datebook
For some blogging is a passion and for others it’s a way to make income. There are as many reasons to blog as there are bloggers and some include connecting and forming relationships; exploring ideas, concepts and beliefs; sharing expertise; inspiring and persuading; entertaining; sharing experiences; and learning and growing.
It’s not surprising to find that most bloggers do have more than one blog. If you do intend to create a new blog I recommend you do your homework first.
(1) Determine the niche and who your audience will be
Blogging tip – Access what your knowledge and skill base is in relationship to the niche you are considering, and determine who your audience (readers) will be. Identifying your audience will help you focus on the reader’s needs. The following questions can help you identify your audience and what you can do to address their wants and needs.
- How many kinds of readers do you expect to have? List them.
- What do you know about the writing and reading skills and backgrounds of those people who you expect to become readers?
- What is most important to them?
- What are they least likely to care about?
- What do you want your audience to think, learn, or assume about you?
- What impression do you want your writing or your research to convey?
(2) Will you blog under your given name or a pseudonym?
Blogging tip – If your new blog will be a business blog or a professional blog then you may want to consider blogging under your real name and posting a recent photo. Blogging under your real name allows you to build a name and branding credibility for yourself and your blog in your area of interest.
However, if you are a business or professional blogger that desires the freedom to be more casual or, if you want to develop a tone and persona online that’s different than the normal you, then blogging under a pseudonym will be the better choice to make.
If you are already blogging under a pseudonym then decide whether or not you want to create another one or use the same one. If you are blogging under your real name, then decide whether or not you want to create a pseudonym. The decision you make will be based on whether or not you want your existing blog(s) and your new blog to be associated. See: How to Become a Better Blogger 2: Online Privacy
(3) Assess your competition
Blogging tip – Blogging is competitive so visit the blogs of the top bloggers in any niche that you are interested in entering, assess your competition, and determine what unique and original information you have that you could contribute to the niche.
(4) Determine your purposes and your goals
Blogging tip – Take the time to consider exactly what your purpose is for creating a new blog, ascertain what your key words and tags will be, and develop a blog description prior to founding your new blog.
Here are two examples:
Blog Description
onecoolsite – a growing collection of Tips and Tutorials on How to Become a Better Blogger, How to Build a Better Blog and where to find free Blogging Tools and Resources.
Blogging Goal:
To provide free instructional material and resources to bloggers, who are intent on improving their writing and blogging skills, and making their blogs more reader and search engine friendly (basic SEO).
Directory listings: Blogging, Blog Resources
Tags: SEO, blogging tips, blogging resources, blogging tools, blogging guides, blogging tutorials
Blog Description
thistimethisspace – a personal development, growth and relationships blog containing posts on alternative medicine, blogging, conscious living, and self improvement.
Blogging Goal: To share information and techniques for transforming and improving life with others also focused on personal development, growth and self improvement.
Directory listings: Relationships, Development and Growth
Tags: personal development, blogging, Spirituality, alternative medicine, self improvement, conscious living
(5) Consider purchasing your own domain
Blogging tip – Wherever possible, your new blog’s url, blog title and tagline ought to contain keywords (products and/or services) that define your new blog’s intended brand. Also note that choosing to purchase your own domain will provide your blog with greater credibility than blogging on a free hosted subdomain like blogspot or wordpress.com will provide. There are other advantages to purchasing your own domain as well, and inexpensive good web hosting is available.
(6) Create content in advance and plan a launch
Do you want a guaranteed way to launch with a bang? Prepare amazing content before you launch. I am not talking about a quick general post, I want you to take the time of your life to create the most astounding post you have ever come across. – 10 Ways to Launch a New Blog with a ‘Bang’
(7) Register your new blog with search engines
Blogging tip – You will need to add your new blog to your Google web masters account, generate and submit a site map, and register with search engines. But don’t be surprised if it takes weeks for Google to acknowledge your site’s existence because new blogs are usually “in the sandbox“.
