Blogging 101: “What Should My First Blog Post Be About?”

One of the questions that comes up time and again for new bloggers is, “What should my first blog post be about?” There’s no right or wrong answer, but this post looks at a couple of key options you may want to consider.

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The topic of your first blog post can be tied to your launch plan. For example, if you’re planning to publish two or three posts at the same time to get your blog started, or if you’re planning to drip feed posts every day over the first week, you may want your first post to be more of an introductory style post. If you just want to get stuck in with some meaty content to please Google and Pinterest, that works too. Whatever you do, just don’t forget to delete the default “Hello World” post!

Option 1: The introductory post

If you go down the “Welcome to my blog” route by doing an introductory post, you may want to cover any or all of the following in your first ever blog post:

• A brief outline of who you are
• Why you’ve decided to start a blog
• What you’re going to be writing about
• Why people should read it

This is the route we went down for our own blog here at Lyrical Host (you can check out our first post here: The Story So Far (And Future Plans)). If your blog is a personal blog, you may want to include a photo of yourself/your loved ones. If it’s not, you’ll probably want to include a photo of something related to your blog’s niche, for example food or a travel destination.

For your call to action at the end of the post, you may want to pick one of the following:

• Directing readers to subscribe to your posts (and an explanation for how to do that)
• Directing readers to your “About” page
• Directing readers to another relevant page, for example “Start Here” or “Work With Me”
• Directing readers to your next blog post (you can always come back to this post and link to your next post when you’ve published it).

You could also ask them to follow you on social media, although it’s usually better to direct them somewhere else on your site rather than sending them away from it.

Option 2: Getting stuck in

Instead of writing an introductory post, you could have your first post be something you were intending to write for your blog anyway, with careful keyword research and appeal to your target audience.

If you’re going down this route, it’s important to find the balance. You don’t want your post to be rushed or low quality, but equally you don’t want it to be the thing that stops you launching because you’re a perfectionist and you’ve chosen a topic that needs 3,000 words to do it justice.

If you’re planning a meaty first post, consider where you’re planning to get traffic from in the early stages of your blog. For example, if you’re considering pinning it on Pinterest, you’ll want a post with a catchy title and nice visuals. If you’re posting it in Facebook groups, your focus is likely to be less on the visual side (unless it’s directly related to your niche, for example photography or web design!) and more about answering the questions of your target audience.

Your post should give the reader a good introduction to your writing style and be interesting enough so they want to read more, but equally it doesn’t have to be the best post you’ll ever write. There are a few reasons for this:

• A lot of people use their first post as an excuse not to launch their blog. Get the launch out of the way, then you can concentrate on your content and promotion more after that bit is done.
• Your first post will quickly get pushed down your list as you publish more. As you won’t be getting traffic from search engines and it may take a while to get decent traffic to specific posts, people are most likely to browse your posts manually from your blog homepage in the beginning. So publishing your best post first can mean fewer people are likely to come across it in the early days of your blog, which means your time is better spent on other things, such as promoting your posts, optimizing your website, your next post, etc.
• Your blog posts will improve massively as you continue to write them. You may not even notice how much better your writing and blogging skills are until three or five years down the line when you happen to look at your first post again. So don’t worry about it being perfect, and don’t worry about publishing an amazing post first time. “Good enough” is totally fine.

 

In summary

Don’t let your first post be an excuse to put off launching. Everyone gets nervous when they write their first post, so it’s better to just get it out of the way so you don’t have to think about it any more. Whatever you write, make it good…but remember you’re not aiming for it to be the best blog post ever published on the internet. Enjoying blogging should always come before anything else. Good luck with your new post, and feel free to paste the link to your first ever post in the comments below so we can check it out!

Happy blogging!
 
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