The undersigned

I might get flamed for this, but this is my honest opinion: Hundreds of new blogs are launched each week, without any goals or purpose. It is a result of the fact, that the word “blog” has become a real buzzword, not only on the Internet but also in daily speech. People act before they think and signs up at blogger.com, wordpress.com, typepad.com or uploads an opensource blogging application at their own server, just because it is cool to be able to have their own blog.

Preparation

So what is there to think about before I launch my blog? This is really an individual thing, there is no golden rules, or specific ways to blog, but anyways I have chosen to highlight a few things every new blogger could use, business or personal.

If I have forgotten about any critical stuff, please notice me.

1. Why do you want to start blogging?
   It is critical to question yourself this - why? Who do you want to reach? Are you joining the game for the money (Google Adsense etc.)? Do you want to reach the whole world and join the game to get as much traffic as possible?

2. Is your blog going to be topic-specific?
   It is true, in 1996 blogs were online diaries - well, there is no problem in that today, unless you have joined the game for more than sharing your daily life stories with friends and family. Personal blogs with no topic is really hard driving traffic to, you will have to be realistic about that before you begin.

   If your interest in traffic lies elsewhere than friends and family, you really need to be topic-specific - find 1 or 2 topics you love to write about and start focusing on them - find out where people with interest for your topic hangs out on the internet and tell about your blog and blog posts on forums etc. You can always expand the number of topics to write about with time, but if the blog is to abstract in topics and you try to reach a too wide target group, you will make it much harder for yourself, driving traffic to the blog.

   Have you joined the game for the money? Think twice - there is no easy key to earn money this way. Google Adsense won’t help you without traffic, and people won’t visit your blog if there’s no interesting content. Monetizing your blog comes second - get the traffic first!

3. Get a network established
   Do you know other bloggers? Have you found out where people with interest for your upcoming blogs content hangs out? If so, start networking! Get to know some people, and agree to exchange links when your blog launches or even better, have some write a post about your blog launch!

   Links to your blog really drives the traffic, the more links you get, the higher google placement you will receive - along with some other sites, such as technorati.com.

4. Write content
   Write a bunch of blog posts prior to you launch - be sure you have written enough to be able to post regularly the first month. In the first couple of weeks, don’t post 2 posts daily, rather post 1 blog every second day. It’s no good to have a really active blog, but no readers - save the quick-posting to later, when people start discovering your blog. A good idea could also be to write some series-posts. Write a post “part 1″ and continue it through 2 or 3 posts.

   Always remember to include links to your sources when you write a blog post - the more you link to others, the higher chances that you will get linked back to. Linking to sources will also make your posts reliability better.

5. Prepare your blog install for the search engines
   Before you launch your blog, make sure that everything is optimized as much as possible. Read up on several articles about SEO (search engine optimization) eg. the one I’ve written about WordPress and SEO.

6. How is your blog gonna look?
   Picking out the perfect theme for your blog isn’t done in 2 minutes - take some time picking out what you need, or even better, make a custom design, or get one done. The design should go well along with your content and be able to catch your target group. A flowery theme doesn’t go well along with a heavy metal band blog, does it?

7. Statistics
   This isn’t the most critical thing, but wouldn’t it be nice to actually keep track of how many visitors you get, where they came from etc.? Your host probably already does this for you (using webalizer or another application like that), otherwise take a look at mint, which I highly recommend.

8. Feeds and ping services
   Spread the word about each new blog post - feeds are fantastic! Eventually sign up at feedburner.com who helps you spread the word about your posts to several aggregators, and lets you keep track of how many feed subscribers you have. Also be sure to set up your blog to ping various aggregators whenever you have written a new post. This is one of the main sources of traffic for newly launched blogs - so make sure the first few sentences in each posts sounds catchy.

9. Ready to launch?
   Everything is in place? You are launching with content, launching with a link network, SEO’ed a little and set up the ping services? Go ahead and launch - if you aren’t about to go on holiday or something ;)

When your new blog is running

It takes time, it really does. Be aware that people might not comment on your blog the first long time - don’t loose patience! Keep up the good work on your blog, write more and better content, and eventually some day, comment and traffic will head your way. It is easy to loose motivation, and might be hard to get motivated again. Whenever someone comments, it is extremely important that you interact with your visitors - your job doesn’t end with the post, join the discussions started in the comments and show that you are alive. This is also extremely important for all businesses trying to enter the blogging world - let your visitors know you are reachable through comments!

Links

Blogging goals
Ping services
10 Tips on Writing the Living Web
Ten Tips for writing a blog post