Technorati - claim your new blog, enter your tags, and register your favorite blogs. You will find that the site has excellent instructions to help you work through all the steps.
Yahoo indexes sites more frequently than MSN, which has now become Bing but less than Google but will dramatically increase visits after submission.
Bing (formerly MSN Live Search)
Special note for wordpress.com bloggers – this Support Documentation entry provides instructions for getting a Google WebMasters account and registering your blog with the three major search engines.
Note: If you have assigned categories and tags to your posts and used keywords in your post titles, subtitles and in the natural flow of the text they will be picked up by the search spiders. However, getting backlinks is the quickest way to be indexed by search engines.
(8) Promote your blog and your posts
- Write well and publish regularly. Keeping your blog updated with fresh and informative content will maintain reader interest.
- Reply to every comment as this may encourage more comments from the same readers and from others who have yet to comment.
- Be cautious about reciprocal linking and be very selective when choosing related blogs to link to and keep your blogroll updated.
- Be aware of your subscribers and subscribe to the feeds on their related blogs.
- Comment, comment, comment and comment.
- Backlink to posts published by faithful readers wherever possible.
- Create a social media time management strategy and stick to it.
- Use a Recent Comments widget to showcase those readers who leave the most recent comments.
- Use a Frequent Commenters widget to showcase those who leave the most comments.
- Promote and support the promotions of the blogs of your faithful readers at every opportunity that you can, and everywhere that you can.
(9) Traffic builders checklist - consider emplying these traffic building strategies
- creating and publishing pillar posts that provide timeless content for readers in your niche
- using anchor text in your recent posts to deep link to your earlier related posts
- learning basic SEO techniques for on page optimization and applying them to your posts and your blog will help you get the perfect link
- joining online groups and forums related to your niche or topic
- commenting and answering questions on forums related to your niche or topic
- creating and offering free newsletters and/or ebooks
- submitting press releases
- creating podcasts and videos for your readers
- guest blogging on blogs with higher PageRanks than your own blog
- inviting guest bloggers to create guest posts you can publish on your blog
- submitting articles to sites that accept free articles and provide backlinks
- participating in blog carnivals
Happy Blogging!
David
June 10, 2009
Where you say “Bing (formerly MSN Live Search) – At this point no one knows how to subit to this news search engines and the former link is a 404.”
Unless I misunderstand you, what you can do is follow the link you gave, then click on ‘Windows Live’ and you then follow the instructions to upload a sitemap.
MS’ blurb says “Windows Live ID helps you open a bing cashback account, get bing news alerts, add bing map collections, and gain full access to the bing Webmaster Center and the bing Developer Center.”
timethief
June 16, 2009
@David
When I put up the link it did “404″ but now the Bing connection is being made. Thanks for giving me a heads up, I have edited.
I’m expecting that once webmaster’s have digested what’s in the new white paper we will be seeing some helpful posts that explain in simple terms SEO and Bing. http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/bing-new-features-relevant-to-webmasters/
BloggerDaily
June 10, 2009
Nice list! I think I applied most of them while creating new blogs. Yeah, I agree with the suggestion that own a domain is better but as far as we concern content always be the king.
No good content means no good blog. Keep up! =)
timethief
June 16, 2009
@bloggerdaily
Without doubt content is king and promotion is queen. You can have wonderful content but if you have not used basic SEO in the posts and in the blog then potential readers will not find links to your content when they use search engines. And, domain have greater credibility when it comes to PageRank than sub-domains do.
Josh England
June 10, 2009
Brilliant. Short sweet and to the point useful info.
timethief
June 16, 2009
@josh England
Thanks for the succinct comment/compliment. It’s appreciated. ;)
Nothing profound
June 10, 2009
It”s wonderful the way you keep providing so much useful information for the benighted like me. Although I myself am too lazy and unmotivated to take advantage of it, I know you’re helping hundreds/thousands of others and nothing profound profoundly respects you for it.
timethief
June 16, 2009
@nothingprofound
Thank you kind Sir. I’m determined to be like water dripping on a stone. Eventually, I will wear down even the most recalcitrant bloggers, and they make the changes they need to make to create a stronger flow of organic traffic to their blogs. ;)
roentarre
June 10, 2009
This is an excellent post and I am spreading good word of this article in other fora :)
timethief
June 16, 2009
@roentarre
It’s always a pleasure to write for bloggers like you and to explore blogging issues on forums too. Thank you.
