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Starting Your First Blog? 29 Tips, Tutorials and Resources for New Bloggers

Posted: 29 Jan 2009 06:09 AM PST

Are you starting your first blog? Looking for some tips and advice for new bloggers?

I just received a tweet from @MillerMosaicLLC asking for some links to posts about starting a blog so I thought instead of just replying to her I’d compile the list here as a post for new bloggers. There are literally thousands of posts in the ProBlogger archives for bloggers starting out - but these would be a good place to start.

Posts on Starting a Blog

There is a lot to think about before and during the process of starting your first blog. These tips and tutorials attempt to give you some questions to think about and some advice on how to practically move forward:

3 Factors to Consider Before Starting a Blog - Maintaining Blogging Momentum
9 Tips to Start Blogging Successfully
Starting a New Blog? Start With a Mind Map (will help in choosing topics and categories for your blog)
Crawl before you walk: 6 Step-by-step Instructions for Starting your First Blog
23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers - Is a Blog Right for You?
How to Choose a Niche Topic for Your Blog
Choosing a Blog Platform
Choosing a Domain Name for your Blog

Writing Blog Content

At the core of every successful blog is great content - without it starting a new blog is almost pointless. How you define ‘great’ content will vary from person to person but I generally put it down to content that is unique and useful. Here are a few other tutorials and tips on creating this type of content on your first blog.

Blog Promotion/Finding Readers

When starting a your first blog one of the most challenging things is that it is hard to find readers. We all want to be read - here are a few tips on how to make this happen and then how to keep those new readers:

Making Money from Blogs

Not all bloggers choose to try to make money from their blogs (I think this is a good thing). But if you’re one that does want to make money from your new blog then here are a few tips and articles for you to start with:

Further Reading and Resources on Starting a New Blog

If what I’ve listed above isn’t enough - here are a few other resources for those wanting to invest into starting out with a blog.

ProBlogger the Book - This book (in which I am a co-author) was written for the beginner blogger. It contains up to date and logically ordered advice on starting new and profitable blogs.
Training Programs - Two great courses/coaching programs for new bloggers are Blog Mastermind and Become a Blogger. Blog Mastermind is a paid coaching program that is one of the more comprehensive training resources going around. Become a Blogger is series of free videos and a great free report/roadmap. It also has a paid program which is ideal for those just starting out. Both of these courses are by Yaro Starak - a great blogger.
Archives - there are a lot more posts that are relevant for bloggers starting their first blogs in the archives of ProBlogger. Another good place to find some of them is my Blogging for Beginners Series helpful. I’ve mentioned some of the posts in this series above but there are a lot more ‘beginner’ type tips and articles listed in it.
Recommended Blogging Resources - lastly I’ve put together a page of tools and resources for bloggers. It covers blogging platforms, designs/templates, tools, training and monetization. I hope you find them useful.

I hope you find these articles and resources helpful!

How to Get the Words Out with Content Marketing

When I first used the term content marketing, almost no one was talking about it. Not that people didn’t do it but Larry Chase was one of the first to use the phrase. Other marketers refer to it as educational marketing. Just recently, it becomes the buzz word.

Marketing suddenly becomes fun once you approach it from the content angle. Rather than calling out to random people who are more likely not interested in what you have to offer, content marketing attracts people in. People come (call, contact, or ask) you about your product or service instead of you selling them aggressively. And when the approach you, often they feel as if they’ve known you for a long time.

It all starts with superb content.

Content marketing is effective but at the same time doesn’t burn a hole in your pocket. Sure, there are expensive ways to create and distribute content. More power to those who can afford them. But for most of us, here are some cost effective tips and strategies for content distribution and promotion. (See above for tips on affordable content creation strategies.) Don’t underestimate any one of them, as they can be far more powerful than the costly methods:

