This is a guest post by Ilias Chelidonis. If you want to guest post on http://www.dailyblogtips.com/,
I decided to launch my first blog back in February 2011, I was all
excited and ready for being able to share my knowledge and experience
with the world. Although, in the beginning traffic was very low, after
having a specific plan in place and knowing the subject I was blogging
about very well, managed to reach 4000 unique visitors last month. In a
nutshell, the key ingredient for a successful blog is to create great
content that teaches people something, optimize the content for search
engines and distribute it via social media.
I made a list of 12 steps you need to follow in order to create a
successful blog. They are all coming from personal experience, starting
from a single idea to creating a blog that help people learn lessons on
social media, search engine optimization and blogging.
1. Decide what you are going to blog about,
this is by far the most important decision in order to create a
successful property. It is acceptable if the subject is broad in the
beginning, as you gain more experience and learn what your readers want,
you can become more focused. For example, in the beginning you may blog
about online marketing in general but down the road realize that you
want to focus on just seo practices or social media marketing.
2. Decide for your blog’s name.
The name needs to be memorable, easy to spell and it would be advisable
to include a keyword of the topics you will be blogging about, that is
if you blog about online marketing and social media it, try to add words
like social, media, marketing, in your domain name.
3. Get a professional blog theme,
I would advise Thesis theme and Woothemes, they are very easy to
customize with tons of features. Do not try to save few dollars by
getting a free theme, because most of them do have limitations and do
not come with support. You do not need to have a custom design for your
blog, at least in the beginning, as you gain more experience and
readers, you can consider that for a major update.
4. Get a professionally designed logo,
it will cost you few dollars to have a designer do that but will put
you ahead of competition, furthermore, readers will take you more
seriously and they see you invest money and time in creating a serious
blog.
5. Select a good and reliable web host, shop
around for a reliable web hosting provider that can help you in setting
up your blog as well, do not go for the cheapest but for those
specializing in wordpress. Start with a share hosting account and if you
grow big, move to a dedicated server.
6. Install few but powerful wordpress plugins.
I have personally used them and highly recommend them. Avoid stuffing
your blog with as many plugins as possible because they will eventually
make your blog hard to navigate and make readers lose focus.
7. Install google web analytics.
If you cannot measure it you cannot improve it, so make sure google
analytics are on place. Check your stats often but do not get over
obsessed with traffic especially in the beginning as it will not be
much.
8. Write down any ideas for topics you may have,
sit down 1 hour a week and brainstorm on what to blog about next week,
do not worry if you eventually change the topics but having a list of
idea topics will help you to stay focus. How to and list topics work the
best e.g How to run an online store or 10 ways to run an online store.
9. Install social media sharing widgets and buttons,
this will help your readers share your content with their friends and
fans, thus bringing in more traffic and loyal readers, people love to
share only content they like.
10. Optimize all your posts for search engines,
make sure that keywords are on the subject title and repeated at least
once every 150 words in the main text content. Use images to increase
readers’ curiosity, internet is all about photos.
11. Blog as often as possible but try to have a post at least 3 times a week, do not expect to build a successful blog if you have just 1 post a week, blogs need content and lots of it.
12. Develop a system to get new content ideas.
You do not need to create the content for all your posts because you
will eventually get drained. Find interesting content from other
resources that will help your readers learn something new and do a post
at your blog, do not just tell them to visit the link but do an analysis
instead. For instance, if you found a great post on another blog about
Search Engine Optimization, do a 150 word analysis on the post, what is
your opinion and experiences on the subject. Do not forget to add the
link and the blog you found the topic.