more powerful platform, IMHO…

There’s a little bit more to it than the videos show. But not that much.

In my opinion, buy a domain name from anyone (e.g. Bluehost, the service I use — they have been fine for the last two years and are dirt cheap) and map it to your wordpress.com account, or even better install wordpress on your own hosted server. (If you’re still with Blogger at this point, no problem — your host can map to that, too. WordPress can also import all your blogger posts if you want a fresh start).

Most hosting services, including Bluehost, but also GoDaddy and most of the rest, make that absurdly easy. Look for ‘Fantastico’ in their feature list. That’s a service that will allow you to ‘auto-install’ a load of website software, including WordPress. No technical skill required.

If that last couple of paragraphs sound like a foreign language, then a simple wordpress.com or blogger.com account will be a start. Just go to the address and open the account. It is really easy, as the videos describe. It’s also easy to just have a go and then delete the whole thing: then there’s no embarrassing past to be unearthed by someone. Just have a go and then delete the whole thing.

Once you’ve got some technical skill, or got someone in who has, you can customise to your heart’s content. Priorities: (1) more, better content; (2) that it doesn’t look like shit. Contrary to what the whole advertising and marketing world thinks, content is more important than appearance on the Internet. Get great content and no-one will care about the appearance. Get mediocre content and a great appearance and no-one will care, full stop.

Not looking like shit is an important, secondary priority. First choice (and you went for the hosted service option above, right?), choose from and implement one of the thousands of free themes at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/. Second choice, get one of those and customise it bit yourself with Photoshop and a decent CSS editor. Option3: get your designer to create a custom job. If they can’t work with CSS, fire them (seriously).

Even if you’re not planning on blogging anytime soon, go into these services and make sure you have a decent user name, not like the user1238237@hotmail.com you ended up with when you were late to the party with web email. If people are searching for you on the web, they’re searching for ‘yourcompany’, not ‘yourcompany12921134’. You’ve probably already got .com and .co.uk names, but have you got the delicious, flickr, youtube, stumbleupon, etc. names? Gotta get them all. If you can.

Reserve good user names on every online service you can think of, even if you aren’t planning to use them straight away.

Look forward to comments, or get in touch if you want me to sort this sort of thing out for you.

Well, you’d probably try to work out how Google works. You want to come top of the search results for things like err.. ‘glue’. You’d probably also want to come at the top or near the top for things like ‘DIY products’ and ‘craft supplies’. You can’t just buy your way to the top – well, you can, but it would be better to be returning top positions in the organic results as well as sponsored positions.

How would you do that? Well, you’d go about making sure that the Bostik site was the best site on the web when it comes to glue. You’d have sections on the history of glue, glue tips and tricks, glue industry news, glue formulae, learned articles on the future of adhesives. It’ll take a little resource, but hey, you’re a brand – part of the Total group in this case – you aren’t short of a few bob. Plus, if you get it right, you’ll be saving a packet on advertising. Depending on your marketplace, you might not have to go overboard here – you just need more, better stuff than those bastards at Copydex.

You’d also get into this whole Web 2.0 thing. It’ll help you generate more content and get linked to. Pay someone to write the best glue blog on the planet for you. Get some message boards on the go about DIY, handicrafts and other glue issues. You’ll get a widget put together – maybe it gives you a DIY tip every day or something. You’ll provide RSS feeds for all your content so it can travel as far as possible.

Google loves all this stuff – pretty soon, you’ll be ranking for as many glue, DIY and handicrafting terms as you’d care to mention. And it’s all relatively easy.

Most brands aren’t currently doing this stuff. That’s because corporations are slow-moving and stupid, not to mention psychotic. Most brands behave like toddlers screaming for attention at the moment; the brands of the future will behave like best mates and learned counsellors – people you actually want to have a relationship with.

They will come round eventually – it’s common sense. If you are a brand you will sooner or later be working as hard as possible to either create or acquire the definitive site on the Internet when it comes to your subject matter.

Anything wrong with this? In some senses, it’s great. Google is rehabilitating corporations in some senses – forcing them to offer stuff that’s useful and interesting rather than the old raping and pillaging shenanigans they used to do.

Well, it’s great if you work in advertising or marketing (hey, kill yourself). Not so much if you are a citizen of the world. Brands are still psychotic underneath, you see. They are being rehabilitated in the same sense that a mass murderer growing flowers in the prison garden is rehabilitated. You know exactly what they’d really like to do with those shears. The problem is brands have been given the means to take control of the message once again, if only they had the sense to realise it.

They don’t want you to consider their competitors; they don’t want you thinking about buying nails instead of glue; they don’t want you to know about the Marvin Medium massacre of ‘37. And it will only take them a very little time and resource to achieve it. And remember, they’re brands – their resources and energy are pretty much limitless. Particularly compared to you, Mister competitor Glue Blogger. They’ll buy you up and shut you down in an instant. Here’s a real example – a search for Mattel Toy Recall takes you straight their consumer relations page as the top result. Potentially more vital information about the results of lead poisoning in young children appear half way down the page, where nobody clicks.

So the next Google. Not only will it be better at searching – we’re only impressed by the current Google because the competition is so absolutely dismal. It will also be about expressing diversity rather than hierarchy. About delivering the truth in all its facets rather than the definitive answer. It won’t produce a list; it will produce a crystal.

Another interesting feature is the top-ten list of search-engine optimisation tips. They’re totally dominated by the idea of embracing social media and Web 2.0 technologies. The guide suggests that getting involved with blogs, bloggers, RSS, tags, wikis and the long tail are the way forward if you want to be seen.