18 Ways To Setup Your Blog For Immense Success (Part 1)

Blogging isn’t all that simple.

Sure, the fundamentals are extremely basic. You pick a domain name, install WordPress and away you go. But there are a thousand little factors that can either make or break your blog.

So I decided to write this extensive 18 step quick start guide to setting up your blog for immense success! It’s broken down into two posts, here are the first 9:

1. Build An Email List

If you want a successful blog, your question shouldn’t be “how do I setup a successful blog”. Instead, it should be “how can I build the biggest following”.

Blog’s are only successful because of their followings. Their readers are what makes them so successful. If you want your content to go viral and get picked up by thousands of different sources; you need loyal readers who share it.

…And the best way to build a loyal following is to build an email list. There are countless lists you can build. You can build a Facebook list, a Twitter list (now x.com), a RSS list, but most importantly you should build an email list.

Why?

Simply because email marketing offers the most control over your subscribers. You could ask everyone to subscribe to your RSS feed, but what would happen if the feed service crashed (think Feedburner). If Google discontinued Feedburner and you had 10,000 RSS subscribers; you’d be screwed.

With email marketing, you have complete control over your subscribers. You can collect as much information about them as you want, download/export your lists and mail them whenever you please.

It’s the ultimate way to build a following and make money with a blog. To get started with email marketing, you need to:

1. Get An Autoresponder: Either Aweber (works, checked as of 2024) or GetResponse (works, checked as of 2024)
2. Create A List In Your AR
3. Add A Subscription Form To Your Blog’s Sidebar

2. Use Feedburner

Feedburner is a RSS subscription service owned by Google. Feedburner allows you to “burn” a feed by simply entering your domain.

A RSS feed is essentially a live feed of all your blog posts. Generally, feeds display snippets of your blog posts and whenever you publish something new; it’ll show up in the feed. Services like Feedburner allow you to create a feed and then publicize it.

By publicize I mean promote so people can subscribe to it. When people are subscribed to your RSS feed, they’ll receive an update every time you publish a new blog post. You can subscribe to a RSS feed in several ways; but the ultimate option is email.

When readers subscribe to your blog’s feed via email; they’ll get an email every time you publish a post. So if you’ve got readers subscribed to an email list as well as an RSS feed, they’ll receive two emails about the same post increasing its exposure.

The more times subscribers are exposed to your new content; whether via email, RSS or social media, the more likely they are to read it.

3. Create And Syndicate To Social Profiles

Social profiles are a key component to a successful blog. Without social media, you’ll struggle to build any kind of community. And without a community, you can’t build a successful blog.

So first of all create accounts on the following sites using your blog domain for the usernames:

• Facebook
• Twitter (now x.com)
• Google Plus
• Pinterest
• Digg
• Youtube

Once setup, you need to be active on them. Make connections, add friends, post updates and most importantly; syndicate (share) your new blog posts on all of your social profiles immediately after you publish them.

4. Add Social Sharing Buttons

Social signals are the new backlinks. A social signal is effectively just a social share. It could be a Facebook like, a Tweet (now x.com), Google +1, a pin, or a bookmark.

The best blog traffic is referral. Meaning visitors who have been referred by other visitors. By adding social sharing buttons to your blog posts you greatly increase the chances of visitors sharing your content.

The more people who share your content, the more referral traffic you will get and the higher you will rank in the search engines. Social signals are a huge part of SEO now, take advantage of these little buttons!

Use sharebar (works, checked as of 2024) to add a simple sharing bar to all your posts and pages.

5. Connect With Fellow Bloggers

Connecting with fellow bloggers is one of the fastest ways to set your blog up for success. By connecting with fellow bloggers, you’ll get shout outs and more social shares. If you friend a top blogger on Facebook and they message you quoting your blog; their entire Facebook audience will be exposed to it.

Connecting with fellow bloggers is also important for establishing yourself within the community and finding guest blogging opportunities.

6. Interact With Your Subscribers

If you want a responsive email list and a loyal following, you need to seriously interact with them. There are six ways to interact with your subscribers:

1. Email Them Asking How They’re Doing
2. Connect With Them On Google Plus
3. Follow Them/Give Them A Shout Out On Twitter (now x.com)
4. Friend Them On Facebook
5. Respond To The Comments They Leave On Your Blog
6. Comment On Their Blogs

7. Use Call To Action

What good is a blog post that doesn’t accomplish anything?

Unfortunately most bloggers never direct their readers properly. You need to think of your readers as a herd that needs to be directed. If you don’t include a call to action in every blog post, readers will probably just close the page rendering them useless.

Here are the four biggest call to actions:

• Join The Email List
• Buy My Product
• Follow Me On Twitter/Facebook/Google+
• Leave A Comment

8. Learn SEO

Search engine optimization is a fundamental skill that you must learn if you want an immensely successful blog. In all honesty SEO is boring, it’s tedious and if you over do it you can get a penalty from Google.

So my advice is to focus on social media and writing epic content. Learn the basics of SEO, just enough so that you know how to target keywords on-page and syndicate content off.

9. Write Pillar Content

Pillar content means epic blog posts. The most successful blogs online consist of pillar content. In order to grow a blog quickly, you need to adopt one of two schools of thought. They are:

1. Write lots of 500+ word posts (5/week for example)
2. Write one epic 1500-2500 word post/week

The most influential bloggers out there all seem to vote for number two, writing less posts, but writing pillar content. Pillar content that consists of 1500+ words of text, countless images and the odd video.

If you want to grow your blog as quickly as possible via social media; that’s the way to go. However if you want short and long term steady growth; you should write more blog posts of lesser quality. (It does make sense)

If you write five 500+ word posts per week, your traffic will mainly come from the search engines and it will be 100% passive. Epic blog posts don’t get much SEO traffic, but they do receive an initial surge of visitors from social networks. Usually in the range of hundreds to thousands of visitors.

===>>> Click Here To Read Part Two

Comments

Galen Morgigno, June 28 2012, 14:23

David, you rocked this post with the first 9 set up steps. All necessary and important to having a successful blog. Enjoyed your points on #5 Connect with Bloggers and #6 Interact with Subscribers!

Thanks, Galen Morgigno

Anna Thompson, June 29 2012, 09:15

This is a fantastic guide for beginners! I especially appreciate the emphasis on building an email list and creating pillar content. Looking forward to Part Two!

Michael Sanders, June 29 2012, 12:45

Great post, David! The tip about social profiles is so important, and many new bloggers overlook it. Thanks for sharing these insights.