How to Get a Blog off the Ground

Getting a Blog off the Ground

Posted on June 03, 2008 by Katy

Typing Hands

It’s easy to setup shop on a new blog with high hopes. Reading successful bloggers, their tricks, and what has worked for them gets us worked up that we’ll be able to easily create the same results — with ease. Problem is it’s unrealistic expectations and sometimes, even with the most successful bloggers it’s not easy. Those bloggers may make it look easy but we all know that seldom it is.

A blogger looking for genuine success, authority, and a brand reputation will need a strategic game plan. If you build it, they won’t come. Sure a few might trickle in but that’s just enough to kill your hopes of having a successful blog and often times drives budding bloggers to giving up. Let’s try to throw giving up out the window and get a game plan worked out for launching a successful blog.

And hey, even if you’re not a brand new blogger and have stuck with blogging, it’s not too late for you to get a new game plan in place.

Step 1: Research

Everyone needs to know what they’re jumping into. The only way to get a clear idea for the market of any niche to search it out and get a feel for current events and visitors within the niche. And while I always suggest that you should be passionate about your niche, you can obviously have more than one passion to research multiple niche’s you may be interested in writing about.

Some questions to ask yourself:

Who writes in this niche?
What kind of visitors, traffic, and subscribers do these niche writers have?
Can you target any keywords to bring in organic search traffic?
What sites can I target for niche social networking?

Research won’t end when you have setup your blog, keep that in mind. But researching some of the initial factors will help you to start with a bigger bang and know instantly where to go to promote, comment, network, and drive traffic to your blog — all things that you never want to postpone when it comes to your blog!

Step 2: Your Blog

Let’s evaluate what’s happening with your blog. Ask yourself the right questions to really “get” what it is that you’re doing and what purpose your blog will serve to your visitors.

What’s my niche and am I covering everything I can about the niche?
Who would want to read my blog and what information would they be looking for?
Can new visitors find their way around?
What do I want my visitors to see before they exit my site?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you produce the best content, write subjects visitors will want to know about, and design your blog in a way that is efficient for all levels of users.

I would suggest having all of this in place before you start heavy promotion. And take a lesson from me, get your design the way you want it ahead of time (though I realize my visitors have come to expect design changes and I have a problem with redesigning, unlike other bloggers).

Having everything in place before your visitor arrives will encourage them to sick around and read, be interested in what you have to offer in your niche, and get them to subscribe — who wants to miss out on good content that is relevant to them? Answer: few!

Step 3: Content

I have suggested many times when doing blog consulting that people kick off their new blog with what appears to be a month worth of content. There’s nothing that says just because you’re writing you need to be promoting. After all, once you get people to your blog, you want to keep them there. A couple of posts from someone who looks like nothing more than a novice blogger won’t be encouraging to experienced blog visitors.

Don’t at all be afraid to blog behind closed doors. Good quality content on your blog when traffic arrives will do you some good. At minimum, have a good 5 to 10 posts already published when you launch your blog.

Even when you have your posts in place, consider your page content too. Most blogs should have, at the very least, an about and contact page. You’ll want to give your blog credibility and these are minimums for creating credibility.

Step 4: Promote

The sky and your wallet are the only limits to what you can and cannot do to promote your blog. And don’t forget, there are a ton of ways to get free advertising for blogs.

Comment on blogs in your niche to get your name out there. And don’t spam, read the posts, and add something to the conversation. Don’t be afraid to take the time to submit posts to social networking websites. Other bloggers will take note of those who are frequently commenting and voting for posts. Keep all ethical practices of social networking in mind and never submit something you don’t genuinely appreciate.

Get involved in conversations over at BlogCatalog and get your name out there by talking, joining neighborhoods, and adding friends.

I won’t spend too much time on this — there are many ways to promote your blog and once you have gotten your blog setup, now is the time to go at it full force. And don’t stop promoting! This is something that you’ll do for the entire time you blog. Sure, you may get the point of ProBlogger where your commentators and fans do the promoting for you but that’s going to be awhile.

