7 Things to Do Immediately After You Start a Blog

Starting a blog is very exciting! You get to learn new things, you start sharing your thoughts and knowledge with other people and.. let’s face it.. There’s something new to learn everyday.

But with all new things to learn, do you know if you’re doing them right or are you missing something?

So, to help you saving time, I want to share with you the 7 things to do after you start a blog – and some of them I wish I knew before.

This post contains affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost for you. Please read my disclosure policy for more info.

1. Connect to Google Analytics

In order of importance, for me there’s my blog and then Google Analytics 😅 

If you don’t know, Google Analytics is a FREE tool from Google that allows you to see how your website is performing.

For example, you can check how many views a blog is getting or where the readers are from.

I highly recommend you to connect to Google Analytics as soon as possible.

Doing so, in a few weeks, you’ll have important insights to help you check if what you’re doing is bringing results.

For example, if you’re implementing a social media strategy, you can check which social media is bringing more traffic and which one not. So you can modify things accordingly.

I’ve written a post here for you to understand how to use the platform or if you prefer help from a professional, I now offer Google Analytics Audit for your website (click here to learn more).

2. Connect to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is another FREE tool from Google that will help you taking your SEO to the next level.

It shows which pages of the blog are indexed by Google, which one contains errors or issue to be fixed.

I find it particularly useful to find those 404 error pages that you completely forgot about and apply a redirections.

Google SC is also great to show you how you rank on Google results. It gives you which keywords you rank for and the number of impression.

3. Setup a Sitemap

A sitemap is a file which contains a map of your website. When uploaded in Google Search Console, it gives to “an hint” of what your website is about and what contains to all the Search Engines going through your website.

It might sound a bit complex, but it worth it. In other words you’re helping Search Engines in finding your blog. And that’s great for SEO!

You can easily create a sitemap with a plugin, like “XML Sitemap Generator” or “Yoast SEO“, download it and then upload it to Google Search Console.

In this article you’ll find a in-depth guide on how to create a sitemap in WordPress.

4. E-mail list

This is something that I’ve always thought “I’ll do it later, when my blog will start grow”.

Erm, wrong!! Building an email list is something that you should start from day one even if it’s not clear what you’ll do with it.

Sending regular emails to your reader is a great way to humanise yourself and establish a connection.

Treat your readers like you would do with friends, check with them about new posts they might like or you want to promote.

And later in your blogging career you can use the email list to promote products or services, too!

When it comes to email providers, choose one that makes it easy to create and send emails (if you use Mailchimp, you probably know what I mean). Also the possibility of creating reports and track how the email are performing is very important.

I highly recommend Constant Contact. They offer a 60-day free trial as well as easy-to-customise email templates with drag and drop included, segmented lists and much more.

>>>Click here to sign up with my affiliate link to get a 60-day free trial with Constant Contact and no credit card required<<<

5. Create a Privacy & Affiliate disclaimer page

This is very important, as you don’t want to ended up being sued (argh!). If you use cookie or collect other forms of data from your readers, you MUST let them know.

You must tell them how you collect the dat and how are you going to use the data. Especially with the newest law, like GDPR, make sure your site is compliant.

If you use affiliate links in the blog, you must let readers know that you use them and you receive a little commission from them.

A lot of affiliate program also oblige you to have a page about it, otherwise your sales won’t be paid. So better having a look into it.

6. Choose a theme

Of course you have already chosen a theme to starting out… but….. Does the theme reflect your name or brand?

Does the theme give readers a hint of what they have to expect? Or it’s just “another theme”.

A “good looking” theme is part of your branding and helps you to look professional if one day you decide to go for sponsored posts.

It does have to look good but it has to be easy for you to edit, as well! And unfortunately, a lot of free theme have very limited options for customisation.

For experience, you want to be able to edit the colour of the fonts or the size of Heading 2, 3. This kind of things where you don’t want to learn how to code in order to do it.

A premium theme instead, will give you freedom on how you want your blog to appear, colours, pages, and much more.

My favourite place for WordPress themes is ThemeForest. They are a marketplace for WordPress theme, so you’ll find a lot of creators and not just mono-brand.

>>> Click here to see the most popular WordPress theme for blogging on ThemeForest <<<

7. Invest into a scheduling app

This is the game changer and what will free up time so you can focus on other tasks. I wish I done it as soon as I started, instead I’ve only discovered it recently.

With a scheduling app you can schedule your blog posts to be shared at CERTAIN time on CERTAIN Social Media. You automate the process so you don’t have to be present all the times.

I really love it for two reasons, which most of you’ll probably relate too:

1. It helps you posting regularly – With all things going on, is easy to forget to post regularly on all the social media. I’m terrible at it! Instead, it helped to keep my online presence regular on all the platforms.
2. It free up your time – because you can schedule and “forget about it” I am now able to focus on writing more posts and creating more Pins.

At the moment I’m testing out 2 different apps for Twitter and Facebook (Planable and Buffer) and regularly using Tailwind for Pinterest.

I love Tailwind and really made a different in growing my Pinterest account. Plus it have further pin analytics to help you understand how you are performing. It’s free to try up to 100 scheduled pins.

>>> Click here to use my affiliate link to get 100 scheduled FREE pin and $15 off when you upgrade to Tailwind Plus <<<

In Conclusion

Everyone’s blogging journey is different and you’ll always learn something every day. I’d love to know how’s yours and if you are already doing one of the things above 🙂

Want to read more about blogging? Here’s something for you:

• 5 Reasons why your blog should be self-hosted and how to switch
• 10 tips to make the most out of your blog as a beginner blogger
• 5 biggest SEO mistakes and how to fix them
• 5 things to consider when buying a theme for your blog

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