How to Start (And Grow) a Blog

In today's video .

I'm gonna show you exactly how to start and grow a successful blog from scratch step by step .

This is the same process that I use to grow my blog back link to 307,000 visitors per month .

I'm Brian Dean , the founder of back link , the place where marketers turn for higher rankings and more traffic .

And if you want to grow a blog that reaches thousands or even millions of people , you'll love the actionable steps in this video .

Stay tuned .

When I launched back link a couple of years ago , people thought I was crazy .

After all , I was launching a brand new blog that was going head to head against industry giants like Maz search engine land and hubspot .

They were well oiled machines with hundreds of employees and I was a random guy writing blog posts in my underwear even though I still sometimes write blog posts in my underwear .

I still found success as you can see here , even though I was a new player in a highly competitive space , my blog got some early traction traction that has continued to this day .

So how did I do it .

I followed the exact steps that I'm about to share with you .

So without further ado , let's get started with step number one nail your blogs positioning .

When most people start a blog , they wonder things like should I use wordpress , squarespace or Wix ?

What are the best plugins for Sco ?

How can I get my blog to look like this other popular blog as it turns out if you want to grow your blog , these are the wrong questions to ask .

And hey , I'm not judging when I launched my first blog , a while back , I was obsessed with things like themes , plugins and other nonsense as it turns out that stuff doesn't really matter .

So what does your blog's positioning ?

Positioning is a fancy way of saying what makes your blog different than the thousands of other blogs out there on that topic .

For example , the first blog that I ever launched was in the weight loss space and I put zero thought into that blog's positioning .

It was for all intents and purposes , just another health and fitness blog .

And because that blog didn't have strong positioning or any positioning at all , really , it ultimately failed .

Flash forward to a few years later when I launched back Linco and I made positioning a top priority .

Like I mentioned earlier , I was a brand new blog competing against established juggernauts .

And if I launched my blog as a generic digital marketing blog , I would have failed before I even started instead to stand out .

I positioned my blog as a resource for all things link building .

Every post that I wrote was about link building .

All my website copy was about link building .

Every guest post that I published on other blogs was about link building .

I think you get the idea in this strong focus positioning , help my blog really stand out in those critical first few months .

So if your blog is brand new or if you want to get more traction from your existing blog , you want to identify one small niche topic and only cover that topic for at least 3 to 4 months .

Then as your blog grows , you can slowly branch out into other topics which leads us to our second step , publish a power post .

So now that you have strong positioning for your blog , it's time to create a piece of content around that niche topic , but not just any blog post , a power post .

In other words , a post that's so insanely valuable that it helps put your blog on the map .

For example , one of the first posts that I published on the back link blog was called 17 Untapped back link sources .

This wasn't your typical list post .

And that's because I shared some of my all time best link building tactics and sources in that post along with detailed steps , screenshots pro tips and more what makes a power post for you .

Depends on your industry and your positioning .

For example , in the fitness niche .

My friend Steve can published this guide to the paleo diet that helped his blog grow by leaps and bounds .

So as long as your content is something that makes someone say , wow , you're on the right track .

Wow , that's pretty cool .

And now it's time for our third step .

Step up your design .

Here's the deal when someone lands on your blog for the first time , they judge your credibility on design first and your car content .

Second .

And there's research to back this up , a study out of Sheffield University found that design has a bigger impact on someone's impression of your site than the content itself .

So if you want people to take your blog seriously , it needs to have a professional design pet said this doesn't mean that your blog needs some fancy design or win some sort of design award .

It's not at all about having a flashy design as long as it looks professional and matches your blog's positioning .

You're good .

For example , in my case , I use lots of call for designs and illustrations , but that's not the only way to approach things .

The James Clear blog is the total opposite of mine .

His design is super minimalist and it also looks great .

So yeah , the content that you publish will ultimately make or break your blog success , but that doesn't mean that you should sleep on your blog's design because it's also super important with that of the way .

Let's hit up step number four , write an origin story .

If your blog is in a competitive space , like mine , having an origin story can really help your blog stand out .

For example , I created back link after I started to have some success with one of my affiliate sites , a site that got 90% of its traffic from sco and because the site was doing well with Seo , I wanted to double down on it and learn more about it .

But when I looked for actionable content on Seo , I came up empty .

So I created back link as the blog that I wanted to read .

So yeah , that little story probably isn't gonna land me a Netflix series .

But that simple story that I just shared with you has help my blog stick in the minds of my readers .

Plus that story helped my blog stand out from the other big name blogs that all hire hundreds of freelance writers .

So I recommend creating a quick little origin story that outlines where you were before you created your blog .

Why you decided to create your blog and the main problem you're trying to solve .

In my case , I was doing affiliate marketing before I launched my blog .

I created my blog because I was frustrated with the sco content that was out there .

