Here we go, guys! This is the Ultimate Guide to writing your first Awesome Blog Post using my first blog post from my new Blog as a walkthrough example.
Are you scared, excited, worried?
You can do this stick with me!
This post may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Please see our full disclosure HERE for further information.
Updated January 2020
What you need to do before Writing your First Awesome post:
You really must go self-hosted rather than having things like wordpress.com or blogger.com after your site name. If you want to run things as a business then this is a must. To do that you need to:
- Buy your domain name
- Buy your hosting package your domain name can be included I use Siteground and have had not problems with them they do some great packages under $4 per month including domain name purchase so check them out today if you want to set up the correct way. If you buy more than one yearly plans you can save even more money.
- Install WordPress on your Cpanel of your hosting company
- Jump over to WordPress and Install your theme – Paid or free this is always a debate
- Install your Plugins not too many you don’t want to slow your site down
- Make sure your Google Analytics and Google Console are installed
- Think about your why! Here is a recent post that will help you with that
- Add your Privacy and Disclosure policies
- Get ready for your first post.
Phew that’s a lot to do before you even start writing your post but if you can get through that lot you can start writing your first post!
Related Posts to Starting a Blog and Writing your FIRST Awesome blog post
Here are some posts to help you with getting started for your blog:
Grab my FREE How to start a blog PDF PLANNER and Printable?
I can make it easy for you I have a FREE Printable planner PDF of all my How to start a BLOG series of posts to walk you through the steps above.
If you are stuck on any of the above steps – Yep I have been too so you are not alone even though I have done all this before it has taken me a few days to work it all out. Here is where I came unstuck:
- How to properly install my theme ( using Total Plus from Hash themes ) they upgraded it so it was not quite the same as my previous install – see even folks that have been doing this for a while can still muck up!
- How to redirect my domain name from 123reg.co.uk – If you bought the complete package from Siteground including your domain name you won’t need to worry about this step
I won’t lie it does take a few weeks to get everything set up.
Here is how my new Website is looking so far after I have completed the steps above.
Update – I wish it still looked like this but with WordPress upgrades I had to change my homepage and with this website I had to install a completely new theme!
This is a good reason to start of with a FREE theme first if you look at my homepage on Smartpennies.com now it is much simpler I used Generatepress FREE theme on WordPress.
Starting your Blog
- Social Media – be sure to grab your website named social media so for me I have grabbed Smartpennieslife on Instagram and Pinterest try and keep the colour and images the same throughout your website and your social media – even I haven’t finished all of this step I still have to claim my Facebook page!
-
Email service provider I use Mailerlite it is FREE up to 1000 subscribers
- Email list what do I need to do that for well because the money is in the list – well a lot of it can be guy’s so its really important to crack this nut as well! Create your first Optin ahhh whats that – check out my post also part of my How to start a blog series for some help here – I have two posts on the subject so get reading!
Related Posts to Building an Email list
Email list building for beginners
OK, NOW YOU ARE READY!
Your first post guys?
How start Writing your First Awesome post
Most bloggers recommend you wait and have at least 5 pieces of content available for your readers to your blog – me I figure why to bother – in the beginning, you will not see much traffic and in 3 weeks you could potentially have at least 5 posts written.
Make sure you don’t have too many categories 3 to 5 is a great number have a look at what I have on my new homepage.
You want to have a post in each category for two reasons-
- You will find out what you enjoy writing about
- Visitors will have something to read when they are browsing throughout your site in each category
What should you Write About on your new blog?
So my new blog is in the lifestyle niche so there is a lot of topics I could choose from.
Yes, but how do I know it will generate any kind of traffic and should I be thinking about that now?
Yes and No – it is good to take a quick look at this aspect of writing your first post but don’t go too deep you want to get your post out there you don’t want to be struck by
PARALYSIS BY ANALYSIS
How to find Topics to write about for your first post
So down and dirty trick to finding some quick topics
I recommend Pinterest when you are starting out to drive your blog traffic don’t worry its not that hard to master.
Have a look at the categories page you can still get this up it is great to see what is trending on Pinterest.
I even have a posts to help you out with that too! :
- How to win with Pinterest
- How to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your website
- How to make money on Pinterest
- 5 ways to make money on Pinterest
How you write a good blog post
Writing a blog post isn’t too much different to writing for school or college EXCEPT you want to write more like you would talk.
So imagine you are talking to a friend what do you want to say to them?