Optimize your content for search engines. Learn basic SEO. If you don’t have the budget to spend, you can do this yourself and still get good results. Many web users refer to search engines to find information. I’m not surprised if bloggers claim that 40-60 percent of their traffic come from search engines. So like it or not, a lot of the following strategies will help you get more traffic from search engines.
Break news. This is possible if you have insider access to news, but if you don’t, being one of the first to blog about a story may result in links from A-list blogs and news outlets. I’ve written about content filtering and keeping up with industry news in previous post.
Send out press releases. They have to be news-worthy. If done right, you may get a lot of publicity in additional to links from authority web sites that will strengthen your positions in search engines. Media coverage may bring in a surge of traffic to your blog. Read Darren’s post on how to get media coverage for tips on how to do it.
Hold a contest. Contest is an effective way to generate buzz around the blogosphere, especially if you are able to have other bloggers and influencers blog about it.
Participate in contests. Bloggers often hold contests or group projects to encourage others to blog about certain topics. This may result in both links and referral traffic for your blog.
Participate in blog carnivals. Even though you have great content, it can be hard to get links from other bloggers when you are getting started. By participating in blog carnivals, you are able to kick start your inbound link strategy quite easily.
Linkbait. Certainly it is not the best word to describe what it does. Linkbaiting is simply the act of creating solid piece of information that catches people’s attention. It has nothing to do with baiting people into fads. Being remarkable is the idea behind linkbaiting. With great content and a bit of promotion, others will notice and start linking back to your blog.
Write and promote your free e-books. A free promotion in one forum may bring hundreds or even thousands of downloads, which distribute your message to more audience. A freemium — to steal the term from direct marketing — is effective to get visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter.
Become a guest blogger. Like what I am doing right now. Everyone should like the idea of stealing traffic from other bloggers ethically. Provide great content and help out other bloggers. In return, they will be more than happy to let you communicate with their readers. This in turn will drive traffic back to your blog.
Contribute to article directories. Article directories are still good sources of targeted traffic, mainly because of their authority in a lot of topics. I regularly get 5-10 new subscribers to my e-course every day from this source. Focus on high-traffic sites to save your time.
Visit forums regularly. Discussion boards are places where people with the same interest hang out, discuss and share opinions. By being a forum regular, and by contributing back, you will be able to establish your expertise and drive traffic back to your site. Some forums also accept on-topic articles.
Use micro-blogging platform. Twitter is by far the most outstanding micro-blogging tool. At first, you may not be able to drive significant traffic using Twitter, but realize that it is also a networking opportunity. More about this in the next section.
Lifestreaming. FriendFeed immediately comes into mind. With it, your audience will be able to get up-to-date stream of web pages, photos, music and videos that you share. I use FriendFeed’s room feature to share interesting stuff around blogging. Businesses who tap into blogging don’t have time to monitor hundreds of blogs every day, but they will be able to get links to interesting stuff online by subscribing to the feed. I’m going to push this idea further this year. Although more than 95 percent of the content I share is not mine, but over the long haul, being resourceful will be rewarding.

Connect and Build Relationships with Others (It’s Social!)

Blogging requires you to reach out and connect with your readers and other bloggers. Relationship is an important part of it. “It is who you know.”

Building relationships with other influencers should be on everyone’s agenda. Over time, you will need bloggers to help you spread your content, product or service. By the time you need them, it is usually too late to start networking.

While certainly there’s more things to consider than just “who you know,” influencers are people who have the capability to generate buzz and bring you traffic and business. Average content can become outstanding with the right people endorsing it, but superb content remains unnoticed without proper promotion.

With the word “social” everywhere, “where to network” is no longer the right question to ask. It is more about prioritizing your time to get the most out of social sites and activities.

Here are some useful online networking tips that I hope I’ve learned years ago when I got started:

