Updated December 4th, 2017
One of the most depressing things for a new, excited blogger is to start publishing posts and nobody is there to read them. Talk about a high to low. It can leave you feeling like “I HAVE ALL THIS GREAT INFORMATION AND I PUT ALL THAT WORK INTO PUBLISHING IT AND THERE IS NOBODY TO READ IT!” Then follows the thoughts: is this worth it? Am I not up to snuff? Am I doing something wrong?
I don’t want that to happen to you!
The truth is, without marketing your content you have zilch chance of reaching your blogging ambitions if your goals include someone else reading your blog. Marketing also takes time. This is why I recommend you work on gaining followers before you even publish your first post!
When the New Blog went live, it had over 100 followers on the each of the main social media platforms, over 100 email subscribers, and over 300 visits to the blog the day it went live. It didn’t just happen by chance, it took a lot of work to gain followers and get people excited about the debut of the New Blog. But it was worth it! It can take months to gain the traction that she had with her first post.
Anyway, let me show you the process the owner of the New Blog used to get the followers she did before her blog went live.
Before you get started building your followers, you’ll need to complete the first 5 steps in my How to Start a blog Series. There are a lot of moving parts to starting a blog, make sure that you get my start a blog checklist.
1. Set up Social Media Accounts
You don’t have to be on all social media platforms, pick the ones you would like to focus on and start there. The big ones for bloggers are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Tips for setting up your new social media account
- Check out this post if you need help setting up business accounts on social platforms.
- Use the same profile pictures for all of your social media accounts.
- Create a cover picture on Twitter and Facebook that shows what type of blog you will be launching soon. Canva has templates for both of these cover pictures.
- Don’t add your URL or start connecting/advertising these social media accounts until you complete step number 2.
2. Create a Coming Soon Landing Page
Now that you’ve created social media accounts for your blog, you need to create a Coming Soon landing page for your site so that there is something for people to see when they come to your blog. Use Coming Soon Page and Maintenance Mode by SeedProd to create a landing page. There is a free option or the Pro option. I am all for saving money – especially since you’re just getting started, so we used the free option. You really don’t need the pro option.
To install the plugin go to Plugins > Add New > and then search Coming Soon Page SeedProd. Click install now. Now that you’ve installed the plugin, a new link will show up under the setting section of your WordPress dashboard. Let’s go through the set up for the plugin.
Setting up the coming soon landing page
Here is an example of what the coming soon landing page could look like when you are done:
Content Tab
Status – Choose to enable Coming Soon Mode
Page Settings – If you have a logo you can add it to the logo section but it is okay to leave it off. The headline is the title of the page, it will appear in larger fonts than the rest of the content on the page.
For the message, write a short blurb about your blog.
Here is what we included on the landing page:
- Blog Title
- Coming soon
- Brief summary of what the blog was about
- A call to action: Join me in…
- Option to subscribe via email and freebie
- Social media links
Make sure to add a way to collect email subscribers. You do not need to upgrade to the pro version of the plugin, just get the form code from your email service provider and paste it in the message box.
Header – we’ll get a favicon up later, for now just add a title and a sentence description of your blog.
Design Tab
This is where you can make it look prettier.
Background – Choose a background color or upload your own image. Images work well at 1600 x 1050
Content – this is where you can adjust the content width. By default, it is set at 600. This is fine or you can make it a little larger.
Text – choose the colors for varies text on the page: text, links, and headlines. Make the links stand out so that readers know they are links.
Now it’s time for the fun part.
3. Market your coming soon page.
Connecting with other bloggers is key to establishing yourself online – especially with blogs that compliment or write about the same things as you. Follow other bloggers in your industry and chat with them on social media. Share their stuff.
Tell friends and family members about your new blog and let them be your biggest fans and cheerleaders.
You are going to do great!
How long should you promote your coming soon page?
The New Blog promoted her coming soon page for about 2 ½ weeks. There really isn’t a magic number for how long you should promote your coming soon page before you go live. You don’t want it to be too short that you don’t get as many followers as you could have, but you also don’t want it to be too long and have people completely forget about you by the time you’re ready to go live.
Bonus Tip: Have at least 2 weeks of posts in your drafts before you go live.
This will allow you to keep up with promoting yourself. For the first two weeks after going live, you should really focus on connecting with others and promoting your new blog and posts. If you have to worry about promoting and about writing new content, you’ll burn out quickly. New content is essential for building a following and keeping readers interested so keep the new content coming once you go live!
