If you want to start a new blog and take it all the way to success, this condensed guide is everything you’ll need. Work as Darren Rowse’s, Steve Pavlina’s and Chris Guillebeau’s, as well as many others’ are of absolute help, have to be read and is where I got the inspiration to write this list.
But in here I have summarized which are, in my eyes, the ten important things you have to do. Blogging success is not easy, but the steps and the paths you have to take are all clear. If someone has a blog that doesn’t succeed is because they just don’t follow these rules. Read through and be willing to work hard on each of these points!
1- Write quality content. Give value to the people. Make your articles great, deep and unique. Make the people be thrilled waiting for your next piece. Write timeless and viral material.
2- Write quality content for others. This is THE way for you to reach new readers and drag people into your site. Leave thoughtful comments on other blogs, write guest posts and participate in forums. The more you do it, the bigger you’ll get.
3- Post regularly. I schedule my posts for every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday and all my readers know that one way or the other the posts will be online by midnight at the latest. This helps building reader confidence and establishing a solid number of subscribers.
4- Start with the best design possible. As long as you don’t have money to spend, get the best themes and designs you could possibly find for free. Once your writing gave you some return, reinvest it and set up your own custom designs. Get a logo designed from the best professionals, a premium or custom theme and show the world how serious you are about your blog.
5- Build a big social media presence and leverage from it. Use Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, etc to bring new readers into your site. Connect with people in your niche, learn and also promote your work. It takes time but it’s absolutely worth the effort.
6- Tell everyone about your blog. Tell your family, your friends, colleagues, etc. Let them all know about your work and also ask for their help and feedback. A friend of mine went far enough to leave a big sticker on the back of his car with the URL. Spread the idea as much as possible!
7- Optimize for Search Engines. There’s a lot of talk about SEO these days. Honestly, I never went that deep into it but I do know a few things that are important. Pay attention to post titles and meta descriptions, build a solid internal link structure, install SEO plugins, use “nofollow” links and add a xml sitemap. All these have ended up giving me a lot of extra visits – Take a few days off your writing and focus on this too!
8- Create a community. Don’t make your blog a monologue – Make it a thriving group, encourage people to speak out and build your own social movement. Interact with your readers, prize the ones who help you and also encourage participation.
9- Learn to adapt on the fly. Perhaps your blog is not a success in the way you first planned it but ends up being a hit in some other. Change and adapt fast to satisfy the new and unexpected readers, offer them services and build value focused on them.
10- Stay for the long term. Outstand your competition, stay longer than all of them and build your place in the scene. If you are planning a new blog, make sure you update and comprise yourself for at least a year. Support it, write fresh posts and give services and features all that long.
Photo credit: notsogoodphotography
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Copenhagen, Denmark.