7 Essential Things You Should Be Doing When Your Blog Is Still Young

These days my blog, Zen Habits, no longer has the problems of finding its identity and finding an audience … but there was a time not too long ago when Zen Habits was just a baby going through the inevitable growing pains.

And yes, I remember struggling to find new readers — to just let people know I was even there. The early days of a blog are the toughest, by far.

But they don’t have to be. When a blog is still young, just as in childhood, it can be freer, carefree, and fun. Everything is a learning experience. Best yet, a young blog has endless potential — it can be anything (except perhaps President of the United States).

So if you’re the owner of a young blog, here are seven things I recommend you do, based on my experiences:

1. Create amazingly useful content. This is the most important thing you can do the first month or two of your blog’s existence. The next item (branding) is also important to think about as you start, but in terms of how you spend your time, writing amazing and useful content should be 95% of what you do. Your design, ads, technical stuff … all that can be worked on later. Right now, write your butt off. Create tip-packed posts that will knock the reader’s socks off. Read more: What Makes Great Blogwriting?
2. Create a great brand. When you first create your blog, you should think a bit about the brand you’re going to create. When you create a brand, you are sending an unspoken message. What unspoken message do you want to send? Start by defining your target audience, then by figuring out what desires you will tap into. Then craft an unspoken message that will be true to yourself while tapping into those desires. Use that unspoken message to craft your brand (the title of your blog) as well as everything else you do, from blog design to post topics to the tone you write with and more. Read more: Branding 101: How to Promote Your Blog Like the Big Guys Do.
3. Network with other bloggers. When you first start out, you might not know many other bloggers. Rectify that situation by commenting on other blogs in your niche, and sending friendly emails to other bloggers whose blogs you enjoy. Offer to collaborate with them, to do guest posts for them (see next item) and in general be helpful and friendly. Develop a relationship with other bloggers — it’ll pay off in the long run.
4. Write guest posts. One of the absolute best ways to promote your blog and your brand, and to find new readers, is to write guest posts on other blogs with readers who are among your target audience. Of course, it’s hard to get a guest post slot on big blogs when you’re just a little guy. So start with blogs that are just a little bigger than you — if you have 10 readers, go for a blog with 100-200 readers. If you have 100 readers, go for a blog with 300-500 readers, and so on. Before you start doing guest posts, however, be sure to have 10-12 solid, powerful, insanely useful posts on your blog. You want your new readers to come to your blog and be struck by a great first impression. Every guest post you write should be as amazingly useful and tip-packed as the ones on your blog (see first item).
5. Experiment and have fun. Once you’re a blogging powerhouse, you have thousands of readers’ expectations to live up to. You have to put up great content every day, and each word is scrutinized. So take advantage of your youth as a blog — have a blast! Experiment, try out different writing techniques, imitate other blogs, try humor and rants and moving personal essays. Try to write a post that will become popular in the social media. Find your voice as a writer. Seek inspiration and write whatever you’re inspired to write.
6. Get out there, often. Now is the time to start becoming more visible, and to spread your brand as much as possible. Comment on many other blogs, participate in blog carnivals, send links to other bloggers and see if they’ll share them with their readers, participate in contests. Be visible.
7. Seek out your potential. You can be anything you want to be when you’re just starting out. Figure out what that will be. Aspire to great heights, and seek to raise your level of blogging each step of the way. Find your path to greatness as a blogger. Try new paths, and find what fits you. Follow your passion, your inspiration, and above all, enjoy the journey!

The Power of Blogging with A Long Term View

It’s a long tail to the top if you want to blog and win.

How many times do we see headlines like “get rich blogging” or “1 post a day is all it takes.” Blogging has long been sold as a panacea to everyones ills, but the reality is often far from the hype.

On The Inquisitr recently I took a look at 10 Myths of blog marketers and debunked them all, but there’s one interesting one I want to take a step further here on Problogger: the time it takes to establish a blog.

Take it as a given up front that you will not get rich overnight from blogging. But how long does it take? I’ve always subscribed to the view that any blog needs a good 6-9 months to establish itself based on my experience in previous blogs and blog networks. The Inquisitr ended up being true to form, and it was our 7 month that things really took off in terms of traffic and actually making a profit. Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo and the founder of the Weblogs Inc blog network though thinks its longer, and commented recently that he puts the number at 2 years. The semantics may be a case of how “established” you would term a blog to be. I’m not about to spend Christmas on the Caymans from The Inquisitr, but in 2 years time…well, you never know.

