OK, you’ve installed your blog (hopefully WordPress) you know your URL, you’ve written a couple of brilliant, insightful posts, now what?
Part of the fun for me of setting up a brand new blog, is everything involved in getting it running and initial promotion. If you’ve just started, you’ll be in the same position (a later trick comes in keeping it going after the initial enthusiasm wears off, but that’s for another day!).
So, assuming you’re blogging more for fun, than business, and that your blog is online and viewable here’s what I would do first:
Have at least 10 minutes reading available for new visitors, preferably over several posts. Give people the chance to get to know you, and want to come back for more - what’s your blog about?
Write your ‘About Me‘ page. It doesn’t need to be intrusive, it needn’t have a photo, although many people advocate this, but it should present a written picture of you, the blogger, and why you’re doing this. Make sure there’s an email address on it - if you want a GMail address let me know & I’ll send you an invite if you need one.
Make sure that your RSS Feed is available and decide whether you are going to use FeedBurner now, or stick with your original feed. If you change it later, you risk losing existing subscribers when their feed stops working.
Already reading other blogs? If you like them, add them to your blogroll. The bloggers will notice and come visit.
How did they notice? They claimed their blogs on Technorati-make sure you do too, and then you can see who’s linking you.
Take part in a ‘meme’ like Wordless Wednesday, Thursday 13 or Friday Feast. Easy to do (Just post a photo or image for WW for example) and you can add your blog to the central blogroll before visiting other participating blogs and commenting on their posts. 90% of bloggers will make the return trip and visit your blog. If they like what they see, they’ll come back on other days too. It’s a great way to introduce your blog.
Get a StumbleUpon account. Read my post on Being a good Stumbler and then make the most of it to drive thousands of visits to your blog if your posts are good enough.
Submit your blog’s feed to as many of these 200+ services as you can. I’ve only done the free ones and get a reasonable amount of traffic and links from it.
Read other peoples blogs. Get Google Reader, add as many blog feeds into it as you can (This is Blog-Ops) and make regular, useful comments on other peoples blogs. At this stage it’s the number 1 best way to get people to visit.
Stay at it! Blog like you have a 1000 readers and one day you will. By that stage, you’ll want more!
It can seem a little daunting at first, when every other blog seems to have a hundred comments, and your stats are stuck on 0, but once you get out there, you’ll be surprised how fast your blog can spread.
What are the first things you like to do when starting a new blog?
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Chris, you make it sound easy and hard at the same time. I didn’t do any of that stuff until February and not all of it. I don’t like continuous memes and I don’t like submitting to directories. But that’s just me.
“Chris, you make it sound easy and hard at the same time.”
I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not!
Like everything I come up with, it’s all optional, but merely what I did & what worked for me. I know not everyone likes the memes (I only really do the photo ones) but it’s a good way to start for someone who has no idea where to get some readers.
hehe, this wordless wednesday is pretty cool. already got a few nice comments
Nice one Chris.
One thing I do discourage however is, do not try and make your blog to cover every single itty bitty thing in your life. For example, several blogs I know of try and put every single word of their day on their blog, I DESPISE that. Be unique, be yourself. That’s what I like to do.
Its probably just me but to remind my friends and people I know personally that I have a blog going, I used Feedburner’s Headline Animator in my GMail signature!
Good stuff Kevin, I’ve added my link too.
If you check out my other blog that I left in the link, you can see how many visitors WW can generate. In the first month, with very little other promotion WW has helped generate over 5000 page views for that blog+some nice posts from other bloggers.
K, that is an excellent idea! I have my URL in my signature, but I may swap it for that.
Hi Ryan, just recovered you from my spam trap
Good point-there’s nothing wrong with domestic stories if they’re interesting, but…..
Chris, would you please explain the difference between using the feedburner feed or the original feed?
I thought we can always keep both?
Thanks it really does work!
Got a really good response to my first Wordless Wednesday too, and a chance to chat to other bloggers.
Good post mate. I’ve bookmarked it just so that when someone asks me the question I can send them here
Andy: If you re-direct your feed thru FB, you get a whole host of stats that you cannot get any other way, along with the ability to insert all sorts of things into your feed, convert the format, get widgets for re-publishing your feed elsewhere etc.
Cheers Alison, it’s good isn’t it?
Thanks Owen
Chris, that’s awesome.. I think I need to spend some time with FB and look at what I can do with it!
The problem with Feedburner and RSS feeds is that is comes by source…..not subject. Also, there might be 150 articles on the same story but they arent automatically clustered….I wish there was a way to create a subject focused news page that looked at all sources and then clsutered the articles into similar stories…..OW wait a minute Congoo News circles does that!
YEEE HAW!
It’s a cool service Andy.
Take more water with it next time David
Could you send me an invite to do the Gmail thing? I’d appreciate it. I always learn something good when I come to visit you.
-Alissa
On it’s way Alissa
[...] What Do I Do With My New Blog?: You’ve got your shiny new blog, now what? Advice for the neophyte blogger. [...]
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