About To Launch New Blog? Then This Guide is For You!

About To Launch New Blog? Then This Guide is For You!

If you are preparing to launch a new blog, get ready. You are about to take on a huge task. Not only do you have to come up with an overall concept for your blog, you have to select a platform, create your initial posts, and, most importantly, create an audience from an initial following of zero. Can it be done? Of course it can. All you need is hard-work, planning, and good advice. Unfortunately, good advice on this topic is hard to find. Search the internet for advice on starting a blog and you'll find lots of vague advice about sharing your posts on social media and networking with other bloggers. Sharing your posts on social media works great, only if you have a significant social media following. Networking with other bloggers is a great idea, if you can get them excited about networking with somebody with no posts or followers.

So, let's move past high-level concepts that only work for people with a following and a solid internet presence. Let's go through some real steps that you can take to make the roll-out of your blog a success.

Understand your Audience

This is huge. This is the thing that will drive nearly every decision you make in relation to the launch of your blog. You have to understand your audience, and that takes research, not presumption. Here's an example. You are launching a blog related to online video gaming. You can presume that your audience is going to be mostly male ages 14 to 25 and plan to write content that appeals to that age group. Maybe you're right. That may be the demographic that plays video games the most, but should that group be your focus. If you researched instead of presumed, you might seek out answers to the following questions:

• Is the market already saturated with blogs targeting the male gamers ages 14 to 25?
• Is there a current demographic in this space that is growing quickly?
• Is there a niche audience in the world of gaming that is craving attention and content?
• What is the fastest growing group of gamers?

How do you get the answers to these questions? Market research. No, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars to hire a market research company, you can do this on your own.

• Do you participate in any online communities that are related to the topic of your soon to be launched blog? If you are, start there, create polls, ask questions, or simply take note of the demographic information that you see.
• If you are active on social media, seek out help from your followers. Ask for volunteers to be interviewed or to fill out a survey. Then, tie participation to a giveaway. Remember, your goal is to find out who your demographic is, and even more importantly, what they are seeking. You want to know what interests them, what entertains them, what turns them off, and the type of blogs they are currently following.
• Get out in the community and get insight from people who are active in your niche.

This will help you square

The answers you find, may completely change your target audience, and if it does not, you will certainly understand your audience better.

Optimization – Getting Found

Congratulations, you now have a target demographic, you understand the wants and needs of the demographic, and you know the content you must provide to maintain the interest of that demographic. In other words, your content strategy is in place. Now, you need to make sure that your blog is easy to find. This means...

Search

Engine

Optimization

These are three words that sound much more intimidating than they need to be. The rules of optimization change frequently, but there are some simple, practical things that you can do to make your blog search engine friendly.

• Don't create URLs that are too long – Google will think you are stuffing them with keywords
• Use dashes to separate words and phrases in your URL that are keywords – a few keywords are fine
• Use titles that are clever and match the actual content of your post – if you have to pick one over the other sacrifice creativity
• Use meta descriptions but keep them short
• Use keywords in your subheadings but don't reuse the same ones over and over again

Remember, the more optimized your content, the more likely people are to surf into your blog.

Getting Subscribers

Visitors are wonderful. Subscribers are even better. There are a few ways to encourage visitors to become email subscribers. The first is to simply ask. A call to action to sign up to receive more content often works quite well. Another option is to provide an incentive to subscribers. This could be access to premium content or a small giveaway.