Imagine this:
Launch day has come. Over the past couple of weeks, you’ve been excitedly preparing for the launch of your blog, and today is the day.
You wake up, rush to your computer, and quickly log on to your freshly launched blog, and….
Crickets. Nothing.
Nobody leaving comments on your blog posts. Hardly any traffic at all. And your email service provider is showing a big fat zero where you wanted to see dozens of new subscribers.
Your launch was a bust.
That’s the nightmare, right? No blogger wants to experience a failure to launch. So are you making these blog launch mistakes? Here are:
Launch Mistake #1: Taking Off Without a Runway
You publish a blog post, pick the perfect theme and add your social media profile buttons to your website. You’ve launched, right?
Well, not so fast. This is a mistake that new bloggers often make with their blog’s launch.
Think of your blog launch as a plane.
The plane needs a runway to taxi down before taking off to gain speed and momentum. Without the runway, the plane won’t go very far – if anywhere.
Your blog launch is like that too. You need a runway before you take off to launch effectively, and that runway happens to be time.
Don’t just open the doors on your blog and assume that your job is done. Set a launch date in the future so you can use the extra time as a runway to gain momentum for your launch.
Launch Mistake #2: Leaving Your New Readers Hanging
When you launch a blog, you want to see as much traffic as possible land on your blog. You want those readers to stick around and remain loyal fans.
But launching with only one article is like opening a library with only one book. What’s a reader to do after they’ve finished the one book?
If you launch with only one post, you’re leaving your readers hanging. You need to give them something to do after they read your initial article.
Instead of launching with just one or two blog posts, launch with three or four. Give readers something to do after they read your launch post.
Recommended reading: Launch: An Internet Millionaire's Secret Formula To Sell Almost Anything Online, Build A Business You Love, And Live The Life Of Your Dreams
Launch Mistake #3: Being Foggy on Your Goals
This is a mistake that new bloggers and experienced bloggers make alike:
Being foggy on their goals.
Every blog post, every button, and every image on your blog should have a purpose. It should lead the reader toward one call to action, one goal. To do this effectively, you need to be crystal clear on what your main goal is from the second you launch.
If your goal is to convert readers into email subscribers, you’re contradicting that if you have social media buttons all over the place!
If your goal is to get people in your Facebook group, your launch goal won’t be met if your call to action is to subscribe to your email list.
Remember: one goal at a time of your launch. Become crystal clear on your goal and make all of the elements of your blog work toward that goal.
As you become a more established blogger, you can increase the goals and calls to action, but you want the most successful launch possible.
Launch Mistake #4: Backloading Your Launch
When you launch your blog, all of the work happens when your blog is up and running, right?
Then, you can start promoting, list building, and writing, right?
This is actually a huge mistake. When you backload your launch like this, you’re losing out on opportunities to gain readers, generate buzz and drum up excitement for your launch, which helps you gain a much farther reach.
Instead of backloading the work for after your launch, focus on promoting your blog, building that list and writing posts and social media updates before your website’s “go live” date. You can even submit guest posts, create YouTube videos, make live streams on YouTube, LinkedIn or Facebook. Get creative and I'm sure you'll come up with lots of ideas for things to do before you launch so you can avoid this next mistake…
Launch Mistake #5: Launching to Nobody
One of the biggest blog launch mistakes new bloggers make is that they launch into a void.
See, a launch is one of a blog’s biggest moments. Other than a product launch, it’s one of the only newsworthy events for a blog. So it’s a huge mistake to use this newsworthy day on nobody.
Launching your blog when you have no subscribers and no audience is like setting off fireworks in the middle of an isolated desert.
The fireworks go off, and they’re exciting, but there’s nobody to witness it, nobody around to ooh or ahh about the fireworks, and they go off in vain. Start making connections with others in your niche by leaving insightful comments on their blogs or connect with you on your favorite social networks. That way you will already have an audience before you hit publish.
Instead of launching to nobody, build an audience before you launch so you can harness the power of that audience to make your launch as newsworthy as possible. Drive traffic to your pre-launch landing page and capture those emails before you launch. Don’t launch until you have an audience of 500 or 1,000 subscribers.
This will make everything you do on your blog more effective when you do launch.
Launch With a Bang by Avoiding These Blog Launch Mistakes
What could be possible if your blog launched with thousands of visitors on day one? If you already had an audience who shared your posts and helped generate buzz around your launch. If your launch goals were met or even succeeded?
You’ve been working hard on your blog.
You want to set it up for success, reach your launch goals and make sure your hard work goes to good use.
So make your blog launch work harder for you by avoiding these five silly launch mistakes.
And when you do launch, the only crickets you’ll hear are outside, where they belong.
Hi Sarah and Ileane,
Great post. Really nice job here. And thanks for linking to Better Blogging! I appreciate that.
Wish I had read this post last year… lol. When I launched my blog, I had nothing in place except for five mediocre posts. Started from zero and built up… oh well. Live and learn, right? 😉
Brent
Hey Brent,
We all start from zero! We do live and learn, it’s all part of the process. Thanks for reading and commenting!
