In The Beginning, There Was Content

In The Beginning

Eventually, every blogger has to post their first blog article or blog post as it’s called. A typical first blog post might include an introduction with a little bit about the blogger and their intention of their blog.

First Steps

Either way, it’s that first step, that jump into writing. For some, it might be traumatic because way back when, writing wasn’t the subject they excelled in.

For some folks who have perfectionism tendencies, just starting to type some words will be hard because they think it has to be grammatically and structurally correct right from the get go. This can stifle you from starting, as well as editing, editing, editing and more editing can make writing seem cumbersome.

And yet, some will be stopped cold in their first words because they don’t know what to write about or how to start. Telling this type of person to just start writing about themselves becomes overwhelming as they ask, “How?”

Start Thinking

If you’re just starting to setup your blog and you haven’t written anything yet because you’re waiting for your domain to get setup or waiting for your hosting account to be setup, or for whatever reason, there’s never a better time to start thinking about how you’re going to start writing, as well as what you’re going to write about. Another consideration to start thinking about in the beginning of your blog is a writing and posting schedule. More on that later.

For starters, check out some of your favorite blogs or some of the more popular bloggers About pages. This will give you an idea for how to start your first blog post, which can be just like an About page. It’s ok to have your first blog post the same as, or like your About page. That is, if you decide to include an About page in the beginning of your blog.

Check out some of these About pages for ideas:

Entrepreneurs-Journey by Yaro Starak

Dosh Dosh by Maki

ReadWriteWeb by Richard MacManus

Problogger by Darren

ShoeMoney by Jeremy Schoemaker

Lifehack by Leon Ho

First Post by by Steve Pavlina

Another way to start your first blog post is in a list format. You could write an introduction about your blog and about yourself using the list format. People love lists and we’re told they rank well in the search engines. Now, I might be going over board here but for example, your blog post title could be “10 Truths You Need To Know About MyGreatNewBlog“.

1. Welcome to MyGreatNewBlog, my name is, my name is, my name is, Slim Shady.
2. I am x years old
3. I was born and raised in (city, state, country)
4. I like
   1. fill
   2. in
   3. a
   4. bunch
   5. of
   6. stuff
   7. you
   8. like
5. The purpose of this blog is ____.
6. I will write about this at my blog.
7. I will write about that at my blog.
8. I will show you how to do this at my blog.
9. I will show you how to do that at my blog.
10. Again, welcome to MyGreatNewBlog.

Writing and Posting Schedule

While you think about and work on writing your first blog post, think about your writing and posting schedule. Are you going to write and post every day, maybe multiple times a day, or maybe just 1-3 posts per week? There’s always the impromptu, inspiration driven, crank out a post no matter what time of the day or night it is, schedule as well.

Some professional bloggers recommend cranking out something every day or as much as possible to build as much content as you can in the beginning of your blog. Some very successful bloggers write 1-3 articles a week and are wildly popular.

Track Your Word Count

No matter what software you use to write with, check to see if it has a word counter. For example, Microsoft Word 2003 has a word counter.

You can create your blog posts in Word if you like or copy and paste your blog post from whatever editor you’re using into Word, then use the word counter in Word that is located under the Tools -> Word Count… menu selection to see how many words you have in a particular blog post. You can also find word counters online like this one – Word Count Tool.

To get a feel for how many words other bloggers use in their posts, you can copy and paste blog posts from your favorite bloggers into a word counter, you’ll get a sense of how many words they use in some of their posts. This is certainly not an end all to measuring the success of a blog post, but certainly helps when you look at popular blog posts and the content and attributes that makes up a good blog post. Plus, it’s just plain fun.

Speaking of counting words, there is a nice word counting WordPress plugin called TD Word Count and it’s located here. TD Word Count will allow you to see the word count of each published article on your blog at the WordPress Dashboard. It doesn’t give you any information before you publish your blog post, just after you’ve published your blog post. But it is still very useful to keep those kind of statistics readily available on your WordPress Dashboard.

Writing

You’ll also want to spend some time thinking about writing. Don’t let it intimidate you. Just like a musician has to practice and get on stage performance after performance, so do bloggers when it comes to writing and posting. With time and patience, the boos become less and less and the cheers get louder and louder.

Here are some great resources on writing:

CopyBlogger by Brian Clark

DailyWritingTips by Daniel Scocco

Write To Done by Leo Babauta

Here are a few books to help you become a more better writer:

On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (On Writing Well)

The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

Random House Webster’s Handy Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation, 2nd. Ed. (Handy Reference Series)