DECIDE ON YOUR SOCIAL MISSION. If you could change one thing aboutthe world, what would it be? Who would you help and how? Take some time to do some real soul searching. Ask yourself, “What do I want to be known for?” And remember, you don’t have to pick just one cause! It’s completely ok to pick a handful.

WRITE YOUR BUSINESS OBITUARY. What did your businessaccomplish? How did it change the world? Who did it help and how? How many people did it help? 

DECIDE ON A FORMAT TO SPREAD YOUR MESSAGE. Will you post blogposts, videos, podcasts, or something else? Maybe a combination of a few of these? 

FIGURE OUT WHO YOUR IDEAL AUDIENCE IS. What kind of person reallyresonates with what you have to say? Are they men/women, parents, millennials, Gen Xers, rich/poor, educated or not? What hobbies do they have? Where do they live? What do they do for fun? What do they care about? 

DECIDE ON A BUSINESS MODEL. More specifically, how exactly will yourbusiness make money? What will you sell and how? Will you sell products or services? Digital or physical? Courses, memberships, books, trainings, or something else?

 FIGURE OUT HOW YOU WILL SUPPORT YOUR SOCIAL MISSION. Will you donate a percentage of profits? Does your business directly help a certain cause? Are you starting a non profit? Will you give your time and services instead?  REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN NAME. For a personal brand, this is usually yourname.com. It’s a good idea to reserve this domain as soon as you can, especially if your first and last name are more common!   CHOOSE A WEB PLATFORM. The three big ones are Wordpress, Squarespace, and Wix. I use Wordpress and LOVE IT (so many plugins!), but I’ve also heard great things about Squarespace. A small word of caution about Wix- Wix currently does not support “rich pin” connection with Pinterest, which could be problematic for your business in the future.  BUILD YOUR SITE. When I was building my site, having a great design was very important to me. While style and design isn’t everything, it sure helps your brand stand out! I use Thrive Themes and Thrive Architect to build my site exactly the way I want it, and I highly recommend them!   ADD SOCIAL ICONS TO EACH OF YOUR POSTS. You want to make it easy for people to share your stuff, right? Make sure it’s easy for them to do so! And a hint- Creative Market has some ADORABLE custom social icon packs to fit your brand.    

 CREATE A VISION BOARD FOR YOUR BRAND. This is the fun part! I created my vision board on Pinterest. First, I created a “secret” board so that only I could view it. Then I pinned anything and everything that felt like “me” and that I liked. Lastly, I went through my vision board and removed any pins that didn’t really fit after all.   CHOOSE A COLOR PALETTE. Once you’ve created a vision board full of elements and styles that flow together, you can probably extract a color palette pretty easily!   PICK YOUR BRAND’S FONTS. It’s important to choose a font scheme that flows with your brand visuals and makes all of your content easily recognizable. You’ll ultimately want to choose 3-5 fonts. The first is the main font that you’re known for, and that you’ll use in your headlines. The second is an attractive scripty font for decoration and signatures. You’ll also need a standard text font that is easily readable.   CHOOSE YOUR BRAND GRAPHICS AND TEXTURES. When you look at your vision board, what elements stand out to you? A solid brand will have a couple of patterns, textures, and graphics that bring together their brand. These are elements you can use around your site, as well as on PDF’s, downloads, and other marketing materials.  DECIDE ON THE VIBE, MOOD, AND TONE OF YOUR BRAND. How do you want people to feel when they see your brand? Is it fun and uplifting? Serious and motivating? Are you sarcastic, cheesy, academic, or  

 something else? The big key here is to make sure that your tone really reflects who YOU are. Don’t try to be somebody else here, it will just sound forced!  OUTSOURCE YOUR PRIMARY LOGO. Unless you are a graphic designer, I HIGHLY recommend outsourcing your logo. Seriously, don’t try to jerry rig something yourself. A professional logo will go a long way. Check out Upwork or 99Designs to find a great logo designer.  CREATE AN OFFICIAL STYLE GUIDE. I created my style guide in Google Docs, and it’s something I reference again and again. Here is where you store your brand color hex codes, your pattern and texture graphics, your font list, your branded social media icons, your primary and secondary logos, your favicon, an example Pinterest pin, and an example of your brand’s photography. The style guide brings it all together, where you can see all of your elements in one place. If you notice that an element doesn’t match the rest, rework it until it flows.  DO A BRAND PHOTOSHOOT. When your brand is you, that naturally means that YOU need to be on your website. The fun part is deciding on an outfit and some accessories that match your brand. Get creative! Then, hire a professional photographer to get some personality filled shots of you in action.  TAKE SOME GREAT PHOTOS FOR YOUR BLOG. Brand photos of YOU are important, but so are the other photos you’ll need for basic blog posts. Whether you decide to go with a flat lay style or something else, make sure all of the elements in your photography are on brand and feel like you.  CREATE A FAVICON FOR YOUR SITE. A favicon is that tiny image you see in the URL bar next to a website’s URL. It’s the first little glimpse of someone’s brand, so it’s important to take care of this little detail too.   

