Editor’s note: Elisa Camahort Page is the co-founder and chief operating officer of BlogHer, the leading participatory network for women who are interested in information, entertainment and news. With more than 2,500 bloggers in the BlogHer network, with a reach of 15 million unique visitors a month, BlogHer has built a virtual bridge between women from all walks of life. The Web community, which covers every topic under the sun, just held their fifth annual BlogHer ‘09 conference, which serves as a four-day-long event to empower the blogging community through workshops, conferences and parties.

wOw: What’s the key to having a successful blog — being able to elevate and distribute your voice?

ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: There are several different ways a blog can be successful, or several different criterions. One is definitely if you can become the master of a niche topic – like you are the person to go to as a resource or an inspirational source around a niche topic: special-needs kids or gluten-free cooking, or all of these things.

Another way that you can have a successful blog is just by being a great storyteller. It wouldn’t matter what you’re talking about, as long as the writing is fascinating, funny and interesting. They don’t need to be niche when they tell stories. So that’s another way that you can be really successful — either a great resource or a great storyteller, either one of those is sort of like the fiction versus nonfiction world.

wOw: Now that we know the key to blogging, how do you begin? Do you have any tips for beginners? Our audience is mostly women over the age of 40 and they really are just stepping into this.

ELISA: Well, you know, it’s interesting: You say that they are "just stepping into this." That’s not necessarily true. I’m 45 years old and I want to say that if you look at our survey data, women from the older Gen X and the boomer generation are dipping into this — and the numbers are surprising. The volume of boomer women who are in the social media space every single week is actually larger than the volume of millennial women. There are just a lot of them out there and I think they’re a little bit invisible, and so sites like yours are giving them a place to go and feel very acknowledged. For those who aren’t yet too engaged, the No. 1 thing we always say is start by reading and listening. Find bloggers who speak to things you’re interested in, read bloggers who seem to be of like mind – people you can identify with and who seem like you. Just start figuring out what you like and try to identify: Why do I like that? What is it about these particular blogs that really resonate with me? What could I write about?

The second recommendation: If you’re starting a blog with any kind of intention of building it and making it some sort of platform — whether for your career, whether for social activism, whether for politics, whether for personal reasons — it better be something you can write about for the long term, and often. It really helps if it’s something you feel a lot of passion for and resonates very deeply with you for the long term. For most successful bloggers, it’s really something very personal to them; something very intense to them.

wOw: Are there any resources that a beginner can use to learn how to do this? Is there a good website that teaches them?