A collection of tips which I’ve implemented over the years when launching a new design blog, as well as being a good personal reference of things I should do in the future if I choose to launch a new blog.
Setting Up goals
Setting up goals and targets which you want your blog to achieve, this is great because it gives you motivation to work harder in order achieve a goal.
Five personal goals which I setup when creating Vector Patterns was to aim towards achieveing the following targets over a 5 month period.
1. Over 1000 RSS subscribers and over 1000 twitter followers
2. Created over 40 articles
3. Have a page rank of three
4. Sold 6 ad spots
5. Featured on some top design blog
6. Continue to enjoy blogging.
Planning out a month’s worth of content
Start by grabbing a pen and paper and deciding what posts you want to publish within the first few months within the launch of the blog. When launching the blog have 5 posts published so readers have content to read through, the more posts you have on the site the more readers you will attract to the site. It’s also a good idea to have posts to be ready to published, within the first month of the launch of your blog.
Offering a free giveaway
Everyone enjoys free giveaways this is a superb way to attract readers to your blog by running a contest such as a free design book to one lucky reader, who tweets about your website on twitter this a great way to start viral twitter campaign which potential could send a lot of traffic to your brand new website making a large audience aware of your website.
Promote your website
It’s awesome having great contents but if no one ever reads this awesome content there’s no real point producing good content. This is why it’s essential in order to promote your blog these are three great ways to promote your blog and content on your blog.
1. Social Media
Promote your website through social media website the top 3 which bring in the most visitors are digg, stumble upon, delicious, or even design related social media websites such as Design Float and Design Bump.
2. Making Readers aware of you new site on other blogs you own
If you have a large following of readers on other blogs you own it may also be worth creating a post informing your readers about the new website you have just launched, this is a great way to attract a large readership if you own other blogs.
3. Guest post on other design blogs
Most large design blogs design instruct, tutsplus etc are always in search of new writers. Writing content for other blogs is a great way to drive people who enjoyed the articles you may have produced for other blogs back to your blog.
Work on quality rather than quantity
It’s great to have a ton of design articles which will bring you in loads of traffic to your website but it’s even better to have quality articles, the better content the more chance readers will keep coming back to your blog in order to read the latest articles.
Be open to feedback
Strive to make your blog better and better take on any feedback which people offer you don’t be ignorant, weather its negative or positive feedback any feedback is good feedback and can help you to have a better blog.
Conclusion
Setting goals milestones which you can achieve will motivate you to keep blogging and producing good content. Planning prevents failure, having several posts ready to be published on your website. Promote your content you have spent a lot of time producing good content ensure the widest possible audience is reading it. Don’t worry about producing 7 article a week concentrate on producing 3 quality articles a week instead. Listen to feedback it can make your blog better don’t be ignorant.
August 10th, 2010 at 7:38 am
Does it benefit your blog by adding comments on other blogs? Also if you dont mind me asking, when it says acceptable code – what does this mean? Cheers Grant
August 10th, 2010 at 11:02 am
@Grant – Hey Grant thanks for leaving a comment. Does it benefit your blog by adding comments ? yes because their so many benefits, it will help improve your websites page rank which means you will rank higher in google. Another reason is if you leave of good comment people who read the comment are more than likely to want to find out more about the person who left the comment by checking out their blog.
August 10th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Thanks Timothy really good advise. I have only been doing a blog for about 4 months and love it. I read yesterday though that some blogs have a ‘no follow’ on comments which means google wont track them. I might have that wrong but if its the case can you tell which are beneficial to your google ranking? Cheers Grant
August 10th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Yet another question….on some comment boxes it has underneath- acceptable code. What does this mean and how can it be used? Cheers Grant
August 11th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
“Work On Quality Rather Than Quaintly” The amount of blogs that don’t follow this rule is unreal.
Also general spelling, grammar and punctuation is a must
August 11th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
@kieran – In order to build a quality blog good content is essential, I completely agree with you.
August 11th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
@Grant – The benefits improving your google ranking is for instance if you own blog about photography this will help your blog rank higher in google when people search for e.g. terms such as photographer, making your site one of the first results to turn up.
August 12th, 2010 at 1:01 am
Hi, really useful tips…I will adopt this tips for my new brand identity niche blog
Thanks
August 12th, 2010 at 6:05 am
There are enough design blogs.. Don´t create any.
August 12th, 2010 at 9:43 am
@Ben – There can never be too many design blogs that provide good useful content which educate designers.
August 14th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
I launched my blog almost 2 months back I wish I had set some goals like you told.. Nevertheless, I will set them now..
Thanks for the good article!
August 17th, 2010 at 4:39 am
Hi!
I agree with you written a very good text. I think that the subject is not completely exhausted. Waiting for more …
And by the way see the election of Miss World: http://missvanilla.eu/
August 19th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Hi bro,
Few but great tips there. As a beginner Design-blogger {lumanti.com} your post is bookmarkable for me. Will come back for more. Cheers !
Btw, just noticed the typo mistake on your header banner {Lanuch}.
August 21st, 2010 at 12:50 am
the precious thoughts u provided do help my investigation for our company, thanks.
August 26th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
very nice article, thanks for sharing..
September 14th, 2010 at 7:43 am
Took me time to read the whole article, the article is great but the comments bring more brainstorm ideas, thanks.
- Johnson
October 22nd, 2010 at 4:48 pm
LANUCH
YEAAAAAAAAH
ROCK N ROLL
January 1st, 2011 at 1:57 am
This has a lot of helpful info! Thanks!