  CHECK THAT ALL OF THE ELEMENTS ON YOUR SITE MATCH YOUR BRAND. Once you’ve laid the foundation of your brand and built your site, go back and double check that all of your site elements and social media accounts are on brand. It’s a great idea to grab a couple of friends or family members and find out if they see anything out of place too.   

 CHOOSE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS. Here’s the part where I beg you NOT to try to do it all! Start with just one social media platform, preferably one that you’re already familiar with. Build it out fully, and then start another one. It’s best to have just a couple great platforms than a pile of weak ones.  ADD BRANDED ELEMENTS TO YOUR SOCIAL ACCOUNTS. Remember those sweet brand photos you took? This is where you use them and your patterns and textures for your social headers and photos, your fonts in your text, and vibe and tone in your writing!  CREATE A CONTENT STRATEGY. A content strategy is an absolute must if you want to get the best return on your content creation. Your strategy is how you plan to repurpose pieces of your main content to gain new 

followers. Check out #10 on this post for details on creating a content strategy that is worth it’s weight in gold!    CREATE A PINTEREST ACCOUNT. Pinterest is STILL my #1 traffic referrer, so I highly suggest you start using Pinterest as well. Sign up for a business account, and create a handful of boards related to your content. Then make sure to sign up for Tailwind to schedule your pinning for maximum traffic!  JOIN TAILWIND TRIBES. Want to know my secret sauce for getting tons of traffic from Pinterest? Here’ s part of it: I post my pins in Tailwind Tribes! Tribes are groups of pinners on Tailwind who get together to help each other’s pins rise in rankings. It’s a great way to get repins on your pins and create long lasting traffic to your blog.  USE A SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULER TO SAVE HOURS EACH WEEK. I use both Tailwind and Boardbooster to schedule and loop my Pinterest pins, but don’t forget about your other social media platforms! Edgar, Buffer, and Hootsuite can help you manage your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram automatically. And trust me, this will save you tons of time that you can then use to build your business.  ADD CLICK TO TWEETS ON YOUR BLOG POSTS. Click to tweets are such a great way for readers to share your content on Twitter. Thrive Architect has a built in Click to Tweet function and it’s stupid easy to implement. I highly recommend both!  KEEP A RUNNING LIST OF BLOG POST IDEAS. Believe me when I say that one of your greatest fears as a new blogger will be that blinking cursor on a blank page as you struggle to crank out some epic content. Not a good feeling! Keep a pad and paper by your bed, in the car, in your kitchen, wherever you tend to have great ideas. Then, make sure you 

write down any blog post ideas as soon as they come to you. You’ll be glad you did on the days you can’t think of anything to write about!   RESPOND TO BLOG COMMENTS. People come to your blog for information, but they stay because of the community. When you take  the time to respond to blog comments, people feel excited to hear from you and glad that you care enough to help them with their questions. Carve out a half hour each week to respond to your comments and build that awesome thriving community of people who love your work!    

  CREATE 1-3 AMAZING CONTENT UPGRADES. Content upgrades are those sweet offerings you can trade your readers in exchange for their email list. Instead of creating a new upgrade for each blog post, I highly recommend creating just a few really great materials that your readers can truly benefit from (like this one!)  SIGN UP FOR AN AUTOMATED EMAIL SERVICE. Automated email is a MUST in today’s world of online business. In order to create an automated launch sequence and continue providing value to the people on your list, you’ll need a service to send them out for you. I use and love Convertkit. It’s the best priced service for what it offers, and the functionality is great. The only part I don’t love is their forms, which are 

