Announcing your BLOG

Day One

         On the day your blog is born you will have no readers. As I’ve written previously, if you are famous or pull off a publicity stunt you can quickly gain a readership. A few well timed joint ventures with established bloggers or website owners, or a massive email newsletter blast promoting your new blog can do the trick. These are the powerful answers for establishing a big audience quickly but are only available to those with money or connections or fame. If you don’t have any of those, well, you need to have one thing - patience.

The Pre-Launch Checklist

At the start of class two in Blog Traffic School I have something I call aPre-Launch Checklist. The checklist is important because it ensures you are ready to get out there and promote your blog. It includes things like -

·         Write at least five pillar articles, the more you have the better.

·         Make sure your new visitors can easily find your pillar content by creating an articles page or linking to your top content on your blog front page.

·         If you aim to use your name for personal branding make sure the title of your blog includes your name.

·         Make sure your contact information is available.

Little tips like this mean that when you do finally announce your blog you aren’t wasting energy. Your new traffic will A) Stay around and come back, and B) Spread the word for you. Without completing a good pre-launch most new visitors to your site will click away within 30 seconds, never to be seen again.

Baby Steps

The simple fact is there isn’t a magic formula for getting traffic quickly to a blog. You need to start promoting your blog by leaving comments on other blogs, forming relationships with other bloggers, producing viral-word-of-mouth-spreading content pillars and community cohesion. When all these initiatives combine over time, only then do you gain solid and sustainable traffic.

For Budding bloggers

One of the problems new bloggers of today face is the hype generated by established successful blogs. You read stories about bloggers earning thousands of dollars per day, with hundreds of thousands of visitors, huge exposure and big profits. Bloggers enter the blogosphere chasing big goals. Once their blog is set up and they have made their first few posts they stop and wonder why nothing is happening. The impatient bloggers head out looking for quick fixes - methods that promise huge amounts of traffic in a few days or weeks.

The reality is you have to pay your dues for success online just as much as you do in the real world. Nearly all big time bloggers have a history of hard and consistent work, only as a snapshot in time *after* something great has been built does it look easy.

If you just launched a blog and you want traffic I have the following advice for you -

Tips For New Bloggers

1.    Focus on your content, don’t worry about the traffic.

2.    Start commenting on similar blogs.

3.    Start building relationships with other bloggers.

4.    Link to other blogs with trackbacks.

5.    Be prepared to work long and hard before big traffic comes.

Blog Announcing Services?

A final word before ending this post - don’t bother with blog/website announcement services. Most of these promise to submit your blog and/or RSS feed to thousands of directories online, increasing your backlinks and traffic. Many of these services use automated software that submits your blog URL and RSS feed to directories. Most of these directories are useless and carry very little weight in the search engines. You will get very little, if any direct traffic from these directories and it won’t do much for your search engine rankings either.

Remember, if it was that easy wouldn’t everyone do it and wouldn’t everyone have hugely popular sites as a result? Don’t trust the hype - only quality and value are rewarded in the blogosphere.

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