The starting point of a brand new blog is the most fun and interesting part of the whole process, don’t you agree? You figured out a great idea, did a lot of research, and you are excited about the prospect of starting your blog, as you are certain that your blog idea is going to be quite successful. There is a particular market that with a lot of people ready to spend their money on it and you have found your blog’s niche based on these factors. Bear in mind that there are endless possibilities for your blog and that the sky is your only limit.
The appeal to the research phase is infinite when it comes to building a brand new blog. This is all because, while you are laying all of the groundwork and researching your niche, it all still exists in a vacuum. However, once you launch your blog, things could get quite messy. So what are the top 6 things you should do in order to promote your new blog efficiently?
1. Why it’s important to do it all
There are people who come up with great ideas easily, and there are people who are good at executing those ideas. Some of us know how to create a good design, some know how to write a good article, and some have great business minds. If your goal is to create a blog that will ultimately be successful when you look at it from a business perspective, then you must understand that you will have to do all of the things mentioned above, and learn a lot.
The reason why I am saying these things is because promoting a brand new blog involves doing many different things. A lot of people think that being a successful blogger is all about writing and nothing else. Well, this is not true, and promotion is one of other essentials you must learn how to do in order to drive your blog towards success. Some of the brand new things you start doing will be fun for you, while others will be annoying, but you simply have to do them if you plan on achieving success.
Believe it or not, talent is the least important factor when it comes to achieving success, it’s mostly about putting in extra work that makes the difference.
Pro tip: Put an emphasis on your strongest areas, but also focus on other things.
2. Starting on the right foot
The way your situation has to develop is by coming up with an idea you want to make a reality. One of the worst starting mistakes when it comes to blogging is just doing things randomly, while hoping things will turn out for the best and, somehow, lead you to success. Setting goals is the first important step for your blog. Why? Simply because if you know what your goals are, you will know what tools to use and where to focus your efforts to get closer to the finish line.
Some people simply want to share the ideas they have with the rest of the world. To feel accomplished some people will look to get 50k unique visitors on their blog each and every month. There are people who want to concentrate on earning money and their goal is to boost their income to a certain level. None of these things are wrong; these are all eligible goals you would want to achieve with your blog. What’s even better is the fact that with the right approach and enough work put in, you can achieve these goals.
Once again, I would like to say that you will be able to achieve all of your goals if you put in the necessary work to make everything happen as you’ve imagined it would. There is nothing mystical when it comes to succeeding in the blogging world, or in any other field for that matter. Success is a manageable and predictable thing that results from doing the right things for a long period of time. Still there are many things that are uncertain and that you won’t be able to predict.
You might make million dollars in three years, and maybe you won’t. What is certain is the fact that if you work hard on daily basis for a longer period of time, you will feel the satisfaction and delight of your own personal success. As time passes you will learn more about blogging, and when you have an established blog, you will be able to turn its strengths to whichever side you want. It’s true that money doesn’t grow on trees, but there is plenty of it out there that you can pick.
Pro tip: A successful start will make things much easier in the long run.
3. Create daily action plans
Each and every promotion campaign requires daily action. The size of all your goals and the types of goals you want to achieve, will deeply affect the things you have to write in your daily action plan. Still, it is highly important that you write things down and commit to them on a daily basis. The first important thing to know is that your daily action plan must contain essential tasks that produce good results and allow your blog to grow.
Reviewing all of your analytics and checking AdSense revenues do not count, although they are important factors. These administrative tasks don’t produce growth directly. The point of daily tasks is to work on a plan and do things that attract visitors to your log and help you promote your business. For example, you can make a lot of personal contacts and write fresh content every day. You repeat this every day, sometimes it will get hard, and sometimes you will fail. But, through these actions you can measure your success level on a day-to-day basis.
It gives you the option to achieve mini successes each day and motivate yourself to keep moving forward. The whole thing can be quite difficult, but it’s possible to achieve consistency and take regular actions that make your business grow further.
Pro tip: Include fewer things in your plans at the beginning, and after a while, increase the number of your responsibilities.
4. Commenting
Anyone who is familiar with blogs and blogging is also familiar with commenting on blogs. It is one of the essentials when it comes to building a noticeable online presence. Forums and blogs alike can give you a valuable opportunity to get involved in conversations and engage users. You should avoid being directly promotional or over-promotional by leaving keywords related to your blog or business; simply put in your actual name, try to be helpful and insightful in the comments and try to genuinely participate.
Discuss important issues and give your thoughts and knowledge on subjects you are familiar with. If the whole discussion goes well and the person you’re talking with is genuinely interested in what you have to say, you can contact them somewhere else and ask them to check out your blog for more information.
Pro tip: Boost your profiles by delivering value.
5. Start building an email list from the very beginning
From the first day of starting a blog, you need to make sure to include an opt-in box and encourage all of your visitors to sign up to your email list. Naturally, not everyone will want to do so, but still try and encourage people to do so. A lot of people suggest that you should include an email list only after you have attracted a substantial amount of traffic, but in my opinion an email list of 15 people is more valuable than you realize.
You will immediately find out how many people value what you do. To me, opening the door to communicating with the readers directly via email is a highly valuable asset. Don’t waste any time. The sooner you start talking to people in this fashion, the faster you will realize the value of maintaining constant communication with your readers.
You will be able to hear their comments, their criticism and, most importantly, valuable insights that will help you learn more about how to do your job. Email is kind of old school, but it still is a valuable tool you can use to learn about the reader’s interests, and people don’t actually mind subscribing to emails, as long as they can get something valuable out of it.
Pro tip: Don’t send emails too often, as people will unsubscribe and mark you as spam.
6. Respond to all readers
I am really surprised of the number of bloggers and business owners that don’t want to respond to messages people send them or avoid responding to comments. And yet, they expect that they will create a base of loyal and long-term visitors who will keep coming back to them… Each time you respond to a comment, an email or some other message people will realize that you are passionate about what you are doing and that you actually care about your work. Furthermore, if you are able to help them completely they will remember that and repay you with a subscription, and spread positive word of mouth.
Pro tip: Use a mild tone and don’t approach people as a know-it-all.
As a bonus tip, I would like to add that you try and connect your blog with your social networks. Learn how to build your social networks and use the influence you have on them to promote your blog. Apart from that, use all of the basic blogging techniques such as link building, guest blogging etc. Like I’ve said before, you must do it all, and after a while you can find out where your strengths lie and what you do best.
Becoming a real blogger is all about learning constantly, sharing what you’ve read today and seeing what established bloggers have to add on the subject matter. Everyone has their own techniques and methods for taking care of these things and the more you learn, the more you will understand how to approach your new blog.
About the Author:
Duke Vukadinovic works for FirstSiteGuide.com. He is passionate about the Internet world and can be of great to help web newbies build many successful blogs in various niches.