But why does it take so long?

The answer is remarkably simple: long tail content.

Let me explain upfront that I’m taking liberties with the term long tail. Eric from Photography Bay touched on the subject on Problogger back in June. when he looked at posts over time, as well as targeting long tail niche topic areas.

The reality is: the bigger your archive of posts, the big your distribution of traffic is, and the higher it grows with time.

Digital Photography School

In Darren’s post November 18 on Digital Photography School he offered lots of stats and graphs, but there’s one that stood out for me: his search engine traffic graph:

Notice how over time the search engine traffic grew and grew. By no means am I precluding other facts, such as great content, extra RSS subscribers, email newsletters or any other method you can and should be using to promote your blog. But if you take away all of that, why the really steady growth over the time? The explanation is more content on the site.

The Inquisitr

To break it down some more, here’s two sets of figures from The Inquisitr, the first image shows July 2008 (our 3rd month), just before we had our first decent traffic increase. The second shows November 1-19, 2008

Notice the key difference marked is between the number of pages receiving traffic over this time: 2,210 pages vs 6,180. Yes, there are other factors involved in our increasing traffic, but having more content over time has a cumulative affect of more page views across the site.

The Base

Internally we use a term called “base” to describe the scenario of days where we have little to no content going up on the site. We try not to have any days like that, but when they do happen they tend to be on weekends. The base figure is the amount of traffic your blog gets without fresh content.

The long tail of content on your site improves your base. For example, every month our base figure has gradually gone up, from less than 1000 page views in our first month, through to 2,000, 3,000, 5,000 and today it’s around 9-12,000. In part, base is a measure of the effectiveness of your long tail of content, the more you have, the more natural search or referral traffic you’ll get on a quiet day.

Balancing quality and quantity

Some reading this will see the post as a justification to fill a blog with rubbish, and lots of it, but it’s not quite that easy. Quantity undoubtedly helps, but quality should always be a factor. You still need to gain links and search engine traffic, and putting up rubbish for the sake of volume doesn’t cut it. You need to balance both: if you’re doing 1 post a day 99% of the time that’s not enough content, but you shouldn’t be doing 25 posts a day, unless you’ve put on a team of paid writers (as I have) to generate it for you.

4 ways to Promoting Your Blogs Homepage That Convert First Timers to a Commited Reader

At time you may be face with the problem of which part of my blog do I promote?
In 99% of the promotion that I see bloggers doing they promote their blog’s homepage URL। This is a reasonably good way to go - but perhaps there are a few other ways to approach promoting you blog that could potentially be more effective at converting new readers.

You see a blog’s front page is not always a great place to send people for a number of reasons:
1। it can be overwhelming - a blog’s front page usually has multiple articles on it. A reader hitting that page cold could be a little overwhelmed by the choice of what to read.

2। content is not always relevant - a blog’s front page is generally always changing. Most bloggers cover a variety of topic, some more serious and ‘on topic’ than others. Send readers to it on the wrong day and they can come away with the wrong impression of you.

3. no strong calls to action - when you’re promoting your blog you want to convert people into loyal readers. While most blogs have a subscription options in their sidebars they generally don’t have strong calls to action on them (or at least not as strong as some of the other options below).
So what other options are there for you when you’re promoting your blog? Let me explore three:

1. Purpose Built Landing Page
One of the most effective ways to convert new readers to your blog is to have them arrive on a page that is purpose built for new readers and attempts to convert them.
The idea of ‘landing pages’ is one that comes from the advertising world। When a company runs an advertising campaign online they generally will not send people to their site’s front page - they generally will design a page specifically for the campaign that appeals to those the campaign is aiming to convert and which has a strong call to action.

Bloggers can develop landing pages also। This is useful when promoting your blog via advertising but also in other contexts. For example when promoting your blog on social media sites or profiles you could develop a page that you send people to that appeals to social media users.

2. Individual Posts
Another option is to send people to specific posts that you’ve written instead of your home page.
This is a technique that I use particularly when I’m doing an interview or a guest post on someone else’s blog। The key is to pick one of your best posts and make sure that it is on a topic is relevant to the context that you’re promoting yourself in and the audience you’re attempting to attract.

In this way you direct people to a post that is likely to hit the spot with them। You can also tweak the post you’re promoting with a call to action at the end.

3. RSS Feed
This is another technique that I’ve used numerous times with significant success। I wouldn’t recommend doing it all of the time or even doing it in isolation but it’s a great secondary promotion technique.

