Launching a new blog there are numerous steps to complete prior to actually start promoting it or writing (too many) blog posts. Some of the steps below are essential to do and some of the steps you’ll simply be happy you did, before launching.
1. Write the About page.
Before doing anything else, it a good idea write the About page of the business blog. Going through the process of writing the About page, you force yourself to decide exactly what you want the blog to be about. You put the theme of the blog into words and get a clear view of how you should brand it.
Also, the About page is one of the most looked for and visited pages by new readers, so it’s important to have one.
2. Choose Your Domain Name
I would actually argue that you should choose your domain name only after writing the About page. Most people don’t, I done it for this blog, but usually I haven’t done so either. It feels like the natural place to start when choosing a domain name for your business blog.
Deciding exactly how to brand your business blog and what your blog is to be about, before looking for a domain name, will make it easier to find a name that encapsulates the essence of your blog. Reading through your About page you should make a list of keywords that stand out or are related to what you’ve written. Then you simply try different combinations of the words (and test the domain name availability), until you find just the right combination that is both brandable and “rings true” to your blog theme.
Remember however that you can choose whatever name you want. Many choose their own name, other’s something completely off topic. The important part is how you brand the blog afterwards. Every name can get the right “ring to it” with the right branding strategy.
3. Decide on the Name and Tagline
Having a clear picture of what you want to use the business blog for is necessary. Deciding on the blog’s name and tagline before starting to promote is highly recommended. Sure, it can be changed later, but a later change might confuse your readership and more importantly all your promotion for the old name will be lost.
I find that thinking about the tagline as I create the About page, helps the process of creating the few words that sum up and capture the spirit of the blog. This is the tagline.
4. Choose the Theme of Your Business Blog
I use WordPress as my blogging platform, because I’ve found that it gives me the most options with the design options and settings that I care about. Whatever blog platform you choose, it’s important to choose the theme, the colors, the fonts that you feel are just right. This is an important step, but don’t use to much time on it, before launching the blog as you will probably modify everything continually (and especially in the beginning) and it’s more important to start blogging.
There are many, many free templates to choose from for the blog theme. I’ve chosen to use the WordPress Thesis theme for Biz Blog Blueprint. It’s not free however, but it does come with a lot of options of what you wish your blog to look like. Whichever theme you choose, I always recommend that you use a theme where the blog post text is on a white background, so that’s it easier to read. Never let the design harm the readability of the blog.
5. Plugins
Plugins are what all the extra features of the WordPress platform are called. These come in numerous variations and with many different utilities. Whatever the utility or feature it’s crucial that you choose very carefully which plugins to use. Use too many and the website will become slow or even crash.
Here’s an alphabetical list of plugins that I have installed on Biz Blog Blueprint:
- Akismet: Helps you fight spam and is essential, if you do not wish your blog to be overrun with spam comments. However it will also spam some of your real comment, so keep an eye on your spam filter.
- Alternate Recent Posts Widget: Displays recent blog posts that are not already displaying on the webpage. The front page of Biz Blog Blueprint shows the 10 latest posts, this plugin shows the following 6 (and not a repeat of the 6 latest post as the regular “Recent Posts Widget” would do).
- Disqus Comment System: This comment system gives you more control over your comments on your own as well as on other’s blogs. People wanting to comment can sign in using their Twitter or Facebook profiles.
- Google Analyticator: Gives you statistics on the visitors on the blog. There are many more advanced tracking systems, but I find the free Google Analytics tracker to suit my needs just fine.
- Google Buzz Button for WordPress: Gives the reader the option to Buzz your blog post to their own Google Buzz Profile.
- Lijit Search: Gives the reader a different search experience, when searching your site. Features include that the readers gets search result not only for your blog, but also your social network’s blogs.
- Scribe: Helps you optimize your copywriting from a SEO perspective. (This is not a free plugin)
- Sharecount for Facebook: Gives the reader the possibility to share the blog post on their Facebook profile.
- Socialite: Publishes your blog posts automatically on Twitter, Facebook and Myspace. This blog is published on the Facebook Biz Blog Blueprint fan page as well as my personal Myspace account, but not on Twitter as I find that not every post needs retweeting (by me).
- TweetMeme Retweet Button: Gives the reader the possibility to retweet the blog post on their Twitter account.
- TwitterCounter: Shows how many followers you have on Twitter in a badge that you can place on the website.
- WordPress Database Backup: Backs up your database with an interval of your choosing. You won’t be sorry.
- WPtouch iPhone Theme: Formats the site for people entering your blog from their smartphones.
Other:
- All In One SEO: As mentioned, I use the Thesis Theme that has the same features as this plugin. However, if you don’t use the Thesis theme, I recommend that you use this plugin. It gives you control over how your blog post will look in the search engines.
6. Write a Few Blog Post
Start writing. Get the feel of writing under your new roof and the boundaries that might apply. You don’t need to post all of what you write, but try to post at least one or two, so that the business blog is open (for business).
7. Add Your URL to the Search Engines
There’s a lot of discussion on the subject of adding your website to the search engines yourself or if it’s better to have the search engines find your site (from a search engine ranking point-of-view). I don’t subscribe to the latter view, so I always use a service to add my site to the search engines. For this particular site I used addme.com as the submission service.
8. Set Up Autopings
You need to ping your business blog when you publish new content, so that search engines and other websites know that they need to come and index your blog again. Most blog platforms offer a service whereas all your blog post will be pinged automatically upon publishing.
Here’s my short list of sites that are pinged, when I publish a story. They include all the major search engine as well as other important sites like Technorati (one site might ping 50 websites or more):
- http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
- http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
- http://ping.myblog.jp
- http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
- http://bblog.com/ping.php
9. Set Up Your RSS Subscription Service
Offering your readers to subscribe to your blog posts will give you both regular readers as well as increase your reader following. This feature is something you need to add.
There are many different option and possibilities, both free and not. I use the free Feedburner RSS email subscription service for readers wanting to subscribe to Biz Blog Blueprint. This service automatically sends the blog post to the readers email inbox.
10. Random Pieces of Advice
- If your blog platform gives you the possibility of changing how the individual blog post URL looks like, you might want to consider changing it, so that it takes the shape of the following: “http://www.yourblog.com/postname”. Many blog platform have a different setup as default, creating long and confusing URLs. If you’re using WordPress adding /%postname%/ under the “Custom Structure” (Settings -> Permalinks), will do the trick.
- Create a “Contact” page containing your contact information. On Biz Blog Blueprint I’ve added a contact form that can be found in Google Docs (just search for “contact form”).
- Update your user information and include a photo, so that your name appears correct on the blog posts.
These 10 points above are what I implemented on Biz Blog Blueprint that I recommend that you implement on your business blog, before getting too far in the process.
Let me know how it goes and please post a link to your new blog. Also, if there are other suggestions that would help the launch of a new blog, I’d be happy to hear about it.
