Hey, I’ve Got A Blog! Now What Do I Do With It?

Now that you have your blog, you should promote it, right? Wrong!

Before you even consider promoting your blog, you first need to work on building up your content. A quick post or two is not enough. I believe you should have a minimum of ten solid posts on your blog before you begin actively promoting it. Why?

Well, think about this. Suppose you saw an ad for a new store in the city and you took the time out of your busy schedule to drive over and take a look. When you get there and walk through the door, all you see is a large room full of empty shelves and one, lone clerk standing at the counter with a few small items for you to look at. Would you have a very good impression of that store? Would you go back? Probably not, at least not without a lot of motivation to do so.

Promoting an empty or nearly empty blog is the same thing. If readers take time out of their busy schedules to visit your blog, they expect to find something of value. If they show up and find a few measly posts and a lot of empty shelves, they’ll be disappointed and highly unlikely to come back. You’ll have to work twice as hard to overcome a bad first impression than you will to make a good one, so take the time and build a good first impression.

That doesn’t mean you can’t tell anyone about your blog. It’s not a secret after all. Just don’t actively promote it yet.

Depending on how much and how often you write, this waiting period could be a few weeks or it could be a few months. No matter how long it takes, the time you spend will be worth it.

During this time, you should not only be filling your blog with excellent posts,  you should also be spending time reading other blogs, joining and participating in forums related to your topic, and learning as much as you can about blogging and blog promotion. Take lots of notes and carefully plan your promotion strategy.

Get yourself out there and start networking. Let people get to know who YOU are. Build a little suspense about the blog you’re working on. If you contribute to the community and give people a reason to think of you as someone worth listening to, when you finally reveal your blog to the public, you’ll have plenty of people eagerly waiting to see what you have to offer. Just make sure your blog measures up to the expectations you’ve created.