Just found this information today and thank you for all the great tips and the startup roadmap/checklist, which I downloaded. Had a ton of things floating around in my head and your advice really pulled it all together. Excited to get up and running!
Got to learn some new things. Will surely test this in future.
I’m sorry if this is a stupid question, but how do you get the form code from your email service provider? I’m new at this, so any help you can give me is much appreciated. Otherwise, this article is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for sharing your wisdom for those of us just learning.
Hi, not a stupid question. What email service provider are you using Teresa?
Kristie, great tips and thank you for sharing them with us! This post was very helpful for me as a newbie blogger! So, Thanks a lot!
yay! I’m glad to hear it. Best of luck.
Wow.
Kristie, thank you so much for your knowledge! This is one of the best posts on this topic that I’ve found! I’m in the very beginning stages setting everything up and this was just what I needed to read. Its very clear and concise and not confusing with too many drawn out steps. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!
You’re welcome! Good luck setting up your blog. Let me know if you have any questions.
Kristie,
I can’t thank you enough for putting this article out there. I had resigned myself to starting a blog with zero followers until I found this!
Granted, I only promoted my “coming soon” page for a couple weeks, part-time, over the holidays, but still, my website launched this morning with:
–18 Email Subscribers
–3 Pinterest Followers
–24 Instagram Followers
That is a non-zero amount of followers, and I am absolutely blown away that this was possible!
Thanks for all your encouragement and awesomeness.
Cheers,
Madeline
Yay! So excited for you Madeline. Can’t wait to see where your blog takes you from here. 🙂
Hi Kristie! I am not sure if you are going to see this but I am living for your site! It is so helpful! I just downloaded the spreadsheet in order to keep track of bloggers in my niche. My question is how do you know how large a blogger is? If I google someone I don’t think I can tell if they are large or small besides looking at how much content they have posted. Is there another way?
Hi Johanna! I’m late, but I’m seeing it. I look at followers on social media to gauge how big they are.
Great info! Thank you! Hope some of this helps me. 🙂
My favourite Pinterest tool is PinPinterest. It has given me about 55k followers for my Pinterest and floods my blog with unique visitors everyday 🙂
It is free to use, runs on the cloud, optimised for use on mobile devices, easy to setup, has Pin Scheduling feature and Speed Control…
The best thing I like about PinPinterest is that it has Intelligent Content Detection algorithms, which pin only images relevant to my business to my boards 🙂
I can fully rely on PinPinterest for my Pinterest marketing 🙂
I haven’t heard of PinPinterest before, I’ll have to look into it. Thanks Nancy.
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How important is your blog name? In my own experience as a consumer, I have found peoples blogs by randomly searching….which my blog posts tend not to show up in engines even tho I tag a lot… thoughts on either? http://healthyhomeslice.blogspot.com/
Hi Kat, Your blog name isn’t very important when it comes to Search engines.
Hi Kristie
I have been searching for techniques on ‘things to do before launching a blog’ I’m about to launch my own blog about as a Vegan Mama and this has been by far given me great ideas in such a clear and consise way. Thanks you so much for this I shall be printing this off to add to my wall for my blog launch Thank again
Rita
Very exciting times, Rita. Let me know when you have that landing page set up. I can’t wait to see where your blogging journey takes you. 🙂
Hey Kristie! This is a great article – I am preparing my blog for a launch right now, planning to launch it in 2 – 3 weeks and these steps are really useful, especially that thing with making a list of bloggers and interacting with them. I will definitely do this and hope to generate at least a little bit of following before I start, because I am really putting in a lot of work into content and I would really like to see the response of other people.
My blog will be about blogging, self development, digital marketing, etc. similar as yours and I hope to have some success with it.
Anyways, thank you for these tips, I always love practical tips like this, very useful, thank you!
Looks like you’re off to a great start at reaching out to similar bloggers. Good luck with your launch!
I’m a new blogger and so green at it. I really would like to build a following or subscribers. I found your article sincere. thank you. My blog name is OPPinionated.com. I would welcome advise and suggestions. I would definitely like to meet/know other bloggers for tips and frienships
We are new landowners so I *just* started a blog to chronicle our journey from “the burbs to the country”. Looking to attract more followers. This article has been very insightful. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and experience with others such as myself.
You’re welcome Lizabeth. Sounds like it will be a fun read, congrats on your new journey!
Love this post! So many great tips 🙂
I wish I had done this before we started our grilling site. We talked about it for months, and now I think of those months lost I could have been building social channels. This is amazing advice!!
