How To Start A Blog When You Have Absolutely No Audience. So you have this great business idea, your mom likes it, your friends like it, and hey, a subset of people you don’t know even like it. You’ve spread word about it through your network—and their networks—and have received a positive response. You’ve even conducted some market research and held focus groups. In other words, you’ve validated your idea. From there, you’ve even taken the steps to put together a rag-tag founding team and a minimal viable product. Now what? At this point, as you work on your finalizing product and business strategy, you should be putting together a communications and marketing strategy that aligns with your overall goals. With today’s myriad of digital tools, resources, and communities, it’s easier than ever to find a target audience who wants what you’re providing… whether or not they know it yet.
One of the most sustainable ways to build and connect with this audience is through content, especially an owned blog. Step 1. Write that problem down. Step 2. Step 3. The 12 Best WordPress Plug-ins - Dagon Design Site Map Generator. StudioPress ® Premium WordPress Themes. 10 Things to Do Before Launching Your Blog | Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends. There are lots of posts and articles about why adopting a blog for your small business is a good idea — how it’s good for customer retention, lead generation, and serves as an effective way to build links and rankings in the search engines. But if you’re a small business owner, the thought of launching that blog may be a bit intimidating. Where do you start? How much content should you have stored up? What do you do the first few days after your launch?
If I were launching a new blog today (and I often am), here’s a short checklist for where I’d start. Set Up Study: Study the other bloggers in your niche, learn about the hot topics in your community, figure out where your customers are hanging out, identify who the leaders are, and read up on some of your favorite writers and the people whose voices you’d like to emulate. Start building buzz: From the moment you decide you’ll be starting a blog, you want to work on creating buzz around it. Content Decide: Ads or No Ads? Promotion. eBook-Blogger Relations by Brian Solis. Empire Avenue. HOW TO: Add Multimedia to Your Blog. This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. A website without multimedia is like a cupcake without icing: Functional but lacking.
These days, all manner of web pages from huge company sites to small business blogs are expected to add audio, photo, or video to their posts and homepages. While this all sounds well and good for multimedia companies that produce endless amounts of content, small businesses with text-based websites can run into trouble finding and providing appropriate content. The real trick is adding multimedia that enriches your site, product, or brand without taking away from your company’s core message and aesthetic. This is rarely easy. The Basics For most blog hosting sites, including WordPress and Tumblr, most multimedia is handled through embed codes. 1. Audio is often overlooked as a multimedia device when compared to photo and video.