How to Launch a Brand New Website (With a Bang!): The Ultimate Guide (1)
I'm often asked about the biggest mistakes that I've made while starting and running my online businesses. I typically answer with the following:
Not starting sooner.
Thinking about money before serving an audience.
Trying to do everything on my own. Not immediately starting an email list.
Using a trademark in a domain name.
With Niche Site Duel 2.0 in full swing and with branding and the launch of a new website just around the corner, I'm reminded of another mistake I made when starting each of my online businesses: Not creating a launch plan.
While you don't need a launch plan in order to build a successful website or online business, without one you miss out on the opportunity to make some noise on Day One that could easily put you 3-6 months ahead of where you would be if you just started publishing content without a plan. Without a launch plan, you're publishing content for nobody. When you first create a website, nobody knows about it but you. Your best content is wasted and eventually over time gets hidden in the archives. There are ways to bring new life back to old blog posts, but when you're first starting out you want as many people to read those posts as possible. More readers = more sharing, and more authority right off the bat.
There's no reason you should ever be writing for nobody. Let's explore how to avoid that… An Ideal Launch Day: The Goals
On the day that you launch and share your new website (which is different from the day that you start it), the aim is to have lots of traffic coming your way. “Lots of traffic” is relative, of course (and for any brand new website, any traffic is something to be proud about), but there are ways to maximize your reach and traffic on Day One, which we'll get into in this post. You'll also want your new visitors to perform a number of different actions—as many of the following as possible: Read your content (duh!) Subscribe to your email list.
Share your content and website with others.
Engage on your website and leave comments.
Get excited about what's coming next. The main purpose of the launch, beyond getting maximum traffic and engagement on Day One, is to truly establish you and your brand as a new authority in the niche that you're entering—one that's worth paying close attention to. Entering a niche late is actually an advantage, because you can see what's missing from an existing market, come in to fill those holes and be the solution that has yet to exist. With a launch plan in place, if done correctly, you can definitely ride the “New & Noteworthy” wave. Ideally, you'll want people to think something along the lines of: “Finally! Where has this been all my life?”
What to Do Before You Launch
You'll want to think of the launch of your new website like an event—something important that happens during a specific day and time where your brand and everything it has to offer becomes available to the public. Doing this puts the launch in the correct frame of mind—not just for you, but for those you'll be contacting before launch day to help you promote, as well as those who visit your site on launch day. The specific date also helps you schedule what happens when, and gives you a target date or deadline to shoot for, which will help you avoid procrastination and putting things off “until tomorrow.”
Before you contact anyone, however, there are certain things you should have in place and figured out first:
1. Your Seven-Second Pitch
The first and most important thing to do is find the right way to quickly let people know what your brand is about and why it's worth paying attention to. This exercise will become the foundation for everything else that happens in and around your launch.
If you can't pitch your website in seven seconds or less and it doesn't sound like a no-brainer for those you are pitching to, then you're not ready to launch. Therefore, a significant amount of time should be spent on your seven-second pitch and determining the right language to use. It will help you figure out your tagline and the copy to use on your website to get people to stick around and subscribe to your list when they visit, and it'll also help you figure out how to send the perfect (and quickest to read) emails to people who help you promote. Why seven seconds?
It's sort of an arbitrary number, similar to the 30-second elevator pitch, but the fact of the matter is that it's quick—really quick. It needs to be the MED (Minimum Effective Dosage) of pitches, because online you only have a small window to make a first impression before people leave and look for a better solution. Or, in the case of an email, you only have a small window of time before people read it and think, “This isn't worth my time right now.” 2. Content That Will Be Live on Day One
On launch day, aim to have multiple pieces of highly valuable content already available to consume—not just one single post.
If you don't have a launch plan, it doesn't matter—hardly anyone is there to read that first post anyway. But if you plan a launch you're going to set yourself back if all you have is one piece of content to read. I made a mistake like this when I launched the SPI Podcast in July 2010. I only created one introductory episode before submitting my podcast feed to iTunes, so when people listened to the new show, all they could possibly listen to was that first episode. I actually received a number of low ratings and comments from people saying that the show actually had very little value to offer, which was totally true at that point. All of the good value was to come, so if I were to do it all over again I would wait until I had three or four episodes already in my feed.
