You Started Your Blog, Now What?

Let me first preface this post by saying, you seasoned bloggers know the ropes already. This  post will target new bloggers and their next steps in building their online venture.

Build It and They Come

The above statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Expecting to start your blog, post an article and traffic will flood in will kill your business. No one knows you exist. You are a wallflower on the virtual dancefloor.

You built it, now your focus is to sustain it. How do you go about doing this you ask? Well, I will tell you some necessary steps to take.

First Things First

Before promotion of your content/blog begins, you need to set yourself up for easy promotional capability. Unless you have been under a rock, you must know that Twitter is a powerful tool for your blog. So, set up a Twitter account and begin following people and engaging in conversation.

Next, you need to set up a Facebook page for your blog. It’s not necessary to link your personal FB page to your blog, but your fan page should have some level of transparency. Meaning, some tidbits about yourself and a real picture of yourself. Both Twitter and FB should now be linked to your blog.

Then What?

Again, you can’t promote your fabulous content without places to do so. Your next step is to join some blog communities. Obviously you want to place your blog in the right categories pertaining to your niche. Don’t submit your marketing blog to the sports category unless you want your new blog to be a ghost town.

I took the liberty of suggesting some great communities for you to join.

1.  Serpd       a great community of internet marketing, seo and blogging professionals.
2.  Blokube   Another great, young community to get your posts noticed.
3. YouSayToo  Two things I like about this one. First, you do not have to manually submit every post. They pull your information from your feed. Secondly, they share in Adsense revenue with you. SCORE!
4. BlogEngage  A leader among men…top notch. Nuff said.

These are just a few that I personally utilize….there a hundreds of great communities to become involved in. My thoughts on this are that the more you join, the less opportunity you have to talk with people and build relationships. I would start off with a couple and begin engaging people.

These rules apply the same as Twitter and Facebook. You absolutely have to engage with fellow users. This is a black and white issue. There is no compromising on this issue.

Finally

While nothing is ever final in your blogging business, this is where you can begin to promote your content. Tweet your posts, post them to your FB pages and submit them to the blog communities. Users in these places have the option to vote on your posts, retweet them and share them everywhere.

I think it goes without saying here, your content needs to be relevant, well written and on topic. You can’t submit junk to these places and expect people to keep reading and sharing. Not gonna happen. So make sure you put every effort into your posts and give people a reason to come back.

These are not hard steps to take nor are they guaranteed to shoot you to superstar status. But, they are essential steps to take to get your blog off the ground and moving forward. Now what you do after this is up to you. You started your blog so I’m pretty sure you want it to succeed.

How will you promote your blog? Any other communities you prefer joining?

Share your thoughts and this post!