If you build it, they won’t come. It’s a rule bloggers learn quickly, as we sigh over the minuscule and miserable analytics our fancy new blogs are delivering. It’s hard to keep motivated and justify time invested creating online content, unless you get the hits, tweets, likes, readers, and subscriber numbers. So how to drive traffic to your new blog?

Here’s a three step process that combines production scheduling strategy with creative ideas, to create posts that have virality.

Step 1: Get inspired through social research.
Before you write, read. Set up Google Reader and fill it with RSS feeds from relevant news sources and websites so that you’ll always have more ideas for blog posts than you could possibly use. Put it on our production schedule to go through this collection of web research regularly. Tag the blog-worthy ideas you come across, to flag them for the next time you’re scheduled to write.

And by the way: how often should that be? Experts disagree, but the best pro bloggers I read make it a daily habit. For small business? Fresh content once a week at minimum seems to be the general rule, but only when inspired, so schedule your inspiration through regular research.

Step 2: Distribute content across channels to drive traffic.
Your blog is the anchor for a system of content marketing that should extend across platforms to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Delicious, and Digg (to name only the top socnets). Sharing content you create from one site to another should be an automatic part of your writing, so: publish, then repurpose. On Twitter, research shows that your blog link tweet is more likely to get retweeted if you preface it with the phrase “new blog post.”

And on each channel, every time you publish, take a few minutes to grow your network while you’re there. Find new people to follow, friend, new pages to like, contacts for LinkedIn, new sites to subscribe to through your RSS feed. So let’s amend the process to: research, write, publish, repurpose, and then refresh network resources.

3. Vary your posts and get beyond type.
Use a variety of blog entry types to keep the content interesting—but be sure to hit the kinds of posts that are widely regarded as most popular. Lists, how-to, top-tens, those kinds of concise informational posts work well in the blogosphere.

As well, think beyond text and incorporate some multimedia: try your hand at a bit of impromptu videoblogging, podcasting, photoblogging. Not sure what to photograph or film? Do a quick Google search assessment of your industry blogs to identify what kinds of rich-media blogging your colleagues and competitors are doing, then follow suit. If you don’t have the time or skill, hire an intern, outsource it, or invite a guest blogger to add their contribution through images.