The same goes for your website. You'll have one viral piece of content that you'll be promoting heavily, but you also want other cornerstone, pillar-type content published on your site, too. Sometimes, it's not that initial piece of content they read that gets them to buy into you and your brand, but those other posts that may actually be more relevant to them. Plus, as a whole your site will already look like a resource to serve that audience that will be worth subscribing too. Again, it should be a no-brainer to your new visitors.
So what kinds of content should you initially publish?
First, let's talk about that viral piece that's going to put you on the map and help you promote your site. Your Viral Piece All of the content that's initially on your site is important and should be of the highest quality, however, there should be one incredible stand-out post that you'll use as your promotional tool from Day One, and it should help your site experience some viral qualities right off the bat. In my eyes, there are two types of viral pieces that you can create. They take some work, but the work can definitely pay off. They are:
1. A Beastly Resource
In SPI Podcast session #67, Neil Patel from QuickSprout.com mentioned that one of the best ways to promote a new website and make noise in a particular market is to create a highly detailed guide—the ultimate one-stop solution for people in that particular market who are trying to learn something. This guide is not a downloadable guide, but rather something formatted within the website itself which will help promote sharing, as well as search engine optimization.
Not only that, it almost proves authority and expertise right away to new visitors.
This is how Trevor Page from SPI Podcast Session #55 got started so quickly. Within a year, he built and monetized a website with a published eBook and membership site, and it all started with a beastly resource for those getting started with Java programming. It was picked up on LifeHacker.com and things just started to happen right out of the gate for Trevor, which is awesome.
A website could contain several of these guides covering many different topics within your niche, but when you start out, pick the one you know is just right for your target audience—the one they are probably already asking for or hinting at elsewhere on the web.
The resource doesn't have to be a 45,000-word, book-worthy piece of content like what Neil typically creates, but something more substantial than a regular blog post can definitely do the trick. Of course, the length of the piece isn't what really matters (although that can make an impression), it's the quality and usefulness of whatever is provided. 2. An Expert Round-Up Post
An expert round-up post was first mentioned here on SPI when Corbett Barr from ThinkTraffic.net was a guest on SPI Podcast Session #08, and it's exactly what he used to launch ThinkTraffic.net back in 2010 and take it from 0 to 60 in a very short time period. (Here's a link to Corbett's post launch round-up post. ) Compared to something like a beastly resource, an expert round-up post isn't quite as instructional or step-by-step, but it can definitely be just as useful and impactful for the launch of your site. An expert round-up post is simply a post that's made up of answers to a specific question that other experts in your field have answered for you and your audience. Here's how to do it: Determine the most important question that your target audience wants answered.
Email other experts in your niche, asking them to answer that one specific question.
Compile all of the answers into a single blog post, and you'll begin to see just how much of a resource this post will be for new visitors! The beauty of this strategy is that not only will you be able to provide this massive resource to your audience, but you'll have made connections with several influential people in your niche. If you approach these people correctly, and follow up with them after your blog post is published, you can easily have several of them sharing the post that they're featured in with their friends and followers. If you'd like some help emailing influential people, check out Derek Halpern's video here. So which one is better—a beastly resource or a round-up post?
It really depends on your niche, but one is better than none. They both take a lot of different kinds of work to complete, but like I said, you can be put on the map on Day One if you do it right.
I'd avoid having both available on Day One, because they each deserve full attention and promotion. Other Types of Content to Have Published on Day One
Besides a beastly resource or a round-up post, you'll want other pillar-style content published on your site too. An additional three or four pieces can go a very long way.
The most important thing when it comes to all of the content on your site is this: Don't write about what you want to say, write about exactly what your target audience wants to read. This is always going to be the case, but it's especially important during the launch of your website. It's also a good idea to mix up the types of additional content you have posted on your site. Very much inspired by the content pyramid, different types of posts will appeal to different types of readers. Touch on them all, and you'll resonate with your audience one way or another. Forget your personal story—that should be reserved for your about page, and you can touch more on that later.
Forget current events and news articles—that stuff isn't evergreen material. Once you establish some authority, you can definitely tap into what's happening in the news if you want.