What I mean by that is to include your RSS feed’s link along side another link when you’re promoting your blog।

For example - if you’re promoting your blog in forums in your signature - why not include a link to your blog AND an invitation to subscribe to it all in the signature। In the same way - if you’re doing a guest post on someone’s blog - don’t just link to your blog, include a way for people to subscribe in your byline.

In effect you’re including a call to action right in your promotion। The cool thing is that it works - when I’ve done this I’ve seen noticeable increases in subscriber numbers.

FORUM
Forum is another interesting way to promote your blog, which I really ought you not take for granted। Here you can make people have fate and build trust in you, j ust by bein a friend and assisting people to solve their little problem in your related nich.

How to Use Forums To Drive Hundreds of Thousand of Readers to Your Blog

1. Identify where your blogs potential readers are gathering

I learned this from Darren here. For me the answer to this question is forums. I know that not every blog topic will have forums that relate to it online but the more blogs that I have started the more I have found that most topics do! You just need to know where to find them.

Quite often the forum is not just a standalone forum - it could be just part of a larger site. So hunt them down!

They don’t have to be big forums either (but they should be active). For my main blog I actually chose 4 forums, one big one and three small ones.

2. Join up…. and Do Nothing (for a while)

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This is key. Many people identify a hot forum and rush in, leaving links to their blog as fast as they can. All this will do is quickly get your banned, annoy people and hurt your blogs reputation.

Instead of rushing in - join up and be a lurker for a few days. Watch and learn.

• Learn who the key players are.
• Watch to see what topics are hottest.
• See which areas of the forum are most active.
• Observe what the culture and rules of the forum are.

This ‘lurking’ is all about learning as much as you can so you can so that when you actually get active you can do it in a way that actually connects.

3. Set up your Signature and Avatar

Set up a very simple yet effective signature so that when you start posting people can find out more about you. My signatures are very understated. I simply include a link and name to my blog. I don’t do it in flashing fonts or bright colors. My reason for this is that the signature doesn’t convince people to come to my blog - the posts I write on the forum do.

If the forum allows you to choose an avatar - choose a simple one of these. I use a photo of myself because I feel it makes me more personal. On that note I make my forum name my real name. Again - this ‘humanizes’ me as I interact with people.

Also at this point I add links to the forums that I am going to interact in on my blog.

4. Start Posting

You have watched, learned and set yourself up - now it is time to start interacting with the forum.

Don’t go too hard too fast. Keep in mind that this is a community that you’re entering. Nobody likes a showoff or attention seeker. A few posts a day for your first week is more than enough. This means by the end of the week you’ll have 20-30 posts which is a signal to those on the forum that you’re investing time into it.

In my first week or two I concentrate on making myself as useful as possible to other forum members. My main priority is to answer questions that others in the forum ask.

Point people to sites that might help them or answer their questions - but in the first week or two show some restraint about pointing people to things you’ve written on your own blog. There will be time for that later.

5. Write Resource Content/Tutorials

After a week or two of ‘helping’ and being useful I then begin to produce weekly tutorial type content. This is where I find things begin to really take off in terms of driving traffic to your blog and becoming a more established presence in the forum.

In these ‘tutorial’ type posts you want to be writing top quality ‘how to’ type content that people will value highly. In many ways these tutorials are the type of things you might normally post on your blog.

In some ways what I am doing with these ‘tutorials’ is similar to what people who write guest posts for other people’s blogs do. It’s writing impressive content that makes people pay attention to you.

In these tutorials I generally will either include a relevant link to my blog to a post that extends the topic or is a ‘further reading’ type link OR at the end of the tutorial I include a simple line pointing out that I write more of this type of thing on my blog (with a link). I keep these links very low key.

What I find is that as I write these tutorials that people begin to want to know more about who I am. When you help people do something it makes an impression and they begin to seek you out.

6. Make Connections

You will find that the relationships will happen fairly naturally at this point but I also put a little extra time at this point to establish relationships with people in the forum, particularly key influencers, moderators and owners. Send these people private messages introducing yourself, encouraging them (particularly owners and moderators - many of them will really appreciate positive feedback) and even making offers of help or suggestions (if appropriate).

If you show that you’re willing to help make a forum a better place you’ll find these key people within the forum will be very open to working with you at some point in the future.

