in today’s article I’m going to show you exactly how to start and grow a blog successfully from scratch step by step. If you want to grow a blog that reaches thousands or even millions of people. You’ll love the actionable steps in this video. stay tuned.
1. Nail your blog’s positioning
Nail your blog’s positioning when most people start a blog they wonder things like should i use wordpress, squarespace or wix. What are the best plugins for seo. How can i get my blog to look like other popular blog as it turns out.
If you want to grow your blog these are the wrong questions to ask. When i launched my first blog a while back. I was obsessed with things like themes, plugins and other nonsense as it turns out that stuff doesn’t really matter.
Positioning is a fancy way of saying what makes your blog different. Than the thousands of other blogs out there on that topic. For example the first blog that i ever launched was in the weight loss space. And i put zero thought into that blog’s positioning. It was for all intents and purposes just another health and fitness blog.
And because that blog didn’t have strong positioning or any positioning at all really it ultimately failed. Then a few years later when i launched new blog and i made positioning a top priority. If i launched my blog as a generic digital marketing blog. I would have failed before i even started.
Link Building
Instead to stand out i positioned my blog as a resource for all things link building. Every post that i wrote was about link building, all my website copy was about link building, every guest post that i published on other blogs was about link building.
I think you get the idea and this strong focus positioning help my blog really stand out in those critical first few months. So if your blog is brand new or if you want to get more traction from your existing blog. You want to identify one small niche topic and only cover that topic for at least three to four months. Then as your blog grows you can slowly branch out into other topics.
2. Publish a power post – to start and grow a blog
Now that you have strong positioning for your blog it’s time to create piece of content around that niche topic. But not just any blog post a power post. In other words a post that’s so insanely valuable that it helps put your blog on the map.
What makes a power post for you depends on your industry and your positioning. As long as your content is something that makes someone say wow you’re on the right track.
3. Step up your design
When someone lands on your blog for the first time. They judge your credibility on design first and your content second. And there’s research to back this up a study out of sheffield university found that design has a bigger impact on someone’s impression of your site than the content itself.
So if you want people to take your blog seriously it needs to have a professional design. That said this doesn’t mean that your blog needs some fancy design or win some sort of design award. It’s not at all about having a flashy design.
As long as it looks professional and matches your blog’s positioning you’re good. The content that you publish will ultimately make or break your blog’s success. But that doesn’t mean that you should sleep on your blog’s design because it’s also super important with that out of the way.
4. Write an origin story – to start and grow a blog
If your blog is in a competitive space having an origin story can really help your blog stand out. So i recommend creating a quick little origin story that outlines where you were, before you created your blog. Why you decided to create your blog and the main problem you’re trying to solve.
I recommend sharing this story on your site’s about page in social media, in guest posts and on podcast interviews.
5. Execute a post promotion plan
Most people publish a post shared on social media and wait for the traffic to roll in. In fact when i launched my first blog that’s exactly what i did. I work all day in a post push it live and share it on social media and then i wait for it to go viral. Today i call this the publish and pray approach. Because when you do it you publish and then pray for traffic.
20-80 strategy
And needless to say it didn’t work. so when i launched my blog a few years later. I put promotion burst in fact i estimate that i spent about 20 percent of my time creating content and 80 of my time promoting it. which helped my blog’s traffic grow even though it was brand new.
So how do you actually promote your content the right way here are two strategies that i recommend. first use pre-outreach pre-outreach is just like it sounds. You start the outreach process before you actually publish your post. So why is this important well when most people promote their content with outreach they’re way too pushy.
I’m sure you’ve seen emails like this before but with pre-outreach you flipped a script on traditional outreach. You’re not asking for a share because it’s not even possible to share your post yet. I mean you haven’t even published it. And because you’re respectfully asking to send them an upcoming post instead of begging for a share your conversion rate will be a lot higher.
Next you want to share your posts with your email subscribers. When it comes to content promotion email crushes social media. For example i recently shared a post on twitter and with my email subscribers. The tweet got a total of 340 clicks and the newsletter announcement got over 13000 clicks a massive difference.
So yeah social media has its place but it’s nothing compared to email.
6. Build your email list – to start and grow a blog
Building my email list was one of the most important things i did to grow my blog. My only regret is that it didn’t start sooner. That’s because once you have an engaged email list anything is possible. About to sell a new product you have a list of people ready to hear about it. Want to announce your new youtube channel you can get hundreds of subscribers on your first day. Want to spread the word about your latest post you’ve got a small army of people ready to spread the word.
So it’s clear that an email list is huge the question is how do you actually build it. First you want to make your blog’s homepage a landing page not your blog feed. For example my original homepage design was a list of my latest blog posts in other words a traditional blog feed. Fow this was great for helping people find my latest content but it didn’t convert well at all.
So as an experiment i tried a more traditional homepage. And i put my blog feed at forward slash blog and that single change skyrocketed that page’s conversion rate. Next you want to create a lead magnet a lead magnet is an ebook report video case study.
Basically anything that encourages someone to subscribe to your email list and these don’t have to be complicated to make. For example some of my most successful lead magnets are just pdf versions of the post that the person’s already reading that’s it.
7. Reply to comments
So if you follow the steps up to this point you should be starting to get some traction in terms of traffic and subscribers. And you might even notice that people are starting to leave comments on your posts. I have a word of advice for you reply to every single comment that comes in.
Seriously having a community on your blog is super important. In fact copyblogger famously shut down comments on their blog then put them back up a few months later. When they realized that they made a big mistake like me they realized that an active community is a huge part of growing a blog. And that community is only going to get built up.
If you reply to every single comment. For example i reply to every comment that people leave in the first week or so after a post goes live. This takes a lot of time and energy but to me it’s totally worth it.
Bonus Step: Form a blog alliance -Start and Grow a Blog
Let’s face it growing a blog by yourself can be super lonely. I mean you probably spent a lot of your time writing blog content promoting your blog and watching videos about blogging like this one. There probably aren’t a ton of people in your life who can relate to that. Which is why i recommend forming a blog alliance.
A blog alliance is a group of two to four people that meet online once in a while just to trade tips and talk show. So form a blog alliance with another blogger. There you have it my seven step process for starting and growing a blog.
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