What do I do now?
So you’ve been inspired to start a blog, you believe the ROI messages from Part 2, Part 3 has helped you choose a platform, but now what? This section gives you some guidance on the key things you need to do to make this a success, and points you to plenty of resources that will help.
First, you’ve got to get the purpose of this new blog clear in your mind. You might be selling something specific, or you might be taking an indirect approach and promoting your expertise in a particular area so that potential clients like what they hear, want to work with you and check out your company. You might be sharing expertise around your organisation, or you might be using the medium to connect directly with your customers. Whichever it is, get that vision clear in your mind.
Next, give the blog a theme. It might include your musings and rants, but give it an identity around something that you’re passionate about. There is an enormous amount of content out there, and you need to make yours worthy of people’s attention. That will happen if yours gets mixed with your enthusiasm and passion.
Get a domain name of your own. Blogger and TypePad domain names are OK, but you wouldn’t start your company site on Geocities would you? In any case, you will almost certainly want to switch platforms at some point, and this will be easier if you’ve got your own address.
Get in to the habit of writing and set aside some time every day, or week. If you want your site to get noticed, you need to feed it, so it can feed the audience and their news aggregators.
Cross post and comment on as many sites as you can. Make sure your site is easy to access, with RSS feeds, Atom, or a subscription option, or all of these. Have a blogroll of blogs you read and people you like. There is an interesting rule in blogging - the more you send them away, the more they’ll come back. So the more you connect with other bloggers, the more they’ll connect with you, and that will improve your ranking.
And the topic that seems to be missed by so many bloggers - apply the rules of Search Engine Optimisation. In simple terms you want to get noticed by the search engines. That is more likely to happen if your blog titles aren’t esoteric or clever, but say what the topic is about with the appropriate keywords. Your post should have those key words peppered around in prominent places. That, combined with the links you’ll manage to get from those other bloggers who are wiser and more popular than you will enhance your page rank in Google, and bring more traffic to your site.
The good news is that there are plenty of advisers out there to help you. Here are some:
Guy Kawasaki with great advice on how to evangelize your blog.
Dennis Howlett’s take on the do’s and don’ts for an accounting practice.
Michael Zhang of Folksonomy offers 7 Ways to Opitmize Your Blog.
Darren Rowse is the problogger from Australia. He writes half a dozen successful blogs, and has plenty of advice for the more directly commercial blogger. Here’s a selection from him:
18 Lessons I’ve Learnt about Blogging
Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days
Social Bookmarking - Getting your Blog Noticed
Search Engine Optimization Articles and Resources
Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days
Social Bookmarking - Getting your Blog Noticed
Search Engine Optimization Articles and Resources
Take a look at Aaron Brazzell’s “The Blogger’s Primer“.
Thirty Stories up has their “7 Mistakes for your First Week Blogging“.
This is Jakob Nielsen’s “Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes“.
And here is Mary Hodder’s “A Comparison of How Some Blog Aggregation and RSS Search Tools Work“.
Presentation Zen asks “Where can you find good images?“.
You need to do enough preliminary research to get the feel of what style and level of detail is going to work, but then just jump in and join the Global conversation.