This is such a great article. If only I had seen this bag when I was starting my blog!
And what do you think about special services like zen-promo.com that finds real followers? The only difference is that with apps getting followers is faster. It finds real people. No fakes. Because with low number of followers is much harder to gain audience because people don’t care and skip you.
This was so helpful! I was trying to figure out a way to build an email list before going live in a few weeks and I’m so happy I found this piece!
It was also super intuitive which was really appreciated.
Thanks for these great tips!
— Zoë Alexandra
The Fake Grownup
You are very welcome. Good luck collecting email addresses and followers! I’m excited for your blog launch. Come back and let me know when it is live!
This is a great article! I wish I had seen it before I published my site. I’m still VERY new and only have 1 post up and haven’t marketed my blog at all yet. I installed the Sunshine plug in, can I “unpublish” my site? I’m using a free theme of WP from WP.org.
Yes, you can! Well, it’s not unpublishing it, but removing from being seen. Put up the coming soon page and try this route. Please keep me posted on how it goes, and let me know when you have it up!
I’m so glad I found this article! I’m currently in the process of starting my very first blog and found this info very helpful! I will be setting up a “coming soon” page before I’m ready to launch! Thank you so much for the advice!
Yay! I’m so glad this post has helped you. It definitely a great way to get started. Let me know when you have your coming soon page, I’d love to check it out.
Great advice! I brought my twitter back from the dead, and am going to try to reach out to some other bloggers. Thanks for the great read!
Vanessa at ladietalks.com
Reaching out and sharing other blogger stuff is a great way to revive your twitter account. Good luck!
Really helpful advice here that I wouldn’t have thought of. Thanks!
It is a nice read. “Coming Soon” idea also gives people something to engage with. But it is about a blog which is to be published soon. What to do if anyone has an established blog. How to get more subscribers?
I have a personal blog. Please have a look. http://www.khooob.com
Well, that is the best article I read on this topic. And trust me I read a lot! Thank you!
That’s great to hear! Thanks Violet.
“Bonus Tip: Have at least 2 weeks of posts in your drafts before you go live.”
Oh sure…I couldn’t have found that tip 2 weeks ago!! 😀
Great info, though. I can’t wait to use some of your other tips.
haha, oh well, you’ll do just fine still. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions Jim.
Awesome tips. They were very helpful for me.
Thankyou!
I’m so happy to hear that, good luck!
Thank you for this great information. I am trying to build a following on my social media sites to gain more views to my Children’s clothing boutique. If you have any more advice or posts you think would be relevant I would love to read them! Check out my website http://www.tweedlebeedle.com
Just checked out your site! Make sure to include links to your social media accounts somewhere on your site **easily accessible** Which social media platforms are your favorite?
Thanks 4 the post. I have already gone live with my blog but there are several tips that you mentioned that I can utilize now. I recently started a blog geared towards women. It’s about recipes, life, resources, tips, encouragement, inspiration, & anything interesting. Your tip on creating a list of blogs in your niche and connecting with them is very useful for me. Great information and I hope to steadily increase my subscribers.
http://fromwhitney.com/index.html
I love having a list of go-to bloggers in my niche (and complimentary niches!) It makes sharing others work so much easier. Good luck building your following 🙂
Hi Kristie,
I can’t thank you enough for this post. I’m launching my first blog- Strong In Body, Strong in Mind- on August 22nd, and though I have a marketing background I was more in the innovation and analytics sector rather than communications. This post helped me get my ducks in a row before starting my social media blitz on August 1st – something I wouldn’t have considered before reading this post.
Cheers,
Nikita
Hi Nikita! How did the launch go? Looks like the blog is up and running well.
Kristie – I love all of your tips! I decided to get the landing page while I am getting my blog set up and building my social media… I set it up and activated it, but it isn’t working! Do I need to actually publish my blog before the plugin will work? (ha, WordPress newbie here)
Thanks in advance 🙂 🙂
Hi, Thank you so much for this helpful article. My blog is not live yet, and I really love your ideas. My niche group is most active on FB and Pinterest, and I have set up a group on FB and a business account for Pinterest. Should I have business FB page as well?
Thanks again!
Hi Kristie!
Such great information! I am new to the blogging world. After I create my “Coming Soon” page will I use the same platform for my blog?
Thanks!
Thank you for bringing this plugin to light for newbies! Works like a charm.