boring and not very customizable. BUT! That’s why I create my forms with the lightboxes and lead generation features included in Thrive Architect. Problem solved!   PRELOAD AT LEAST FIVE EMAILS IN YOUR EMAIL SEQUENCE. Before you start collecting email addresses, I HIGHLY recommend preloading a few emails first. It’s easy to get bogged down in working on your business, and then realizing your subscribers haven’t heard from you in a while. I  started my sequence with once a week emails, so a few loaded in your sequence can buy you a lot of time!  PLACE AT LEAST THREE OPT INS ON EACH OF YOUR BLOG PAGES AND POSTS. I tend to include 1-2 opt ins within the text of my blog posts, one slide in that is set to appear after 10 seconds (a great function of ConvertKit), and another in the footer of each of my pages. I also include one in the main navigation header on the homepage.   CREATE A PINTEREST PIN FOR EACH OF YOUR CONTENT UPGRADES. If you’ve gotten started with your Pinterest account by now, you know that it’s amazing. And another KILLER way to gain new email signups is to create pins specifically for your content upgrades. I recommend creating 2-3 branded styles for each of these pins, and monitor which one does best.   TEST YOUR OPT INS TO MAKE SURE THEY CONNECT. I do this every month or so to make sure my signups are actually reaching my ConvertKit account.   BACKUP YOUR EMAIL LIST REGULARLY. This one is super important. If something happens with your email service or they shut down your account for some reason, you’ll REALLY want to have your list of subscribers somewhere on your hard drive.   

 APPLY FOR AFFILIATE PARTNERSHIPS WITH BRANDS YOU USE AND LOVE. Affiliate partnerships are truly passive income. You can use these affiliate links in your blog posts, content upgrades, emails, and more. The big caveat? Don’t promote just any old thing. To keep the trust between you and your readers, you should only recommend products you truly love.  ASK YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE WHAT THEY ARE STRUGGLING WITH. Want to get a good idea of what kind of product you should create? Ask around and find out what problems you can solve! Ask your email subscribers, members of your Facebook group and Facebook groups that you are a part of, and scour the comments on your blog and related blogs for common themes.   DECIDE ON A PRODUCT IDEA. Once you know your readers pain points and struggles, it’s time to come up with a possible product. This might be a course, membership, a book, or something similar. Don’t worry too much about what you come up with, because you’re going to test your idea in the next step! :)  VALIDATE YOUR PRODUCT IDEA. Here’s a tip that will save you a ton of time and frustration. Before you spend a TON of time creating a product you hope people will love, validate it! This might be creating a free webinar on the same subject, a free email course, a short booklet, or a video training. How is the response to your “tester”? Are people   

 super excited about it and loving your content? Or is the response lukewarm at best?  DECIDE ON A PRICE TAG. Pricing is a fickle thing. Don’t be tempted to price your product super low in order to book customers. Perceived value is a real thing and it can help or hinder you! However, it’s also important to price your product reasonably. Look around in your industry. What are others in your niche with your level of experience charging?   CRAFT A LAUNCH PLAN. The best launches are planned months in advance, and prepare your readers and email subscribers for your upcoming product. This is the time to create content and social media posts around your product topic to build buzz and excitement.  WRITE YOUR SALES PAGE AND SET UP PAYMENT PROCESSING. Well before your launch actually takes off, you’ll need to write your sales page as well as set up the payment processor. After that, make sure you TEST IT! You don’t want to launch your big product only to find that there’s a glitch in the ordering system.  LAUNCH YOUR PRODUCT. Hooray! The day you’ve been waiting for. Take a deep breath, open the launch, and then go for a walk to ease your nerves. It’s all gonna be okay.  SUPPORT YOUR FINANCIAL AND SOCIAL MISSIONS. How cool is this? You’re making money online! Now you can fund your investments, contribute to your social mission, and continue running a business that your customers love. You’ve worked hard to get here, so don’t forget to give yourself a nice break!  GATHER TESTIMONIALS AND ADD THEM TO YOUR SALES PAGE. Testimonials are a powerful thing. People really like reading other people’s opinions on products, even if those people are strangers on the  

 internet. Some honest and positive testimonials can go a long way towards giving you more customers over the long run.    

 MAKE A LIST OF TASKS YOU NEED HELP WITH. Repetitive tasks and time consuming tasks are the best thing to outsource first. Things like posting to social media, pinning on Pinterest, adding emails to your newsletter sequence, and editing your blog posts are perfect for a general virtual assistant (GVA) to work on.   CREATE A SYSTEM FOR EACH TASK. Before you can train a GVA to do what you do, you’ll need a system in place. I recommend writing down your workflow, complete with which folders your GVA can find needed materials and which folders their completed tasks should be placed in. I highly recommend Dropbox and Google Drive for communicating and working with a virtual assistant.  MAKE A SCREENCAST AND/OR WRITTEN TUTORIAL FOR EACH TASK. Loom and Screencast-O-Matic are great for recording your screen and audio as you complete training tasks. I record ALL of my trainings and store them in Dropbox because it’s easy for my VA to find them anytime. It’s also great to have these recorded in case a VA moves on- it won’t be so difficult to train the next person.  

