You have started your blog. You now believe it is ready to be shown to the world or so it seems. You are ready to have an audience for your blog. All you have to do now is start promoting it. You have to start getting traffic quickly because this is the only way people will find your brand new blog. Is it really ready for promotion though? There are 5 things that your blog should have before you get ready to share it with the world.

An About Me Page

People like to know a little about the person who's blog they are reading. Somethings that you can include in your about me page is how you started blogging. Just tell a little bit about yourself. You don't have to tell your life-story (if you are a private person) but what your blog is about and why you started blogging. Your skills and what it is that you do.

Contact Page

This is where people will contact you. You can have a contact form or an email address or both. You can include your social media accounts. Your phone number if you like. Just various ways that people can get in contact with you. This is important because you may receive offers from companies. Sometimes, things happen and we don't always see them. For instance, something might not be working properly on your blog and someone might want to let you know. People have questions that they might want to ask you. This is very important to have.

Search Box

This is a very important feature to have. Why? Because people will want to search for particular articles on your blog. It makes it so much easier to find them. I have seen several bloggers who did not have a search box and I wasn't able to look for a particular article. I had to go through their categories. Which was very time consuming. Everyone will not do this. If they can't find what they are looking for they will search for it somewhere else. A search box is a must have.

Subscription Box

This is a box where people can subscribe to your mailing list. This way people won't miss out on your blog posts and you can keep in contact with your subscribers. If you have anything that they might be interested in you can send them an email. This is how you grow a list. This way you can keep in touch with your subscribers.

At least 10 Blog Posts

Before you start promoting you should have at least 10 blog posts. I have seen bloggers promoting their blogs with only 1 written blog post. This is not a good idea at all. I know you want to get your blog out to the masses but 1 blog post. Come on, you have to give your readers more than that. After they read that 1 blog post what are they supposed to do? You have to have more content than that. If they like what they read they will want more. It's like you are teasing them. Do you like to be teased? I know you don't. Please make sure you have content for them to read.

I know that you are excited when you start blogging but you still are representing yourself. Make sure that you have these 5 fundamentals in place before you start promoting your blog. You don't want people to think that you haven't thought this through. More importantly, you want your readers to be happy and give them a good experience when they come to visit your blog. Make things easy for them. This is your home and your visitors are your guests. I know sometimes we can get caught up in our excitement and we are told the sooner we start promoting the better. If you forget something do not worry you can always go back and add it.

I can tell you from visiting lots of blogs that these 5 things do make a difference. You will get traffic to your blog and get your audience. It does take time but just throwing together your blog is not going to make it happen any faster. Take your time and put things together nicely.

Have you ran into blogs missing these 5 fundamentals? How did you feel about it? Let me know in your comments below.