You’re welcome. Glad the plugin is working for you (your coming soon page looks great!) – hopefully it helps get followers before you go live. Best of luck to you!
Your info really.help me as a newbie in blogging. Love to read more of your article
-fvisn
Glad you found it helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.
I started a blog…working on IG right now to try to get some reccomendations:) Any tips on adding advertising on my blog?
Hi Naomi, the only advertising you can use with a wordpress.com site is the ads that wordpress.com offers. If you’d like to use other ads, you will need to switch to a self-hosted WordPress account.
Hi. thank you for this post , i want to start a blog but i was worried about posting without any followers and then i found you. your post has been a great help and i’m going over to your how to start a blog series right now. thank you!!!
You are welcome Shamiso. good luck starting your blog.
I have been using this post to help gain some followers before the launch of my very first university blog. I really love the idea of the coming soon page, but I am struggling to gain followers on any of my social media accounts connected to it. I feel like I don’t have enough followers in the first place to say “Hey, I’m starting a blog! Come look!”
In any case though, your entire series for creating a blog has been so helpful and really helps to break down all the things you need to get done. 🙂 Thanks!
Hi Alana. I’m so happy to hear that my series has helped you get your blog going. Your coming soon page looks great and it looks like you’ve worked hard on your branding. Those first few followers are hard.
Now that you have your social media accounts set up, you need to start sharing things on them. Find a few other bloggers who write about college. One blogger that comes to mind off the top of my head is Jessica Slauhtger If you like her content, follow her. Share a post you like of hers on your facebook page, make sure to tag her in it.
Do the same with a few other bloggers.
On your instagram feed, start snapping some pictures of things that help motivate and inspire you in college. Write a short paragraph and then find some relevant hashtags and tag it up!
You got this! Try those things out and report back with how it’s going.
Hey Kristie,
I just wanted to let you know that I have got my blog up and running (Only took two months)! And I couldn’t have done it without all the amazing advice and instructions that you have provided (who even knew that you had to submit sitemaps?)
I spent so much time at the beginning worrying that my blog was going to be a big failure, or that it wasn’t going to work or that people would think I was silly for doing it that I ended up putting it off for a long time. But now that I have launched it, I just want to keep writing for it and I’m not worrying so much. I’m so excited about it!
So I just wanted to say thank you so much for the support. It sounds silly, but even just one person saying “Hey, you can do this!” honestly is the most motivating thing.
Thank you!!!
Thanks so much for your willingness to share your expertise and information! It’s a great post and one I’m saving.
This post is so helpful! I do have a question about the SunshineLaunch plugin though, hopefully you can help me. Once they put their emails in a subscribe, should I get an email notifying me someone signed up?
Thanks!
Yes, if someone subscribes, SusnshineLaunch will send you an email with an email address. If you want to sync it with MailChimp, you can upgrade to the Pro version.
Thank you for this post! I started my site almost 2 years ago and have gotten hung up with the technical side and procrastination. I wish I would have seen this when I got started and know where to put my focus!
When commenting on other blogs should you use your name or blog title or both? And what type of comments were most successful for the New Blog in getting traffic?
Feel so blessed to have found your site! Can’t wait to dive deeper!!
Hi Lisa, I always like to comment with my name. Some people like to do something like Lisa – Birth Eat Love. Here is the post that I had the New blog read before she got started on commenting on other blogs.
Thank you for this information. I’m just starting my blog and I was trying to figure out how to connect with others and now you’ve answered that! ~Kelly
http://www.ourhodgepodgelife.com
Good luck starting out, I hope this helps you get followers.
Thanks. This was super helpful as we are just about to launch our blog and were unsure how to promote it. Your advice was really valuable and we will definitely take it on board.
Great! Hope it helps you get more followers – blogging for no one is no fun. 🙂
This is so helpful! I am still in the researching phase of starting my blog, and you hit on some of my main questions. You are helping me to feel more confident as I launch a blog that will hopefully reach a lot of people on the topic of hope. Your advice gives ME hope! 🙂 Thank you, Kristie. I am subscribing to your blog now!
Thanks Lynda, this comment really makes me smile! I also have a private facebook group for new bloggers, or those who haven’t started blogging yet. Would you like an invite?
This is exactly what I did to grow my audience before I even launched. I had a coming soon page and directed people to my Facebook page where I was sharing useful information and free tools and downloads that I was discovering and wanted to share. I had about 100 subscribers by the time my blog launched!