I think the launch is important, but research is everything! Why right a blog, if no one is interested. Picking your niche wisely and researching trending topics that will get readers to the table is key.
Hey Todd,
Thanks for chiming in with your point of view! IT’s appreciated. I think there’s an audience for most blog topics, but you’re right that it’s not all.
Hi Sarah,
Great explanation, here you have highlighted some useful factors about blog launch.
There are many things that needs to be done before launching a blog. Nowadays it is very important to do strong research and choosing the best niche.
Thanks
Hi Gaurav! So true, I agree fully 🙂
Hi Sarah,
I was intrigued by your list of 5 mistakes, and the first three make sense to me. But the fourth one, Backloading, is a term I never heard of before and have never seen online. The fifth one, not launching until you have 500 or 1000 readers, seems like a completely impossible goal. How would you get 500 to 1000 readers when you don’t have a blog? What is it that your readers would be reading? I am mystified. Isn’t a pre-launch landing page just a place to publish hype?
Thanks so much for commenting! It’s not only completely doable to launch with 500-1000 subscribers on your list, it’s important! A pre-launch landing page can (and should) contain an opt-in offer that your audience (or target audience, at that point) really wants, so they will enter their name and email address to receive it.
So your landing page already has content – they just have to subscribe to get it. And they’ll be practically begging you to send it to them if it’s a compelling enough offer. 🙂
Hello, nice posts for newbie. You have mentioned some of the very important points a newbie should avoid while entering into the blog-o-sphere. I personally agree with the mistake number 3, the bloggers do- foggy goals. Thanks for sharing and keep up the good work.
Hi Mahesh,
Thank you for reading 🙂
Hi Sarah,
Great post you’ve got here.
We keep learning every day, no wonder a certain wise man once said, “When you stop learning, you start dying”
It’s so true because learning is the only way to stay relevant.
Thanks for sharing.
Cheers
Dan
Hi Dan!
I really like that quote. It’s a good one!
Great post Sarah! Well said points but Wat matters at the end is seo. whatever effort we put, whatever great content a blog has i think its seo which makes the blog a blockbuster!
Hey Neil,
I’m not sure I agree that SEO is what matters in the end – very few popular, well read blogs became popular because of SEO (most of it has been relationship building and caring about the audience) – but SEO can be one tactic of many to get traffic, if not necessarily readers.
Great article, I am the first to admit that I have made a lot of these mistakes in my past blogs and they all ended up failing. I don’t want to make the same mistake so these tips are really helpful!
I think we all make mistakes like this, Gavi! But it’s just good to be aware of the if you can, before you launch.
Hello Sarah,
I enjoyed reading through this article. I had a bad experience at the launch of my blog, in fact for the first few weeks I had recorded 0 visitors. I felt discouraged, but instead of giving up, i took to reading insights from more experienced bloggers. Now i can tell what my problem was, i tried flying a plane without having a runway.
I look forward to reading more from you and i’m definitely visiting unsettle.org
Thanks so much for reading Raphael, and I’m glad to have helped!
Hi Sarah
This is a really great post.
And actually advice I wish I had when I asked you first launched my blog. You’re absolutely right that you do have to have clear goals when you are launching your blog. By having clear goals you’ll be able to strategize exactly what you want to achieve.
Launching to nobody is really a huge mistake.this is advice that I’ve learned from Jon Morrow and it’s absolutely true. And in fact, I am seeing a colleague of mine do that with a blog that she is preparing to launch. She’s putting in the time and effort to grow that list before she lounges which is very smart.
Great post here Sarah, and nice to see you on Ms. Ileane’s blog.
– Andrew
Hey Sarah,
This would be great for newbies, and I’m actually working on a post similar to this one. I plan on publishing this either next week or the following week.
Anyways, I really resonated with point 3 and 5. When I first started I didn’t have the best of goals. They just didn’t line up and plus they were too generic. It’s vital that you line up your tactics in order to get the best out of them. If you’re goal is to build your email list, focus on that until you become good at it and maybe add another strategy.
You also want to put yourself out there. There are many times that people shoot themselves in the foot. They don’t want to “help” their competition but yet they want to generate traffic and leads. With this mentality, their results would be hearing crickets when they launch their blog. Instead, the best thing you can do is to collaborate with your so-called competition by leaving comments and sharing their blog to start off. The goal is to put your name out there and if no one knows you, then no one is going to come to your blog.
Thanks for sharing Sarah! Have a great weekend!
Top tips. And another one – leaving some of the other pages on the site under construction or half-finished. I’ve done that in the past in my eagerness to start publicising a new blog and suffered the consequences 🙂
Deception is correct. I think at some point over the past 3 months and some still, I have hit every single stumbling block you have listed.
Competitive topic being my largest demon. I keep telling myself to trudge forward, but in the end I feel I may be fighting a dead horse.
At what point do you throw in the towel and decide to begin again? I’m not saying quit, but start anew.
This is a true, disheartening and mind-clenching post. You’ve done well and I look forward to seeing where it goes.