Starting a blog is easier than opening up an email account these days, it takes less than 5 minutes, but then if you are thinking of launching a non-personal blog for your small business then you'll definitely need much more than 5 minutes.
Pre-launching stage is trickier than post-launch, 'coz once everything is set up you just need to concentrate on good content and attaining readership. But before you get there, you need to make sure that you have that perfect template, apt niche, good writer(s), blog post ideas and a strategy in place. Every blogger has his/her own must-dos depending on what they plan to do with their blog, but few steps are universal in nature. Here are 20 of them:
20 Must-Dos Before Launching a Small Business Blog
- First and foremost make sure that your blog is private while its still under construction so that search engines don't index your blog and people don't find it until its ready; because child birth ain't a pretty sight...its the baby that people love.
- Ensure that you choose the right hosting for your blog with minimum downtime.
- Throughly cross check that you do not have any broken links in your blog.
- A killer about us page describing the purpose of your blog is a must.
- Do include a simple and crisp contact us form on your blog.
- Many bloggers tend to place 'about us'/'profile' and 'contact us/me' link hidden on their homepage. Its hard to understand why...don't make this mistake and let your readers easily read about you and contact you.
- Make sure that RSS feed button for your blog is prominently displayed on your homepage.
- Do check if your blog is working fine with all browsers.
- Its important to have atleast 5 articles ready before launching your blog.
- Have atleast 10 of your friends or family members look at your blog from a critical point of view (leave flattering for your readers) and ask them to proofread it as well.
- Register with various social media accounts specially for your blog. Eg: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and LinkedIn etc.
- Add major social networking buttons like Tweet, Facebook Like, Share This...and Digg and StumbleUpon as you like.
- Make sure that your blog is linked with analytics to study and analyze visitors and their behavior on your blog.
- Check the loading time of your blog.
- Its very important to take a back-up for your blog template and make it a habit to back-up your articles and comments every now and then.
- Make sure that your blog has a logo or a mascot. That's gonna be your blog's identity in the virtual world.
- Prepare a list of bloggers similar to your niche, visit their blogs, interact with them and build relationships...this is most organic and efficient way to spread the word about your blog.
- Look out for blog directories and submit your blog there.
- From SEO point of view, make sure that you customize permalinks and structure them better.
- Lastly, prepare a to-do list of all these points including other details that you can think of. Make sure that you strike all of 'em out before launching your brand new blog.
I am sure that there are many more points that can be included in this list, if you can think of some more, then do share them with us and our readers in the comment section below.
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Great tips, thank you!!!
You are most welcome Amanda. :)
Great tips, thank you!!!