If you are launching a new blog in 2018, congratulations! And good luck. You’ll need it.
Sorry to say, you could not have picked a worse time to start blogging because the Internet is literally drowning in content, all of it vying for reader’s eyeballs.
According to Internetlivestats there are over 1.5 billion web sites on the World Wide Web, 25% of which are powered by WordPress.
Every day that number grows. So if you think that if you build it, the readers will come, I’ve got a ball park in Siberia to sell you.
What will you do when you launch your new blog? You have to drive traffic to it. Here are eight things you can do when launching a new blog on the Internet.
Stockpile posts
In the early days of your blog you are going to spend so much time promoting it, (hopefully, after a good deal of pre-launch promotion) you may not have time to write more.
Launch with at least three posts so the blog looks like something.
Have at least a month or two’s worth of well-written, relevant, keyword-researched, and search-optimized posts qued up in your posts file and schedule them to publish at a time you’ve estimated to be prime time for your audience.
For most businesses, prime time is Monday to Wednesday 9am to noon. After a while, you can also check Google Analytics to find your timing sweet spot.
Read:Â How to Write your First Blog Post Painlessly
Get indexed
To figure out your prime time, gauge your click rate on Google Analytics, an account you’ve already set up, along with Search Console (Webmaster Tools).
Register your site on all the major search engines: Google, Bing, and Yahoo’s Flurry and use all the tools they offer.
While your Yoast SEO plugin will ping (request indexing) search engines about your latest post, you can also request manually. Ask Google to index a post at Search Console>Crawl>Fetch as Google.
Read: How to use Google Analytics on WordPress
Grow an email list
You must have an opt-in email list attached to your blog or else you might as well give up.
There is no more fundamental aspect of blogging than acquiring a list of followers. These are your people, your tribe, the ones who will read what you feed. They need to be cultivated.
Set up a free third party email service that offers tools for opt-in forms and link it to your RSS feed so that every post you launch will end up as an email in their in-box.
Somewhere on your site place a Call to Action asking visitors to subscribe, if not in the text then in the sidebar or footer.
Offer a downloadable gift to add to their temptation. An ebook or white paper is an excellent intellectual offering, or maybe you have something else to give away?
Email all your friends and contacts and ask them to opt-in to your list. On social media, ask your followers to opt-in.
Again, if you don’t start building an email list from day one then ask yourself, why are you blogging?
Read: 5 Essential Web Services You Must Connect to Your Blog
Blitz on social media
Open an account on every single social media-type site you can find, even if you don’t plan to use them. These sites have good trust from the search engines and you would do well to register an optimized profile with your link attached.
Religiously post links to every blog post on the big five social sites: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google + (mostly for the links from Google) and LinkedIn.
Post your links in industry-related Groups on these sites and use researched Hashtags to expand your reach beyond your friends and followers. Twitter has such a fast turnaround, you can tweet a post numerous times at different times of day and night without annoying anyone.
Read: Katt Stearns Social Media Tips to Explode Online Relationships
Get backlinks
After launching a new blog, get some backlinks to your posts. Google loves backlinks and seeing them point to your site will prompt the search engine to rank your site higher.
You can get links from older, well-trafficked related sites by leaving comments that link to your site.
If possible, helpfully mention your related post and embed a link to it as a way of adding to the conversation. Never try to steal the other author’s thunder as they may not approve the comment at all.
Guest blogging on relevant older sites is a good way to get backlinks both in the bio they will place at the end and by embedding links to your site in the text.
Check on Links to Your Site on Search Console.
Read: Don’t Bite the Hand that Backlinks to You
Encourage commentsÂ
At the end of each post, ask your readers a question and suggest they leave a comment.
When you get comments, reply with gratitude and ask follow up questions to keep them replying.
This kind of engagement is what Google loves and makes it shower you with better ranking.
SyndicateÂ
In addition to guest posting fresh content to other sites, you can also republish your blog’s content on curation sites. This can be done via your RSS feed, so you needn’t lift a finger.
Not only will syndication promote your site, it will also give you backlinks, especially if you embed internal links in the text.
If you do syndicate, be sure to ping Google so they know that your site was the first place it was published.
Read: RSS Feeds and How To Burn Them
Cross publish
Why should your new blog be the only repository of your content?
Videos
You can also use the content to make videos and post them on your well-optimized YouTube or Vimeo account.
Podcasts
Create a podcast on each topic and feed them through iTunes or SoundCloud.
Infographics
Turn the content into an infographic to post on Pinterest or Visual.ly.
Ebooks
Compile your posts into ebooks and sell them on Amazon.com or Smashwords.
Photos
Use the post’s images – and more – to create photo essays to post on photo sharing sites like Flickr or Photobucket.
Powerpoint
Make powerpoint presentations of your content and post them on Slideshare or Speakerdeck.
Read: Escalate Your WordPress: Twelve Ways to Blog at a Higher Level
Launching a new blog takes work
It not easy to launch a brand new blog to thundering acclaim. You have to work at it, wait, check results, make improvements, wait, check results again, and repeat.
But if you have something valuable to say and keep at it, there’s a good chance you will be rewarded with payback in the form of sales, subscribers, advertisers, sponsorship, and who knows what all.
You might even be able to quit your day job to be a blogger!
What suggestions to you have for new bloggers? Is there something you did that helped you? Or something you wished you did earlier? Please leave a comment so everyone will know.