SEO BLOG

Classics in Lego by Balakov.

Starting and maintaining a flagship blog is not really easy. You need perseverance and the will to keep on blogging no matter what happens. You need passion.

You need to fall in love with blogging!

I have it, so I don’t need extra motivation or something. What I need though, like other bloggers, is a strategy or simply put adjustment to the 3 phases of blog growth.

You just can’t blog the same way for a completely new blog as for a blog which already has a significant audience or an established blog.

What is a flagship blog? A flagship blog is a blog created upon the premise of unique content of high value able to boost your online reputation. A flagship blog is a resource people will link to, subscribe and recommend to others on social media.

I want to outline the 3 main phases of flagship blog growth and how to deal with them in terms of

• content creation
• posting frequency
• topical relevancy
• social media engagement
• guest blogging

What are the 3 main phases of blog growth? These 3 are embedded in a holistic SEO 2.0 strategy including true blue social media participation.

1. Initial Frenzy
The initial frenzy is a hilarious phase of blogging. It’s like a new love affair. You’re agitated all of the time and can’t sleep well.

• You blog daily or at least as often as you can.
• You write guest posts for more popular blogs
  
• You try everything, several social media, widgets, Plugins and maybe even WordPress Themes.
• You create highly relevant topical content geared towards the social media of your choice audience
  
• You link out generously and you praise other established as well as new bloggers like you who you admire.
• You watch your first social media submissions eagerly
• and you are are glad about the first 100 visitors daily, then the first 100 subscribers
  

2. Establishing Mode
The establishing mode phase is a cool down phase. Like in a love affair you now discover whether you truly love blogging. You take a step back and analyze. You take a look at your audience and the workload of blogging. Now you need a focus and some lasting benefit of blogging.

After the initial frenzy ends there comes the establishing mode. It may be after 3 months or after 6 but it will come. You will notice it by the fact that you are posting less without really knowing why. You will more often take a look at your watch to find out how much time you spend with blogging.

• You blog less often but write longer posts
• You elaborate on topics you already covered
• You concentrate on your existing audience, you may have 300-1000 feed subscribers
• Your social media traffic either tends to become lower or you stop caring that much
• You think twice before you guest blog, some people might offer you money already for guest blogging
• You already have a significant network of like minded peers across several social media and people know your name or recognize your avatar
• You think more often about making money with your blog to justify the time spent on it
• People you never heard link to you in best of lists or as a source (”via”)

3. Final Boost
The final boost is in a love affair the equivalent of marriage. Now you decide whether you abandon your beloved one or if you’re really in it whatever it takes. You can do it you just need to want it. If your heart jumps each time you start typing a blog post you can really become one of those exceptionallysuccessful bloggers.

• You want to reach new heights each time you start a blog post, you want to write a short one but it does not work, you have so much to share
• You are the first or one of the first to cover or uncover topics others haven’t t thought of yet
• Your traffic is higher than in the initial phase even without being submitted to social media
• The no referer crowd becomes the biggest traffic factor in your stats on days you are not on social media
  
• Your blog posts get submitted to different social media just minutes or hours after you published them
• People you never heard of admire you or ask you questions
• Once you submit something to social media you get an initial boost of 10 - 20 people recognizing it’s you and checking out your submission because they trust your choices
• You get job offers via or because of your blog regularly
  

Now to reach the final boost phase or whil in it you can go pro for instance, and/or you create immensely valuable posts that will go bananas on del.icio.us, you can create an ebook or you just venture into other media like audio or video or even start a second flagship blog. You can start speaking at conferences. You will consider a professional custom blog redesign.

You want to keep inspiring people forever. You want to empower the people, you want o evangelize them and you even believe it because you made it so far. It’s wonderful!

Now I’m not yet at #3 or final boost, at least not entirely. I assume being in the final boost phase means having around 1000+ subscribers but I already experience the ramifications of it to some extent. I recognize the things others wrote about, like content creator Skellie, web designer Steven Snell or internet marketer Dosh Dosh.

Now will I get the final boost that will propel me to the next level? How will I do it? I’m not sure yet, I already see phase 3 unfolding. Maybe it’s not about doing anymore but watching it happen by now. Anyways, blogging is my true love!