Are you trying to start a blog? What should your first blog post be about? How do you even begin? These are some of the many questions that I’m asking myself as I write this first blog post. If you’re like me, you might be spending an abundant amount of time designing and perfecting the “look and feel” of your site and not enough on the content. This may result in unwanted results. Let’s find out why as we dive deeper.
The Importance of Content Over Design
Think about it. Why do people visit blogs? It’s usually for its content. Humans enjoy consuming content; perhaps they want to learn a new skill, find the best way to fix something that broke in their homes, laugh at something silly, or stay up to date with some news. Whatever it is, it’s content first.
This being my first post, I’m sure you didn’t come here to check out my design, although, if you did, I appreciate it as I made the mistake of spending too much time on it.
So, speaking of content being first, what should it include?
What Should I Include in My Post?
To put it plain and simple, your content should be yours. Ask yourself some questions: what do I enjoy talking to my friends and family about? What am I passionate about? What can I talk about for hours? What’s constantly on my mind? These are some questions to help you get writing. Whatever that topic is, you just have to make sure you’re passionate about it.
Don’t make the same mistake I made on a different blog I tried starting. I was writing news articles about Walt Disney World because I loved the theme parks. You can say it was a topic I was passionate about, however, I never put my take on it. I was just blabbering about news and upcoming releases. The blog didn’t have my unique twist to it. What caused me to take that blog down was this question, “What am I doing differently that other blogs covering this topic aren’t doing?“. The answer was simple, I wasn’t doing anything differently. So, why would someone come to my blog when there are popular blogs doing the same thing? I had to give my own unique twist to it and I didn’t.
Now you’ve found a topic you’re passionate about and are ready to tackle this project, what do you do next?
Are You a Freewriter or an Outliner?
Time to get to writing… or maybe not. You must figure out what writing style you prefer. Are you a freewriter (a.k.a. pantser) or an outliner (a.k.a. plotter)? Personally, I’m a freewriter and this blog post has been written in that style.
Freewriting is when you just let your imagination run wild. My freewriting style involves sitting at my computer, playing some lo-fi music, lighting a candle, grabbing a cup of coffee, and after coming up with a topic, writing my heart away. For this particular post, I just thought, what would I want my first blog post to be about? Then it clicked, and “How to write your first blog post” was born. I came up with the topic and just started typing while making minor edits along the way.
The outliners are more what they always taught you in school. Teachers always wanted you to create an “outline” of papers or projects that you had to write. Outliners would be more linear, writing down their post ideas and headlines/titles to have a general idea of how the post will turn out. Outliners are the type of people who prefer a more organized approach to writing.
After figuring out your style and topic of choice, there’s only one more thing to do.
Get To It!
What are you waiting for? Start writing and don’t look back. Write like there’s no tomorrow.
A problem I’ve had in the past is that I care too much about the content being perfect. Yes, I consider myself a bit of a perfectionist and that’s a good and bad thing. It’s good because it shows that you care deeply about your work and don’t like releasing what you would consider “trash”. However, it’s bad because you’ll harp on little things that don’t matter and end up never releasing your work.
Personally, I’m trying to not make too many edits on my posts and just release them so that the content is out there. If you’ve read many blog posts, you’ll see that we are all human and make errors, so don’t be tough on yourself.
End It
I hope you found my “How to Write Your First Blog Post” informative and can see my freewriting style in it. When we come up to the end of our blog post it’s always a good idea to wrap things up and summarize everything. After all, some people just read the last paragraph in your post.
Things to recap:
- Find a topic that calls to you – What are you passionate about?
- Figure out your writing style – Are you a freewriter or an outliner?
- Prioritize your content and make it YOURS
- Get writing and come to an end
If you found this helpful and want to get to know more about me, check out my About Me page; it’s a quick synopsis of my life. If you enjoyed my writing style, make sure to subscribe below for future posts.