Don’t forget you also need to add images to your posts – make sure you use images that aren’t copyright for some great images I use Deposit photos wait till they have an offer via Appsumo for less that <$50 you can buy 100 images.
What should you write about on your blog?
Briefly you should choose your topics based on what is currently popular its no use writing about how to choose the perfect Siamese cat ( well unless you don’t want to make any money! ) I am assuming your blogging goal is to make money.
Choose something you will be able to write about I suggest you take a look at Google trends to give you an idea of what is trending at the moment.
As I mentioned about Pinterest is a great place to find topics to write about especially as it is still FREE to send you blog traffic at the moment and of course good old GOOGLE!
Yep, Google just type in a keyword ( just a topic idea) and see what google suggests you can also add on a keyword extension tool like Keyword surfer to give you rough idea of how many people are searching for that keyword.
This will also help when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation.
Do not get bogged down with this when you are just starting out basically if you can make Yoast SEO plugin go green you are good to go when you first start out.
Oh and basically your first posts will be crap unless you are a fabulous writer already hence the reason I am spending time rewriting my posts.
Well actually they aren’t as bad as I first thought but still they could do with a rewrite!
YOU WILL GET BETTER!
Don’t sweat it.
How to Outline for Writing your First Awesome post
I have always used Google drive to write my posts because it is free and I have a separate record for my post in case my website decides to self destruct I still have an outline of my posts maybe not exactly the same posts but not far off.
Always outline your post.
Start with your Introduction. Middle and conclusion – told you it was like writing an essay.
Next research your topics on google.
I outline using my blog as an example of what to do below.
Its also good to use the questions google comes up with as well and the related posts at the bottom of the google search.
Don’t forget to share your post on social media.
Decide on the type of Blog post you are going to write
There are various types of blog posts you could write and here as some examples:
- The How to post – basically how to do something
- The list post – a list of items
- Ultimate guide – bit like this post
- Review post – review a product or service
- Interview post – interview someone post
Introductory Blog Post Example
To make it easier for you I thought I would use my new blog as an example of how you would start off writing a Blog post.
My Categories:
- Crafts
- How to sell your crafts
- Organisation
- Blogging tips
- Pinterest – Hire me
Resources – you definitely want this category it will be a list of all the things you use on your blog including affiliate links
See even I am not sure about what to include – don’t dither about it just do it add the categories if you think you will write some posts and if not fine you can remove them later –
REMEMBER YOU ARE NOT MAKING IT PERFECT IT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS
START START START
Sorry got sidetracked easy to do!
Yes picking a topic
How to Pick Your First Post Blog topic
Ok, I am assuming you have set up your Pinterest profile correctly if not
check out my how to set up your Pinterest account here.
I suggest you have SECRET boards for each of your categories so you can save any relevant pins for future topics you may want to write about.
Also its good to keep a list of possible blog post topics when you come across other blogs when you are searching for information on Google.
Say you need to do a search on Pinterest for a topic, for instance, say I was wanting to write about Bullet Journals then I need to put this into the search bar in Pinterest these are the results below each of the tiles are Keywords that Pinterest uses for Bullet Journals and you should use these in your Pinterest Descriptions and also your boards. The Most left-hand Pins are the most popular so you can see the types of topics people have written about and shared.
Make sure you save them for future reference to your secret topic boards.
So there are TWO ways to figure out which pins are popular firstly click on the pin this one here Fabulous November bullet journals you want to find out whether this is something worth writing about here is how:
click the pin and the page above appears you will want to click on the three dots to bring the drop down menu up as above and click down to Embed you will then see the following
From the Embed section, you can sometimes not ALL the time see the pins for Embedding and they will have a total repin count this one is 2k so it’s not super popular but a bit.
Another way to figure out what to write about is to click on the pin and go directly to the blog page and some Blogs will have Pinterest share counts.
Update – These are the only ways to see the repins on Pinterest now.
Start writing but don’t forget your Disclosure and Privacy statements – check out mine for some ideas see my statement at the start of this blog.
Where should you write your post outlines
I use Google doc because it’s free and you can then upload straight from there to my WordPress website or copy and paste.
Next outline your post roughly I like to start off using headings and some blurb to go under each heading.
Should you worry about SEO for Google – well again yes and no here is a no-frills way to do a down and dirt SEO for Google using possible Keywords WITHOUT A keyword finder and if you can use some of these keywords in your headings all the better!
Choose a topic like Bullet Journals this is a bit like what we already did on Pinterest to find Pinterest hot topics which also gave you Pinterest Keywords to find Google Keywords search for bullet journals.