Marianne,
Very Cool! I actually went to your blog already and found some great tips on blogging. Thanks. So I’m setting up my new blog, so my question is what kind of information and downloads you have put on your facebook page before your blog launched? I’ve got a facebook page too, but I thought I should post kind of the same things when I post my blog too. So I didn’t publish yet, and still waiting for my blog.
Thank you so much for the helpful advice! I have been searching all over pinterest for the right information, and I think I found it 🙂
This was so helpful. I wish I would have read this prior to publishing my first few posts! I’m definitely going to get started researching other bloggers and building my social media connections. Thank you so much for the great advice.
This is awesome info! To bad I got to this after I already launched my blog. But I could definitely still use the tips. Thank you your awesome.
I’ve always wondered how to go about building an anticipatory audience! I’m working to create a new blog, and you are 100% correct, it has always been incredibly disappointing to create and publish material and have no one to read it. Thank you for putting this together, especially the information about the coming soon landing page!
Great post. I’m a new blogger and I’m definitely going to try these tips. Also, Bloglovin would be a good way to keep track of blogs. Thanks for posting this idea; it’s genius! !
This is awesome info! Just got my “coming soon” page up and am focusing on new social media accounts. I’ve had a Twitter account for 7 years I think and *maybe* have 100 tweets… Guess I’ll have to become more of a Twitterer….
Thanks for always providing such valuable information!
Hi Kristie! I just found your blog through a Google search when trying to find the best Genesis child themes for beginners. I am working on a new travel blog and I want you to know that I really appreciate the information that you share here with others. I have tried my hand at blogging before and I find myself getting bogged down with the technical aspects of setting up a blog. I’m looking forward to reading more of your posts and learning more from you. Love these tips on getting subscribers before going live – never thought about that before but its pure awesome-ness!!! Thanks so much!!!
Hi Beth. So glad you were able to find my blog when searching for best Genesis child themes. Have you decided on a them you love yet? My newest favorite is a new release from Restored316: Style Theme Swoon. I’m so tempted to change theme.
Let me know if you have more questions about the technical aspects of blogging, I’d love to help. Good luck blogging!
Connecting with other blogs is the important part to networking. This is how to get to know other bloggers. I keep track of my favorite blogs by using one of the apps that store all those sites, which I visit them from time to time.
Thanks for the great post! It is just what I wanted to ask somebody) What do followers make for my account? What I should have them for ? and hat if I’ll buy them? There are lots of services offering to buy followers for a low price. Will I benefit from it or it is a risk?
I would say it is more risky than it is beneficial. You want quality over quantity. Plus, some social platforms will recognize when you have purchased followers and shut you down. I would advice building your followers naturally
This service promises natural activity around my Twitter account and a certain daily number of reposts. I don’t believe in it but wanted to get to know your opinion as a professional. I think it is impossible to perform what they promise. Natural conquering followers in soooo time consuming, but, I hope, it worth those efforts)
It does take time, but you’re right, it will be worth it! Good luck Berry.
Wow Kristie, fantastic post. I am loving all of the information you are sharing. I am almost ready to launch (in a month or so) and I was actually looking for information on how to set up a “coming soon” page. So excited to put your suggestions into play. Love your blog!!
Sherry
Wild Burr Designs
Yay, I’m so glad you decided to launch Sherry! You’re going to do awesome.
This is so interesting and helpful! Thank you Kristie! Sometimes I wonder whether I’m the problem ^^ I already launched, but it’s still useful to have an idea of how many blogs to follow 😉 Maybe I should do a landing page for a product I’ll launch now!
A product landing page is a great idea! You can always follow some of these same practices even though your blog is active – it’s never too late to get more followers.
Thank you so much. I’m about to restart my blog and I didn’t have much followers. I will do what you say to help me have a great start.
But I have a question. Since I had about a month post, should I have a front page saying back soon?
Thanks
Hi Lyne, you could do a be back soon page. Or a “New and Improved Organized Woman Coming Soon!” Follow along or subscribe to my newsletter for recipes, cake decorating, knitting, crochet, and organizing tips.
Hope you have a great new beginning!
Extremely helpful! I am still in the process of setting up my blog and creating content (wordpress is more complicated than I thought!) but I am hoping to go live in 1-2 months. This is an extremely helpful blog post for getting ready to go live! Thank you for all of your tips! I love your blog!
Hi Natasha, I’m so glad you found this post helpful. Let me know if you need any help getting the hang of WordPress or have questions, I’d love to help you get set up!