And I'm trying to solve the problem that most sco content is high level fluff .

And I recommend sharing this story on your site about page on social media in guest posts and on podcast interviews with that .

Let's move right to step .

Number five , which is to execute a post promotion plan .

Most people publish a post , share it on social media and wait for the traffic to roll in .

In fact , when I launched my first blog , that's exactly what I did .

I'd work all day in a post , push it live and share it on social media and then I'd wait for it to go viral today .

I call this the publish and pray approach because when you do it , you publish and then pray for traffic and needless to say it didn't work .

So when I launched back Linco , a few years later , I put promotion first .

In fact , I'd estimate that I spent about 20% of my time creating content and 80% of my time promoting it , which helped my blogs traffic grow even though it was brand new .

So how do you actually promote your content ?

The right way here are two strategies that I recommend first use pre outreach .

Pre outreach is just like it sounds , you start the outreach process before you actually publish your post .

So why is this important ?

Well , when most people promote their content with outreach , they're way too pushy .

I'm sure you've seen emails like this before .

But with pre outreach , you flipped the script on traditional outreach , you're not asking for a share because it's not even possible to share your post yet .

I mean , you haven't even published it and because you're respectfully asking to send them an coming post instead of begging for a share , your conversion rate will be a lot higher .

For example , here's a pre outreach email that I sent a while back .

And as you can see the person that I sent it to was super excited to see my post , which is the goal of outreach .

Anyway , next , you want to share your posts with your email subscribers when it comes to content promotion , email crushes , social media .

For example , I recently shared this post on Twitter and with my email subscribers , the tweet got a total of 340 clicks and the newsletter announcement got over 13,000 clicks a massive difference .

So yeah , social media has its place but it's nothing compared to email .

Speaking of email , it's time for step number six , build your email list , building .

My email list was one of the most important things I did to grow my blog .

My only regret is that it didn't start sooner .

That's because once you have an engaged email list , anything is possible about to sell a new product .

You have a list of people ready to hear about it .

Want to announce your new youtube channel , you can get hundreds of subscribers on your first day .

Want to spread the word about your latest post .

You've got a small army of people ready to spread the word .

So it's clear that an email list is huge .

The question is how do you actually build it first ?

You want to make your blog's home page ?

A landing page , not your blog feed .

For example , my original homepage design was a list of my latest blog posts .

In other words , a traditional blog feed .

Now this is great for helping people find my latest content , but it didn't convert well at all .

So as an experiment , I tried a more traditional home page and I put my blog feed at forward slash blog and that single change skyrocketed that page's conversion rate .

Next , you want to create a lead magnet .

A lead magnet is an ebook report video case study .

Basically anything that encourages someone to subscribe to your email list and these don't have to be complicated to make .

For example , some of my most successful believe magnets are just PDF versions of the post that the person's already reading .

That's it .

Now , there's obviously more to building your email list than those two strategies .

I mean , their entire course is out there on list building .

But if you want 80 20 approach to building your email list , those two strategies are the way to go .

And now it's time for our last step .

Step .

Number seven , reply to comments .

So if you follow the steps up to this point , you should be starting to get some traction in terms of traffic and subscribers .

And you might even notice that people are starting to leave comments on your posts .

If so , I have a word of advice for you .

Reply to every single comment that comes in seriously having a community on your blog is super important .

In fact , copy blogger famously shut down comments on their blog , then put them back up a few months later when they realized that they made a big mistake .

Like me , they realize that an active community is a huge part of growing a blog and that community is only gonna get built up if you're reply to every single comment .

For example , I reply to every comment that people leave in the first week or so after a post goes live , this takes a lot of time and energy .

But to me , it's totally worth it .

And before we close out this video , I've got a quick bonus step for you form a blog alliance .

Let's face it .

Growing a blog by yourself can be super lonely .

I mean , you probably spend a lot of your time writing blog content , promoting your blog and watching videos about blogging .

Like this one , there probably aren't ton of people in your life who can relate to that , which is why I recommend forming a blog alliance .

A blog alliance is a group of 2 to 4 people that meet online once in a while just to trade tips and talk shop for example , when I first started back link , I had monthly Skype sessions with Brian Harris .

And these turned out to be super helpful for both of us or at least to me .

So if you want to form a blog alliance with another blogger , I recommend sending them this simple email there .

You have it my seven step process for starting and growing a blog .

If you like this video , make sure to subscribe to my youtube channel right now .

Just click on the subscribe button below this video .

Also , if you want exclusive su and traffic techniques that I only share with subscribers , head over to back link dot com and hop on the newsletter .

It's free .

Now , I want to turn it over to you .

Which strategy from today's video are you gonna try ?

First ?

Are you gonna try free outreach or do you wanna start replying to more comments ?

Either way , let me know by leaving a comment below right now .