Congratulations on your newly launched blog. I know you must be feeling very excited and pumped but at the same time, you might be wondering, now what next? Creating your blog is actually the easiest part and thanks to advancements in the WordPress community that anyone can create a blog easily.
But now you have the blog ready and like any other successful blogger, you want to grow your blog to get thousands to visitors so that you can make a living out of your blog and trust me this is not a one-night miracle.
All the successful blogs are not made in a day but you have to constantly work hard and hustle to make your blog successful. To make a successful blog you need to follow certain rules and take the right steps slowly and gradually.
So here we will discuss 10 such important steps that you should take to put a strong foundation to the success of your blog.
Step -1 Create Important Pages
This sounds nothing important but trust me it is as important as writing blog posts on your blog and most of the new bloggers miss that part. There are some pages which you must create on your blog from the legal point as well as from a user experience point.
These are some of those pages.
(a) “About” Page: You are on a blog post page and you really like that. Now you want to know who is the writer of this post and you want to know more about his / her background and other stuff. You start looking at the bottom or at the top of the website to find an About page, but like most of the new blogger you missed to add that to your blog or you thought it’s not important. But trust me, that about us page is one of the key element to build a strong relationship with your readers and you should never miss that opportunity.
(b) Legal Disclaimer & Privacy Policy Page: Now GDPR is a big thing these days. It’s important to add some legal pages to your blog, especially the Privacy Policy page. Even in the latest version of WordPress, you get a readymade template to create your own Privacy Page which you can edit for your blog.
(c) Contact page: The best way to build your trust and connection with your readers is by allowing them to contact you and adding a contact us page is the best way to do that. Also, If you are planning to work with brands or collaborate with other bloggers then you should keep a contact form on your contact page.
Step -2 Design your blog with a page builder
While building your blog you might have used a premium / paid theme but I am personally not a big fan of any premium / paid theme. They might give a great look to your blog but they come with so many scripts and features that you will never be going to use. In fact, that actually hurts your page load speed. Along with that, there are many times these paid themes are badly coded which makes your blog highly vulnerable to hackers and virus attacks.
WordPress has grown so much that you don’t have to depend on these paid themes to create a great looking blog. There are page builders like Elementor theme builder that you can use create your own custom blog theme like these paid WordPress themes without any coding knowledge.
With just 49USD / year, you can get a single site license and can create a custom page layout, forms, popups, Blog layouts, and even your own custom E-commerce website. The possibilities are endless and the biggest benefit is that you don’t have to bound your self in a particular theme and create anything as you need by just dragging and dropping various elements.
Step -3 Set up social media account
Now, this step should be done right at the time when you were booking your domain but if you have not done it yet, them make sure you create all social media accounts as soon as possible. No matter if you use 1 or 2 platforms only but you should claim most of the popular social media platform for the sake of branding of your blog.
Here is an important part while creating your social media accounts. Make sure you use the username of all the social media platforms same as your domain name. I have seen bloggers use blog domain as abc.com and their facebook id is @abc23 and Instagram id is @abc_1_2_3 and twitter id is @abc_123. This is a very bad example of creating a brand on social media. Make sure you keep your username exactly like your domain name or at least keep them uniform on all the platforms so that your audience doesn’t get confused and can easily find you online.
Step -4 Focus on list building from day 1
Content is king for bloggers but data is king for online entrepreneurs. If you are planning to use your blog as an online business and earn a full-time income from it then you must start building your email list from day 1.
There is no doubt that you need these social media platforms like Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest to build your audience but you don’t own these platforms. There could be one algorithm change and your account will be nowhere to be found. You only own your website but in the worst case, that also can get banned or your hosting guys could screw up.
In that situation, your only asset is your email subscribers. These are the people who trusted you with your content and products and these people will always be with you no matter what goes bad in your online business.
The best way to build an email list is to offer some value to your readers in the form of an ebook a small video course or anything that they can download and will be helpful for them. Technically these freebies are called lead magnets you will be using some Email marketing service to collect all these email subscribers.
If you are starting up them MailChimp is the best option for you because its free. Once you grow your subscriber base you can switch to their paid plans or even some other Email Marketing apps, my favorite is Convert kit if I have to recommend one.
Step -5 Get familiar with SEO
SEO = Search Engine Optimization in general terms can be defined as making your blog post appear in Google search results and getting traffic from that. If you are a blogger or running an online business then Google is your only Boss. You need to make sure that your boss is always happy with your work on your blog and appreciate that by ranking your posts as the top 10 results on Google search. SEO is probably the most important thing to learn if you wish to grow our blog organically.
As a beginner, SEO could sound like rocket science to you but actually, it’s not that hard to understand and implement for long term gains. A most important part of gaining benefits from SEO is to keep implementing what you learn and have lots of patience.
If you want to learn SEO I would highly recommend enrolling in some SEO course. By this, I do not mean that you go ahead and buy a thousand dollar course from some blogging guru. We are living in a digital world and knowledge can’t be so expensive.
I would highly recommend you to join SKILLSHARE, A platform where you can enroll in an endless number of courses by just paying a few dollars a month. You will get an endless amount of knowledge at the cost of peanuts. This platform is the best way to keep learning new things. The best part is you can get at least 2 months of FREE access to all the courses.
Step -6 Plan your Monetization
A blog can be your fulltime income if you have a proper monetization strategy. Even if you are just starting up, you should plan your monetization of the blog in advance so that you can plan your content marketing accordingly. If you are an experienced blogger then you can implement various monetization techniques to convert your visitors to your customers.
But if you are just starting up and do not have an audience then this is the best time to plan your monetization. You don’t have to pitch for sale from day 1 but if you know how you will be earning money from your blog then you can easily plan your way in advance and work in that direction.
suggested read: 7 Ways to Monetize your blog from day 1.
Step -7 Be consistent
Your blog can become your fulltime job if you pursue it honestly and work hard towards it. There are thousands of blogs launching every minute and most of them fail to make any money, not because of competition but because they give up too early. If you are building a blog and trying to make it your full-time income then you need to work really hard for at least 2 years and then you can think of getting any return on your invested time.
But most of the new bloggers become impatient and quit very early and fail to make anything out of their blog. The only key to success in the field of blogging is to be consistent and produce quality content to provide value to your readers. If you do it for at least 24 months you can surely make this work for you and can earn a full-time income.
Conclusion
Making your blog work need some planning, dedication and lots of hard work. But if you do these things correctly you can make it works and earn good money from your blog. So, follow these steps once you launch your blog and I am sure it will help you grow.
For the love of Pinterest