Leave comments on other blogs Comments with nofollow attribute is still valuable because what you seek for is connecting with the blogger. I know some bloggers who leave comment in 50-100 blogs every day. If that sounds too aggressive a goal because of time limitation and others, aim for 5-10 authority blogs to start with. A tip: If you are able to grab the blogger’s attention, you will increase the chance of getting them to reply to your tweets or emails later.
Help other bloggers. Guest blogging, as mentioned above, is just an example. Do whatever you could to help out bloggers. They will certainly pay attention to you more than to people who blatantly ask for links.
Find the right timing. Don’t spam tens of bloggers with the similar messages. You need to personalize email and get in touch with the right blogger at the right time. A tip I learned from Maki of Dosh Dosh is to create a prospect list using your news reader. It is a neat way to track your network even if you have hundreds of them.
Don’t overlook mailing lists and groups. People are still exchanging hundreds of messages in popular mailing lists and virtual groups such as Yahoo Groups or Google Groups. As with other strategies, the key is always in providing value. Don’t self-promote in your first message unless you want to be kicked out of the circle.
Connect with a purpose in social networking sites. You can certainly befriend your family members or school mates, but if you are to grow your business, look for like-minded people and build relationships with them through those social networking sites.
Use Twitter. Twitter is all the rage nowadays. While people may visit Facebook or MySpace once a week, they regularly use Twitter several times a day. This may be a more effective way to get in touch with influencers, even better than email and perhaps phone (for some people). At least warm up first and avoid cold calling.
Meet bloggers in person. Industry events and seminars are great places to meet people besides getting cutting edge information, of course. When meeting others in person, it often results in closer relationship and joint projects. After all, people who visit those events are also interested in business.

Although social networking sites allow you to syndicate your blog’s RSS feeds and post links to your blog posts, several social sites are created just for the purpose of finding new and interesting content.

Here are some ways that will help you leverage your content and drive traffic through social sites:

Disseminate your content through social sites. Squidoo and HubPages are just two examples of social sites that allow everyone to publish their own content and knowledge. This will increase your visibility as people start finding your content and blogs through various places.
Provide value and steal more traffic! Digg, Propeller, Reddit and Stumble Upon are just several huge players out there. You can find niche specific social news sites and drive tons of traffic to your blog if you really work on it. Care should be taken that traffic from these sites may not be sticky, but they can still be made effective. When using such sites, remember that networking is also important to get your content noticed and endorsed.
Help others find answers. Yahoo Answers and Mahalo Answers are just two examples where you can help others with your knowledge. Others will notice what you have to say, which in turn may drive business to you.

Diversify Your Profit Streams

For most bloggers, make money blogging is about selling ad space or getting sponsorship. While we should expect to see changes in the advertising industry and there are still untapped market for ads, bloggers should really expand their monetization options beyond displaying adverts on their blogs.

The easiest profit stream that comes to my mind is creating information products. After all, bloggers are already content creators, so this should not be hard at all.

An e-book is just an example of info product. CDs, DVDs, membership sites, seminars, group coaching, and even consulting can be considered information-based products.

Information marketing is one of the underutilized profit sources for bloggers.

The benefit is enormous. While you can increase your blog revenue at the same time, these products are also marketing tools. They make you more credible, not to mention about the additional businesses generated from consumers of the products, if you happen to over consulting and other services.

Selling other people’s products as an affiliate also has a great potential. No one could ever make products or services fast enough to satisfy all of their audience. By offering high quality and proven products to their visitors, they are doing a service. Don’t promote just for the sake of earning affiliate commissions though. Be honest, that will make you more money in the long run.

Closing Words

If you look at the list above, you should agree that it can be overwhelming even for most productive bloggers. If you only get one advice from this article, it should be that you should not attempt to do them all at once by yourself.

Instead, prioritize. Successful bloggers focus on what they know best and exploit a handful of different marketing channels to the maximum, systemize them, and whenever they are able to offload some of the stuff, pick another channel to explore. You will be surprised that even if you do one thing well, you will see significant improve in traffic and revenue to your site.

Final recommendation: spend a weekend to plan out your blogging business. It will be time worth spending.

Next post, which is the last post in the series, talks about the metrics you should be tracking so you know which strategy brings you result and which needs a fix. Not knowing your numbers is like shooting in the dark and hoping you will hit the bull’s eye. It isn’t going to happen. Driving traffic and growing a blogging business need a strategy, and based on the feedback you adjust things and take even more actions.

So… stay tuned.

Hendry Lee helps bloggers overcome strategic and technological challenges in starting and growing their blogs. He also writes about make money blogging on his blog Blog Tips for a Better Blog - Blog Building University. While you are there, download your free eBook and subscribe to his blogging e-course where he reveals his secret about blogging and content writing!

Follow Hendry on Twitter (@hendrylee).