 CREATE A TASK CALENDAR FOR YOUR VA. Virtual assistants can get bogged down and confused just as easily as the rest of us mortals. I highly recommend creating a weekly or monthly task calendar for your VA with the things you expect them to complete. I also recommend creating a document of daily to dos to give them. This sheet might instruct them to complete certain tasks, send you a follow up email, and maybe send you any questions that they had that workday.  POST A JOB LISTING. Now we’re getting somewhere! It’s time to post a job listing and invite candidates who seem like a good fit to apply. If you’d like to do all of the reviewing and applicant sorting yourself, try Onlinejobs.ph. I have used them and really liked the service. However, I DO recommend thoroughly interviewing your candidates to make sure they are committed and ready to work with you. If you’d prefer a service help you find someone, Virtual Staff Finder is a great service that will find applicants who match what you need, contact them to check the details of their work experience and education, and send you a list of the three best candidates for you to interview and choose from.  REVIEW AND INTERVIEW YOUR APPLICANTS. Try to narrow down your short list to 2-4 candidates, and then start the interview process. Skype is a great way to interview people, as you’ll be able to get a sense of their personality and commitment level.  HIRE YOUR VIRTUAL ASSISTANT. Hard to believe you’re becoming an employer? This is a great step for your business!   START WITH JUST ONE TASK AT A TIME. As your new hire begins training and learning the ropes in your business, try not to overwhelm them. To ensure thorough training, I’ll start my VA with just one task at a time. They get to review my screencast, ask me any questions they have, complete the task, and then I’ll provide feedback. Once it looks like they know what they’re doing, I’ll start them on the next task. The   

 first couple of weeks will likely be slower than you’re hoping, but don’t worry- their training is an investment in your business.  

FIND GUEST POSTING OPPORTUNITIES. Guest posting is a great way to find new audiences and build your traffic. Look for blogs with similar audiences to yours, but likely not direct competitors.  ADD CASE STUDIES TO YOUR BLOG. People love reading case studies. One great way to build your traffic is to ask other bloggers to be your case study. There’s a good chance they might share your post too!  ASK PODCASTS TO INTERVIEW YOU. Podcasts are hot right now, and they’re a great way to get other audiences to learn about you and hear your voice. Podcast interviews are a win-win for you and the host, so just be sure to be a good guest and you’ll both see benefits from the chat.  DO SOLO AND JOIN WEBINARS. Readers love learning through webinars and live workshops. You can partner up with another blogger to help both of you gain exposure to each other’s audiences, and you can do solo webinars to build your email list.  JOIN HARO (HELP A REPORTER OUT). HARO is the first step for gaining media exposure, and I highly recommend it.  

 PUBLISH A BOOK ON AMAZON KINDLE’S DIRECT PUBLISHING. With an included content upgrade, this can be a great way to build your email list and find new readers. Just please don’t publish twelve pages and call it a “book”. There’s enough of those out there!  SUBMIT YOUR POSTS TO MEDIUM. Medium is a big blog publishing platform with tons of readers. Quick hint: This is a great task for your GVA to handle after you publish your posts!  INTERVIEW SOMEONE AWESOME. Want to benefit from exposure to another audience and build cred on your blog? Interview somebody who is well known and respected in your industry.   SET UP A PINTEREST PROMOTED PIN. If you have a pin you’d love for more people to see and repin, consider promoting it.  TRY YOUR HAND WITH A FACEBOOK AD. I’ll be honest, Facebook ads can take some cash and testing to do well (which is why it’s last on this list!) If your business is profitable however, it is smart to figure out the Facebook code to help bring in new email subscribers and customers.   

CHECK YOUR SITE SPEED. A slow site can drop your SEO rankings and annoy your readers, so check this guy regularly!  

 CHECK FOR BROKEN LINKS. There are plenty of online broken link checkers that will scour your site and report back to you. Broken links are annoying and unprofessional, so make sure you or your VA checks for them regularly.  BACKUP YOUR BLOG. Seriously, this one’s a must. There are a few good blog backup plugins for Wordpress out there, and I think it’s one of those must-do tasks. Don’t get left high and dry!  REFRESH OR UPDATE A COUPLE OF OLD POSTS EACH WEEK. Outdated or poorly designed blog posts hurt the credibility of your site. Spend a few minutes each week freshening them up, or ask your VA to do some basic upgrades for you.  REMOVE ANY UNUSED OR UNNEEDED PLUGINS. Extra plugins can slow down your site, so make sure you are only using what you need!  TEST YOUR CONTACT FORMS. Make sure your fans can send you those love letters! Test your contact forms and make sure that emails aren’t slipping through the cracks.