How to Launch Your Blog

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The launch period for your blog should be treated much like a “grand opening.” With the right strategy, you can turn your blog into a lucrative side hustle.

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Most new bloggers don’t create a strategic plan for their blog launch that details how they’re going to generate the first few waves of traffic from their intended audience.

But the reason most people fail at generating traffic for their blog right from the start is because they’re not thinking of launching their blog like they would a product.

If you were launching an actual physical product, you’d likely try to get awareness of your product by pitching it to publications, posting ads, working with influencers, doing giveaways, earning reviews, etc.

You’d have an entire strategy leading up to launch day.

Just like you’d launch a product, the launch period for your blog should be treated much like a “grand opening.” Your content isn’t available yet, but you’re building up hype for its release.

Launching a blog will take a good bit of time and preparation. But when done properly, it’ll definitely pay off in the end. Luckily, the strategic plan doesn’t have to be that complex.

1. Set a Launch Date

Treat the launch of your new blog like an event—something important that happens on a specific day where your brand and everything it has to offer becomes available to the public.

The specific date also helps you schedule what happens and when, and if anything, it gives you a target date or deadline.

2. Install Google Analytics

One thing you definitely want to make sure you add to your new blog is a solid analytics and stats tracking tool.

I recommend using Google Analytics. It will allow you to properly track the visitor trends on your blog such as daily new visitors, average time spent on your website and the most visited posts on your new blog.

Not only will it be helpful to see how many visitors your blog receives on launch date but this information is extremely valuable in the long term success and optimization of your site.

By being able to recognize trends you will be able to adjust your content appropriately.

3. Run a Crawl Simulation of Your Site

No matter how perfect you or your developers are, there’s always problems at launch ─ broken links, improper redirects, missing titles, pages lacking rel=canonical tags, etc.

By running a crawl test, you can check your blog’s accessibility and insure that visitors and search engines can reach pages and posts successfully in the ways you want.

4. Test Your Site Design with Browser Emulators

In addition to testing for search engine and visitor accessibility, you’ll want to make sure the gorgeous graphics and layout you’ve carefully prepared checks out in a variety of browsers including: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

When I first launched my blog, I actually spent two days doing this manually on a PC and MAC, but you can also do this with a browser testing tool.

5. Create Your Google Alerts

Set up Google Alerts to help you track any mentions or links going back to your site.  It’s not perfect, but it’s free and can give you the heads up on some of the sites and pages that mention your brand or link to your blog in a timely fashion.

6. Create Your Blog’s Social Accounts

Of course, social media is a necessary component of being a blogger. I’d recommend creating accounts on Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.

Don’t underestimate the power of automating. Use a scheduling tool like Tailwind to put your Pinterest and Instagram social media marketing on autopilot and generate traffic while you sleep!

When it comes to social media, only do only what you can manage. Depending on the scope of your blog niche, you can also set up Facebook and Google+ profiles.

Nothing is worse than outdated social media profiles so focus on where your audience is and if it makes sense for your blog niche.

7. Build an Email List

When you’re first getting started with your blog, this might not seem so important. But, having access to someone’s inbox is so valuable!

Create a “coming soon” page for your blog that includes a countdown to build anticipation and a space for those who are interested in leaving their name and email address to be notified when your site officially goes live.

A friendly email blast to just a few dozen of your close contacts can help set the stage for a successful blog launch.

Something that really worked for me was exporting my LinkedIn contacts into Gmail and asking my contacts if they wanted to join my email list to be notified at my blog launch.

8. Publish Guest Posts

Guest posting can be a great traffic driver to your blog. It also builds buzz for your brand and adds to the process of establishing yourself as a serious blogger.

Guest posting on other successful blogging plaforms is also a great way to build links back to your site, which helps with your Google search engine rankings.

9. Launch Your Blog

I recommend having ten published posts on your blog when you launch. This will keep your readers intrigued and give them a chance to fall in love with your writing.

Start promoting your content to drive traffic and attract more readers. Create some promotional graphics using photo editing tools and share them with your friends, in your newsletter, in online blogging communities and across your social media networks.

10. Set Targets for the Next 12 Months

Without goals and targets, there’s no way to know whether you’re meeting, beating or failing against expectations. If you’re just starting out, set goals for weekly visits, average page views, social media metrics, etc.

Each of these should have 3, 6 and 12 month targets. Don’t be too aggressive as you’ll find yourself discouraged or, worse, not taking your own targets seriously.

The Take Away

When it comes to having a successful blog, there is no such thing as an overnight success. It will take some hard work and dedication for your blog to become successful. But with the right strategy, you can turn your blog into a legitimate online side hustle.

If you’re just getting started as a blogger or online content creator, download this e-book of blogging resources to help get your started on your blogging journey.

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