Rohit Bhargarva keeps churning our great content even after 3 years of blogging and thousands of posts. He recentlky provided a good refresher on the first 90 days of blogging.
Although not critical to find your voice in the first three months, it certainly helps.
As we are going to be launching a number of new corporate and Agent Wildfire blogs over the next month, this 15 step refresher is a good reference tool for our community managers, thought I'd share it with a few others too:
Day 1-15:
1. Find a good niche. Couldn't agree more here as there appears to be way to many pale blogging imitations...what comes with a good niche as well is fresh, tailored content and opinion.
2. Choose a name and URL. The name is crucually important, the url is likely secondary as if you're good and perform stesps #8-9 and #13-15 well there likely isn't a need to be chasing Go Daddy trying to find the absolutely right url.
3. Grab a template and launch quickly. Yes, yes. Too much time is spent wondering what might be perfect. get out there and try it and commit to it for at least a month. Wordpress has taken leaps and bounds in building idiot proof and well-designed templates. Spend time getting a nice looking banner design that explains what your blog is and get started. Typepad is also a suitable blog host/template provider.
4. Add Google Analytics. Read Avinash Kaushik's blog and his book WebAnalytics: An Hour a Day for a solid grounding here.
5. Create an editorial calendar. I would look at how frequently you will post, the types of topics you will write about and an editorial calendar that will at least get you up to 40 posts over the first 90 days.
Days 15 to 30:
6. Reevaluate your blog title.
7. Design your blog brand. Add logos, widgets, plugins (Wordpress has over 3,100 already developed ones) and functionalities to your blog now.
8. Get your blog listed. Claim it on Technorati, and submit it to any other sites in your particular industry or area of focus.
9. Set up your feeds. Use Feedburner to syndicate your RSS feeds and offer email subscriptions to their blog.
10. Learn the art of headlining. Not only zippy titles but also first 5 or 6 words of intro are crucially important. Including key search-related terms usually trumps creativity here.
Days 30-60:
11. Set your targets. Re-evaluate the time investment and adjust effort accordingly.
12. Learn the 25 styles. View the presentation and learn the techniques. You can also use KD Paine's 27 Types of Conversation.
13. Contact your influencers. Contact the A, B and C list blogger in your category. Make a personal appeal to them recognizing why your asking for their support, provide context and provide specific evidence that you've read there content. Specifically ask for something: their insight, their content, their support, their referral, their adding you to their blogroll...and make it easy for them to do this.
14. Actively share your posts. Extend out through other social networks - Digg, Stumble Upon, Twitter,Facebook, Deliciios, Reddit and Friendfeed.
15. Integrate your blog into your profile. In a Canadian context, Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo are the personal profile go-tos.
Other things I would add to Rohit's list perhaps as immediate post 90-day efforts:
Start a campaign - test and galvanize interest in your blog through a short term contest/cause
Build a community - if you've sustained enough interest over time, build a satellite area where more interactions and connections can be developed using a site like Ning
Have an event - cement online connections into offline experiences by having some type of grassroots get-together
Share your professional expertise - seek out opportunities to profile your knowledge or passion within your niche through conferences, seminars, webinars and within organizations
Converse and drop comments for other bloggers - the reciprocity principle is alive and well among the social media set, getting entrenched within established blogger networks is a function of passion, perseverance and personal appeal
Wear your logo - make T-shirts, make Moo cards, build a Cafe Press shop
Interview others/find guest authors - broaden the interests and appeal of your blog through an invited groiup of experts and zealots
Hopefully you find the tips above helpful, the great thing is...unlike becoming the new President or taking on a new executive role, even if you mess up for first 90 days, you can still recover.
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