Norman(flashman193)
June 10, 2009
I would like to thank you for the informative post. I learned many new tips and appreciate your help.I am going to follow these steps to get more traffic to my blog.
Norman(flashman193)
timethief
June 16, 2009
@Norman
Great! I’m so happy to hear your feedback. Thanks for commenting and please come back and let me know how you make out with your blog changes.
Ibne Hanif
June 10, 2009
timethief,
Thank you very much for this informative post. Although when I created my blog I had no such knowledge about blogging but I hope I still have chance of using these tips to improve my blog.
timethief
June 16, 2009
@Ibne Hanif
It’s never too late to make these changes. Moreover, we bloggers who are focused ion improving the readers’ experiences of our blogs must be flexible as we are continually making adjustments. Best wishes to you.
stan
June 10, 2009
Thank you,I want to learn because I do have niche and an audience I need alot more info but this is a start.
timethief
June 16, 2009
@Stan
Establishing your niche and ascertaining who your audience is and what they need and want are big steps forward. I hope the information here will help you to create a reader and search engine friendly blog that’s a big success. Thanks for commenting.
Jose Sinclair
June 10, 2009
My first visit to BING, I was was able to quickly and easily submit my blogs.. I started with the most visited 5 or so..
Haven’t been back to check the results yet, its only been 2 days, but it was easy to submit them..
WE should NOT have to submit existing blogs that are easily found by Google, they should be crawling the Google list themselves without our help! what do these MSoft programmers in Asia do to earn their money?
PS – NOTE that when I updated to IE8, I unchecked “install MSN toolbar”, yet they installed it anyway, made MSN my HOME PAGE, changed my search engine from Google to BING! I had to change each item back to what I wanted!! THESE GUYS ARE RUTHLESS (they have no Ruth!) and are STILL LOSING THE NET WAR!
Jose S.
David
June 11, 2009
Be happy – get a mac.
timethief
June 16, 2009
@Joes
Yo! It’s just a search engine – remain calm – be brave – and wait for the signs. :)
Julius Orias
June 10, 2009
Thanks for this wonderful post and share what you have learn about blogging. Very interesting to see more post like this. I have learn
alot of mistakes in the past creating blogs without any purpose but now
I learn alot more.BTW, I join FMB with your widget here at your blog.
Regards,
affiliaterocks
timethief
June 16, 2009
@Juliua
Hello there. It’s so nice to hear from you. I too have made many mistakes. In fact, my first blogging tips blog had this tagline: “learning wordpress blogging one error at a time”.
irtiza104
June 16, 2009
almost one year has passed, but i’m still confused with the number one thing in the list. :(
timethief
June 16, 2009
@irtiza
Here’s a secret. It’s the hardest step of all. Those readers sure are elusive aren’t they? lol … :D
Hicham
July 11, 2009
I followed your link to my comment over the “blogging and authenticity” post. This is a handy list that hopefuly any new blog should follow up. Content and advertising both important for any blog. Nice work, TT.
alfon
July 19, 2009
thanks for sharing very helpful
Devin D. Haller
June 3, 2010
This is the most useful post/helpful information that I’ve come across so far and I just started almost a week ago. I see what I’ve been doing wrong and the few posts that I’ve done so far strayed way away from my niche and audience so I understand now that you can’t just write about random stuff or anything that interest you and maybe that’s why I haven’t been seeing too many views lately. I think I might just make a new blog and start over. Thanks a lot for this excellent post! By the way, I am going to follow your blog and recommend it to others too :)