We have all been there, starting a new blog is not easy. There are so many things that you must consider when beginning your blogging career, and they are all important.
I know many bloggers who wish they had some sort of guideline when they first started blogging, and that is what we are going to provide to you.
We are going to give you a starter-list of things that every blog must have, these will help you significantly down the line. If you are already a blogger, and are missing some of these tools—it is never too late to add them, and you should right away!
Post Syndication:
It is very important for a blogger to get their posts and articles circulated. One of the best ways to do this is to use a great service called FeedBurner, it allows your blog visitors to sign up to receive your newest posts in two ways.
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Email Subscription:
This is an extremely handy way to easily get your recent posts into the inboxes of your readers. Your readers enter their email address, verify, then they will receive your latest posts via email every day at a time you select. -
RSS Reader Subscription:
This allows your visitors to add your blog feed to an RSS Reader (My favorite, for example is Google Reader but there are many options available to you.) This delivers your posts to the home page of their reader, along with all of the other RSS feeds they subscribe to.
Why is Syndication so important?
You might get a visitor to your site, but they do not bookmark your URL…how do they find their way back again? Chances are they will not remember your link, even if they thoroughly enjoyed your content.
If you have a subscription option and your readers subscribe, they will always be in the know and have your latest material at hand.
There is also an alternative to FeedBurner, called FeedBlitz but it is not free—FeedBurner is more widely used but you have to go with what is right for your own personal taste.
Statistic Tracking:
As a blogger one of the most efficient ways to track your growth is through statistic tracking. You should sign up for both StatCounter and Google Analytics, why both? Having two points of comparison can help you get a better idea about how true your stats are, because no one stat tracking service is 100% reliable (although they are close.)
When you start tracking your blog stats (traffic) you will learn about the following things:
(Definitions from the Google Analytics Help Database.)
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Page Views: A page view is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional page view. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second page view will be recorded as well.
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Unique Visitors/Unique Page Views: A unique page view, as seen in the Top Content report, aggregates page views that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique page view represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.
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Keywords: A significant word or phrase, relevant to the web page or document in question. (You will gain traffic when people search “keywords” and click on your blog.)
Learning to understand and keep track of all of these points are important, and you will be asked for your stats one day—it is better to be prepared.
Another important note, the stats do not make the blogger—the content makes the blogger. Always be honest about your stats, no matter how small they seem to you.
Social Media:
A great and easy way to increase your blogs presence online is to use social media, this includes but is not limited to Twitter and Facebook.
You should have a Twitter account and Facebook “Like” Page for your blog, they will both be a place where you can connect with your readers and even other bloggers.
There are a few things you need to remember when it comes to using Twitter and Facebook:
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You must be a member of the community, that means tweeting on Twitter, following people who follow you and interacting with your readers on your Facebook Page.
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You should be using Twitter and Facebook to spread the word about your recent posts, people do click, read and subscribe. They also ReTweet and Share with their friends! You never know when you will have a new dedicated reader on your hands.
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Keep with it—it will be rough and bare at first but with the more followers and “like-ers” you gain, you will start noticing you have tons of people who are interested in what you have to say!
This concludes our post on the things that every blog should have, if you have any questions or suggestions please put them in the comments below—who knows? You might just inspire the next BFPR blog tutorial!