Write down all the blog posts that come up on the first page of Google most will have keywords in common take a note of them all including any Google suggested questions or similar at the bottom of google page search these are all great keywords people have searched for and are the top searches.
Best is the keywords are highlighted in bold for you already.
Try using so of these words in your Titles and subtitles if you are still stuck there is a great new tool out called Ubersuggest and you can try it here it’s FREE.
Make sure you Outline your post include your introduction, middle and conclusion.
Add your subheadings from the research you have done on Google.
Next start writing your post don’t go back and correct your work it will interfere with the flow just write it and go back to it later!
Join some affiliate networks especially ones where you can join a few different advertisers within the network for instance
And of course the biggest one of all
-
Amazon Associates
You want to join programs you know and trust to promote through your affiliate links on your Website and obviously they need to be relevant to what you are writing about.
So here is an example of my first post on my new site that contains an affiliate link don’t wait to start monetising you can begin start away.
If you want to add a border around your affiliate link to make it more visible then you need to add it to the text editor in WordPress rather than Visual editor.
Here is what you do add this :
I have deliberately not added an arrow going left here as it will create a border and you won’t see the code the rest of the code is as follows:
div style=”border: 1px solid red; padding: 16px;”>
Add your text here
</div>
If you want to increase the size of the border then change border 1px by changing the value of 1 with solid red being the colour of the border and padding is the size away from the text higher the number the further away it is from the text.
How do you add an affiliate link?
When you add an affiliate link you can either add it via a plugin like PRETTYLINKS this is what I use and it’s so easy it allows you to set the link up on PRETTYLINK and you can use it again and again in any other post.
If you choose not to add Prettylinks plugin then you MUST ADD a nofollow to the link. Make sure you add nofollow links to your images as well if they contain affiliate links.
Not sure how to do this then check out this post from Amylynn here.
https://amylynnandrews.com/nofollow-link/
Once you have added your Affiliate links next step is to make sure the rest of your links are added to other websites and other pages on your site when you eventually have more posts this is called Interlinking its great to keep people on your blog longer too.
Its important to INTERLINK your posts on your site especially to your top posts and your posts that have affiliate links as these are the ones you want to get the maximum traffic too.
How do you find out which posts are doing well – you need to install Google Analytics if you are not sure about how to do this then check out my post on Installing Google analytics here
How to install Google Analytics
What next add some images to your posts these can include Pinterest Pins that you created for the post and also other related images to break up the text.
Format your headings it is especially important that for your BLOG TITLE you ensure that as well as being in the TITLE box it is also at the top of the post and the format for this needs to be H1 – ONLY FOR THIS, the rest of the subheadings should be H2 and smaller.
Let’s check back- make sure you have done the following:
- Found a great topic for your first post
- Add your Disclosure
- Add your blog title
- Picked your keywords for Google SEO
- Have your subtitles
- Write your post
- Have your affiliate links added
- Add your images
Here is a great summary for you on Writing your First Awesome post
It is also a Pin so feel free to save it.
There are still a few things you need to add!
The permalink – I am assuming you have the preset to postname for the structure if you haven’t been sure that you go back into settings for your permalink and change it to postname.
Your permalink will be pulled from the post title you want to shorten or change the permalink slightly so that it is short and easy to for people to see at a glance what the post may be about when they click on the link.
If you have also installed the YOAST plugin then this will also help you with your Google SEO. You need to fill in the sections on the WordPress post at the bottom here
- Edit the snippet – this is a short description that will be included below your Title the Google search results to describe your post make sure you have your Keywords in this description.
- Readability refers to how well your blog post text reads and you should try and optimise this as suggests but it is not super important
- This part is super important to make sure you add your FOCUS KEYWORD this the keyword that is in your Blog post title and throughout your text, it basically sums up what your post is about.
Make sure you also add your Pinterest Pins if you are looking for a great tool to use to design your pins then checkout PICMONKEY you should also make a featured image for most WordPress themes the ideal size is 300 x 300 which you can also custom on Picmonkey.
If you have a look at my other website you will see all my posts have featured images look here.
If you want a more detailed post on how to actually structure your post them Brian Dean of Backlinko has a great post here.
Once you have followed all these steps you will be ready to publish your AWESOME first blog post!
Once you write a few posts this will be second nature don’t worry it’s NOT too hard.
See it wasn’t that hard now get writing I suggest you have Schedule because when you first start writing its very tempting to skip weeks once you have over a hundred posts then you can slow down a bit.
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