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The road to your successful blog launch has so many mixed emotions attached to it! Excitement, eagerness, uncertainty, frustration, and mostly anticipation for launch day, just to name a few.
I know, I’ve been through 3 blog launches now and each one has been different because I’ve learned so much!
In today’s post, I’ll be covering the 6 steps to preparing for a successful blog launch!
1. Do your research When you are new to blogging, starting a blog can be a huge learning curve . There’s so much to take in!
Setting up your blog, coming up with content , creating strategies to use, buying courses, and other things to invest in, it’s overwhelming!
To start out, I recommend you do a ton of research. Take your time and learn what you can.
Research other bloggers in your niche Learn how to write blog posts with basic SEO strategies Learn about your blogging platform Connect with other bloggers Research any questions you have, take notes, and just do your best to learn anything and everything that you can!
2. Create a plan In order to have a successful blog launch, you need to have a plan in place.
My favorite way to get organized is with a physical planner or a digital blogger planner like this one .
Once you get all of the basic questions out of the way, it’s time to start! You’ll have to start picking your niche , coming up with your why, setting goals and getting organized!
Decide a date for your blog launch. If you don’t set a hard date, and instead wait for everything to be “perfect” – chances are you’ll never actually launch.
The truth is, your blog will likely never be perfect.
We are all our own worst critic.
There will always be something you could change, or tweak- forget about it!
You’ll likely never be 100% ready to launch when you first start out. So set a (realistic) date and try to get everything ready beforehand.
I took 3 months to get everything ready for launch.
Personally, I think that’s a good amount of time.
You can learn pretty much everything you need to, get posts ready, and start your social media accounts. But, again, I didn’t start this blog as a newbie.
I would recommend not taking any longer than 6 months to launch your blog.
The best way you can learn how to blog is to start- you will learn as you go.
3. Decide on a brand for yourself This is an important part of every business. Your brand is what you will be known for.
A brand can cover things like;
Your logo Your writing voice, or “blogging voice” Colors and fonts you’ll use throughout your website, logo, photos, and social media accounts And most important to your brand? YOU!
Whether you know it or not, the biggest part of your brand will be you and your personality.
Of course, you can totally build a brand with a logo and leave your face out of it!
But, if you’d like to make your blog more personal, it’s a good idea to have your photo somewhere. Either on your website or social media accounts.
People will connect more when they can attach a face to what they are reading over a logo.
But, by all means, if having your face out into the world is too much at first, don’t feel pressured to put yourself out there just yet.
But do consider it as an option!
4. Start writing posts It’s a good idea to have a backlog of posts for your blog. I like to have as many as possible because it relaxing to know you have posts ready in advance!
Some people say just launch with one post and go for it, but personally, I think it’s a good idea to have at least 3-5 posts ready for the day of launch. My goal was to have 10-15 posts up.
This will get rid of the “newbie blogger” look and give people more of a reason to stick around on your site.
Plus it will give you tons of content to promote the week of your launch. That way, you’ll instantly have viewers coming to your site.
If you are too excited to launch, and can’t wait till you have 10-15 posts written like me, that’s okay too.
However, to make up for that, it’d be a good idea to think about posting more often when you first launch.
One of the very first things that I did was start social media accounts.
Once I decided on a focus, I created social media accounts before my official blog launch for a few reasons.
To test out my brand/style so I could work on it Get people to know, like, and trust me sooner Have some followers! My thought was, if I started to provide value to my followers before I launched, they’d be eager to see what I’d offer once I went live!
Plus, the key to blogging success is getting people to know, like, and trust you. So if I could do that before I even launched- Even better!
If you don’t know what platforms to start out on, I highly recommend Pinterest to be on your radar! This is the last 90 days of stats on my Pinterest account:
Pinterest is the best place for bloggers to get started with, and if you need help, make sure to check out my Pinterest course called Pinterest Simplicity! I teach you everything you need to know to get results like mine.
Not only that, but I manage seven Pinterest accounts a month for clients of my own! So this course is the best place to get all of the knowledge!
6. Launch your email list If you’ve been researching blogging for any period of time, you’ve probably heard how important it is to have an email list!
It’s a good idea to get your email list up and running as quickly as possible because this will be the heart of your business when it’s time to start making money!
Start collecting those emails as early as possible!
I’ve tried a few different ones before and they weren’t great until I landed on Converkit . If you’re looking for a great email service provider, I highly recommend checking out Convertkit! It’s worth the investment!
Conclusion Honestly, there is a ton to learn when it comes to starting a blog.
But, it is so much fun at the same time! Just take it one step at a time and absorb as much information as you can in the beginning!
Hopefully, you learned a little something about what it takes to have a successful blog launch!
Have you launched your blog yet? What advice do you have for someone just starting out? Let me know in the comments below!