It’s easy to setup shop on a new blog with high hopes. Reading successful bloggers, their tricks, and what has worked for them gets us worked up that we’ll be able to easily create the same results — with ease. Problem is it’s unrealistic expectations and sometimes, even with the most successful bloggers it’s not easy. Those bloggers may make it look easy but we all know that seldom it is.

A blogger looking for genuine success, authority, and a brand reputation will need a strategic game plan. If you build it, they won’t come. Sure a few might trickle in but that’s just enough to kill your hopes of having a successful blog and often times drives budding bloggers to giving up. Let’s try to throw giving up out the window and get a game plan worked out for launching a successful blog.

And hey, even if you’re not a brand new blogger and have stuck with blogging, it’s not too late for you to get a new game plan in place.

Step 1: Research

Everyone needs to know what they’re jumping into. The only way to get a clear idea for the market of any niche to search it out and get a feel for current events and visitors within the niche. And while I always suggest that you should be passionate about your niche, you can obviously have more than one passion to research multiple niche’s you may be interested in writing about.

Some questions to ask yourself:

• Who writes in this niche?
• What kind of visitors, traffic, and subscribers do these niche writers have?
• Can you target any keywords to bring in organic search traffic?
• What sites can I target for niche social networking?

Research won’t end when you have setup your blog, keep that in mind. But researching some of the initial factors will help you to start with a bigger bang and know instantly where to go to promote, comment, network, and drive traffic to your blog — all things that you never want to postpone when it comes to your blog!

Step 2: Your Blog

Let’s evaluate what’s happening with your blog. Ask yourself the right questions to really “get” what it is that you’re doing and what purpose your blog will serve to your visitors.

• What’s my niche and am I covering everything I can about the niche?
• Who would want to read my blog and what information would they be looking for?
• Can new visitors find their way around?
• What do I want my visitors to see before they exit my site?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you produce the best content, write subjects visitors will want to know about, and design your blog in a way that is efficient for all levels of users.

I would suggest having all of this in place before you start heavy promotion. And take a lesson from me, get your design the way you want it ahead of time (though I realize my visitors have come to expect design changes and I have a problem with redesigning, unlike other bloggers).

Having everything in place before your visitor arrives will encourage them to sick around and read, be interested in what you have to offer in your niche, and get them to subscribe — who wants to miss out on good content that is relevant to them? Answer: few!

Step 3: Content

I have suggested many times when doing blog consulting that people kick off their new blog with what appears to be a month worth of content. There’s nothing that says just because you’re writing you need to be promoting. After all, once you get people to your blog, you want to keep them there. A couple of posts from someone who looks like nothing more than a novice blogger won’t be encouraging to experienced blog visitors.

Don’t at all be afraid to blog behind closed doors. Good quality content on your blog when traffic arrives will do you some good. At minimum, have a good 5 to 10 posts already published when you launch your blog.

Even when you have your posts in place, consider your page content too. Most blogs should have, at the very least, an about and contact page. You’ll want to give your blog credibility and these are minimums for creating credibility.

Step 4: Promote

The sky and your wallet are the only limits to what you can and cannot do to promote your blog. And don’t forget, there are a ton of ways to get free advertising for blogs.

Comment on blogs in your niche to get your name out there. And don’t spam, read the posts, and add something to the conversation. Don’t be afraid to take the time to submit posts to social networking websites. Other bloggers will take note of those who are frequently commenting and voting for posts. Keep all ethical practices of social networking in mind and never submit something you don’t genuinely appreciate.

Get involved in conversations over at BlogCatalog and get your name out there by talking, joining neighborhoods, and adding friends.

I won’t spend too much time on this — there are many ways to promote your blog and once you have gotten your blog setup, now is the time to go at it full force. And don’t stop promoting! This is something that you’ll do for the entire time you blog. Sure, you may get the point of ProBlogger where your commentators and fans do the promoting for you but that’s going to be awhile.

Step: 5: Content

Yes, I realize I already said content but at this step, it’s time to say it again! Never slack on your content. The end result is that your new readers will see that you’re straining to write something and will publish anything regardless of quality. Keep that in mind. If you’re not feeling writing or editing a post one day, better not to publish than to put crap out there.

Stay on top of what your niche leaders and trend setters are doing. Don’t fall behind the game and never duplicate them. Come to the table with your own words and your own writing style. There’s no reason why anyone would want to read one post by two people — unless they read the distinct voices of the blogger.

Your Turn

What’s been your game plan to get your blog off the ground? Did you follow any specific steps or advice from another blogger or did you go at it? If you haven’t yet started your blog, what’s your process for getting your game plan together to start your blog?

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