7. Let Others Promote Your Blog

I find that at this point a wonderful thing happens - forum members begin to promote your blog. They come across you either through you answering questions, your tutorials or through conversations that you have with them and they begin to read your blog. When they find something on it that they like, they write about it.

Sounds a little too good to be true - but it has happened from me time and time again. It’s almost like when you find other bloggers in your niche beginning to discover your blog - but instead it can potentially be a whole community discovering your blog at once (a very powerful thing).

Last time this happened to me it was in a forum with over 100,000 members. It took me 5 months of ground work but when the ‘tipping point’ came it was like I suddenly became a celebrity or some kind of hero in the forum. I’d written 15 tutorials by this time and they’d become some of the most viewed threads in the forum, the forum owner had asked if he could pay me to write more and when I said I’d do it for free he included a small button on his sidebar linking to my blog as a recommended resource as payment.

8. Be Generous, Be Understated and Be Useful

My parting words of advice for people wanting to use forums to promote their blogs are really to be as helpful as possible while remaining as subtle as you can.

This actually takes some restraint. If you’re anything like me your natural inclination is to shout out about your blog at every opportunity but take it from me, I’ve done this and it doesn’t work. The more understated I’ve been the more success I’ve had.

by Darren Rowse

Are You Interested in the Topic?

A friend of mine explained it this way recently:

“Probably the best place to start thinking about what your blog should be about is to consider what YOU are about.”

Perhaps that’s a slightly awkward way of saying start by identifying your own interests, passions and energy levels for topics. While it might be tempting to start blogs based on what other people are interested in or what makes commercial sense there is little logic in starting a blog on a topic that you have no interest in. There are two main reasons for this.

Firstly if you want to grow a popular and well respected blog it can take considerable time and you’ll be needing to take a long term approach to building it up. As a result it’s well worth asking yourself ‘can I see myself still writing on this topic in 12 months time?’ If you can’t I’d suggest finding another topic.

The second reason is that you readers will quickly discern if you are passionate about your topic or not. Blogs that are dry and passionless don’t tend to grow - it makes sense really as no one wants to read something that the author doesn’t really believe in.

Is the Topic Popular?

While the blogger’s interest is important it’s not enough on it’s own to build a popular blog. Another crucial ingredient is that people WANT to read information on the topic you’re writing on. The law of Supply and Demand is what most business students are taught in their first semester of of studying economics and it comes into play here also. You might be interested in your topic but unless others are also you’ll always have an uphill battle in building a highly read blog.

Of course keep in mind that you are writing in a medium with a global audience of many millions and as a result you don’t need a topic that everyone is searching, just one that some people are searching for because even it’s something that even a small percentage of people have an active interest in it can be a lucrative area.

Is the Topic one that is growing or shrinking?

Also keep in mind that popular topics change over time. Obviously it’s great to get on a topic before it becomes big rather than when it’s on the decline. This is not easy to do of course but predict the next big thing that people will be searching for and you could be onto a winner.

Get in the habit of being on the lookout for what people are into. I constantly ask myself ‘what will people be searching the web for in 6 to 12 months?’

Keep an eye on what people are into and what the latest trends are. Do this online but also keep an eye on TV, magazines, the papers and even the conversations you have with friends.

13 Ways to Promote Your Next Blog Post

1. Pitching Other Bloggers

One of the most effective ways of getting the word out about a new post is to let other bloggers know about it. There isn’t much more powerful a way to find new readers than another blogger recommending something you’ve written to people who trust them.

Getting other bloggers to link to your posts is not always easy though - particularly in the early days of a blog or if you don’t have some sort of profile or pre-existing relationship with the bloggers that you’re pitching. However it isn’t impossible. Here are a few tips on how to pitch your posts to other blogs:

• Relevancy is key - don’t pitch stories to other bloggers that have little or no relevance to their blog. You’ll just be wasting their time and yours.
• Only pitch your best posts - you will have a much higher success rate at getting a link if you only do it with your best stuff. I would only ever do this with around 1-2% of my posts.
• Give them an angle - don’t just shoot the link over - tell the blogger what the story is about and why it might be relevant to their blog. Save them a little work by showing how the post might be interesting to their readers.
• Keep it brief - if the blogger wants lots of details about your post they’ll click the link. Be to the point, communicate what you need to say and then let the blogger get on with their day.
• Be polite - don’t assume you’ll get the link or insist that they link to you - make the suggestion and let the blogger decide if it’s relevant for them.
• Be personal - use their name, their blog’s name and show you are not just spamming thousands of blogs with your email