Step: 5: Content

Yes, I realize I already said content but at this step, it’s time to say it again! Never slack on your content. The end result is that your new readers will see that you’re straining to write something and will publish anything regardless of quality. Keep that in mind. If you’re not feeling writing or editing a post one day, better not to publish than to put crap out there.

Stay on top of what your niche leaders and trend setters are doing. Don’t fall behind the game and never duplicate them. Come to the table with your own words and your own writing style. There’s no reason why anyone would want to read one post by two people — unless they read the distinct voices of the blogger.

Your Turn

What’s been your game plan to get your blog off the ground? Did you follow any specific steps or advice from another blogger or did you go at it? If you haven’t yet started your blog, what’s your process for getting your game plan together to start your blog?

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Discussion: 640CommentsGetting+a+Blog+off+the+Ground2008-06-03+18%3A06%3A52Katy

Comments to “Getting a Blog off the Ground”

Michelle

- 3rd Jun, 08 07:06pm

The best advice I can give is to just go for it. If you have a passion for writing and are committed to sticking with it and doing the time, then you’ll be way ahead of the game. I agree that you should have a plan and posts ready to go (this is something I have started thanks to your advice and when I need to slack, I have back-up).

I don’t follow too many advice blogs – yours, of course :-) and doshdosh, sometimes progblogger and techcrunch. I follow my niche closely and if I post similar content, it is usually a more humorous and fresh spin which my readers seem to enjoy. Otherwise, I write blindly about what I feel needs to be said in the world of fashion.

Dennis Edell

- 4th Jun, 08 08:06pm

Excellent list, really. I think thought that #1 should be bolded underlined centered with a font point of 40 or so :-)

This is where the larger majority start and fall…my opinion anyway ;)

Katy

- 5th Jun, 08 12:06am

@Michelle: It sounds to me like your passion established your game plan which in the long run could make you more successful. I’m a huge advocate for ensuring that you’re writing about your passion and then following your niche.

Advice blogs are not for everyone. To tell you the truth, I am the kind of girl who likes to pave my own way so even though I may read advice, I don’t always follow it.

@Dennis: Perhaps it should be that big but research isn’t for everyone. When I’m Blogging That moved from personal blogging to niche blogging, I did no research. Clearly I’m not the only blogger who’s blogging about blogging (say that 10x’s fast!) but I didn’t care when I started – that passion drove me and research came later.

Now having said that, when one is looking to blog about a passion that earns them an income, research first is key. It’s a matter of the blogging goals and strategy of the blogger. As long as we each have our own level of success, we’ll find that research may or may not be relevant.

Dennis Edell

- 5th Jun, 08 07:06am

Exactly right, and you hit the key right there. When you flipped the blogs direction, you were in fact already blogging for some time. One could say this was your initial “research” and gave you enough to at least start blogging about blogging with further research down the road.

However when little Billy wakes up and declares “I’m gonna blog for money!”, he is going to fail before even starting because his only research is noticing hundreds of others doing it.

Passion is an awesome motivator and vital for longevity, but it’s not sustainable without facts. Without market research at the very least, it’ll simply be a personal blog. :)

Jamie

- 23rd Jun, 08 08:06am

I would add that you should always take some sort of position or stance in each blog post. Unless you just want to regurgitate the news that is relevant to your niche, you need to be adding something to the conversation. You need to let your opinion of the matter be known. This gives people an idea of your thought process and if you make intelligent arguments, you will become a resource when something new happens. They’ll want to know what you have to say about the matter.

Time Management Games

- 25th Jun, 08 10:06am

One thing I would recommend for anyone trying to get a blog off the ground is SEO. You don’t have to become an SEO master, but you should know the basics. Luckily, a slick SEO plugin All in One SEO Pack exists for WP. It will help you with things like duplicate content, search engine friendly URLs, and good header tags.

If your blog isn’t set up in such a way that search engines can easily determine the core focus of your postings, then you will always struggle to get yourself into the rankings. This is turn will always hamstring your visitor growth.