What should your first blog be about

It can be hard to jump right into the meat of your blog content, but posting a word intro to your blog is pretty easy. Who : give a quick intro on who you are, your background, your interests and anyone else that might be relevant to your blog, like family. What : describe what your blog will be — this is good practice as a blogger, but it also helps build expectations for anyone who sees your first post. Why : a lot of first blog posts describe the genesis of their blog.

Are you in the hot and dry Southwest? A busy city? Letting readers know your general location can help set the scene for upcoming content. How : this is similar to your what, but how are you going to go about blogging? Will you post weekly recipes, or focus on social media and update your blog whenever you have time? When : if you plan on a blogging schedule, let know readers what it is.

Recommendation : I love the idea of introducing yourself, your blog and your intentions, but I think that serves a better purpose on your about me page, where people will visit over time. This is my preferred approach for a first blog post because it skips the fluff and gets right down to business.

I also like this approach because the more you blog, the more you figure out your style, preferences and voice. All that information is super helpful and necessary, especially if you want to build trust and loyalty among your readers. Recommendation : start by writing real content, but tackle an easy topic or subject first, instead of attempting a massive blog post on your first try. If you dig right into your content, how you write your posts depends a lot on your niche, style and topics.

Hannah at The Friendly Teacher does a great job with her first blog post. View trending hashtags on Twitter, explore recommended videos on YouTube, or look for posts on Reddit with a lot of upvotes and then write an article that revolves around the same subject. And because of them, it just might go viral. In the least, you could simply compile a bunch of them as your first blog post idea and discuss why they have meaning to you. People often search for niche-related quotes posts, and creating one could be a great gateway to your website for people who have never heard of you before.

One day, sponsors will approach you without any action on your part. When that day comes, read our sponsored post blogger rate card.

Testimonials are handy for blog post ideas for writers, or for content on your about page which is another beast to be tamed. Tell a story around testimonials you may already have from friends or collegues on Linked In, etc. And having it the other way around, giving your peers a thoughtful testimonial they publish can also be a great way to get a backlink from another website. A solid, respectful rant could prompt a discussion with your readers and inspire an entire series of posts. Go to your favorite online discussion site and create a thread discussing a relevant topic in your industry or asking a question.

Encourage users to engage and reply to posts to keep the discussion going. When the discussion slows down, sum up the best information and insights from readers into your first blog post. For additional benefits, use forums that allow you to include links in your signature.

This is crawlable by search engines which is good for your search rank. When you find that they have a broken outbound link, create an appropriate piece of content for their broken link and contact the website owner to inquire if they would like to link to your content instead. Infographics are a fun way to present information that users may typically find boring. This format is ideal for audiences who love visual content. If you have capable graphic design skills you can create one yourself, or have us do it for you.

Infographics, slideshows, audio clips and explainer videos are all a great way to repurpose everything. Speaking of videos, take advantage of platforms like YouTube, Facebook Live, Google Hangouts, or Periscope to talk about topics that are important in your industry. Your first blog post idea could be little more than a paragraph and a video to accompany it. And your video could be a pre-recorded live stream, or some other form of video that was made with minimal effort.

Walkthrough — take your viewers on a tour giving them a preview of a first-person experience. Tutorial — do a tutorial that helps readers better understand how to complete a task.

Product review — if you find a product that you know might be useful to your customers, you can do a product review. This is an exceptional way to do affiliate marketing. Animation — got a complex idea you want to simplify? Animated explainer videos are the best modality for ideas that are difficult to explain.

Or your best friend. You would want to help or entertain them the best way that you can, right? Build trust. You want repeat readers , repeat customers, and lasting relationships. That all starts with building trust with your audience and building site authority with Google and other search engines. Your intro can make or break a reader sticking around for the whole post. Your conclusion can make or break the reader taking action like buying a product, subscribing to the blog, or checking out an additional post.

Your intro should lay out what the reader will find in your post. The conclusion should give a brief summary of what you covered and tie it all together with the value gained from reading it. Bullets are your friend! They make it easy for web readers to get through your post — and make it to what is probably your most vital CTA.

Web readers are scanners and skimmers, and they are looking for the most information they can get in the shortest amount of time. Use short sentences and numbered or bulleted lists. Your job is to post a piece of content that is relevant and helpful to your audience. As mentioned earlier, find out what the competition is including and make your offering even better. You want the post to be long, but not appear long.

To avoid the TLDR problem, you need to make it look easy to read. You can shorten long paragraphs either by taking words away or just hitting Enter to divide the paragraph into two. Web readers are busy and are more likely to finish posts with shorter sentences. Or, you can cull them. Have you ever heard you should kill your darlings? Find out why. You probably noticed the first two sentences of this post were crossed out.

Rightly so. They added nothing of value. It may be wrong. We recently wrote a comparison piece on WordPress vs. It takes a deeper dive into these questions. WordPress, for example, has a Categories box. Create some categories to help organize your posts. From there, link back to your new article across your site and submit it to Google Search Console for faster indexing. It will help search engines understand what kind of content you provide and will improve your rankings as your blog grows.

Take a strategic approach to using images into your blog posts. You want them to be relevant and move the reader through the post while avoiding any legal usage rights issues. Pay for stock photos or use royalty-free images. Unsplash and Pexels have royalty-free images, as does Wikimedia Commons. Note: Ensure due diligence by taking extra measures to verify that the image you want to use is truly free to use. Space an image every — words.

More is better. My colleague Pat says that a blog post without promotion is like a house with no roads to it. You need a content promotion strategy to get your awesome new blog post in front of the people most likely to take action. If you have questions or want help in launching your new blog, reach out to us on Twitter , or send us a message. But affiliate marketing takes your earning potential to the next level. The content you generate can make or break your business.

But what type of content should that be? Should we still be focused on blogs? Do we need to create more visual assets, such as videos and photos? Is it time to work Ebooks, webinars, and podcasts into our content strategy?