Writing your first blog post is one of the hardest steps in blogging. Majority of bloggers fail because they never start typing their first blog post.
When it comes to writing your first blog post, there is a tendency to plan without executing. Even after planning your first blog post for days, it still feels insufficient.
The first blog post is one of the hardest posts you will ever write. The fact that there are no other blog posts on your blog to benchmark against makes your first blog post hard to write.
I have been there and I struggled. But you don’t have to struggle as much as I did. The following five points will help you find a structure for your first blog post.
1. Length of your First Blog Post
There are all sorts of blog posts on the internet; some are long others are short. When it comes to writing your first blog post, you have to determine how long you want it to be.
Some people say that you should write without worrying how long your blog post will be. While that is not entirely wrong, something else has to be mentioned; a blog post with no end in mind will never be published.
If you start writing a blog post that you expect to end when ideas to write end, you will never complete that blog post. Ideas never end.
You may deplete your ideas on a given topic but when you show up the next day, you have fresh ideas. This is why you must decide the length of your first blog post before you start writing.
You don’t need to have a fixed word count for your first blog post but you can set a range you want to be within.
In the blogging industry, the minimum word count that is advised is 1000 words though some blogs write shorter blog posts and still do well.
Google once hinted that the shortest blog post they consider worth ranking is 300 words long. This is information you need to have at the back of your mind when deciding the length of your first blog post.
2. Formal and Informal Tones in your First Blog Post
Gone are the days when blog posts used to be formal. Nowadays, most bloggers write informally. Formal blog posts are left for the big news websites.
When writing your first blog post, decide the tone that you want to use. While the tone of your blog post is not something you will sit down and formulate, you can steer your writing to bring out a certain tone.
When I was learning how to write blog posts, I was told to write the same way I speak. That way, I would bring out the tone of how I speak in my writing. It worked!
As a blogger, try as much as you can to write using an informal tone. You can still use a formal tone if that is your natural tone.
The goal here is to make sure that the tone used in your blog post matches your natural tone.
The tone of a blog post is a result of the word choice, length of sentences and punctuation. Many short sentences make the tone of a blog post formal. Long descriptive sentences make the tone of a blog post informal.
3. Number of Ideas in your First Blog Post
A single blog post can express multiple ideas. Too many ideas can have a paralyzing effect to the reader. Few ideas can make your blog post too short. You have to balance between the two.
The best way is to decide how many points you want your blog post to have. Just like the length of your article, the number of points in your blog post must be decided even before you have the points.
In most of my blog posts, I aim for either three or five points. In this article, I have five points. When I was learning how to write a blog post, I was told to always make sure my points in an article are an odd number. I don’t remember the exact reason given but it was a psychological reason.
If you have decided the number of words you want your article to have, deciding the number of points to include in the post becomes easier.
If you want a 1500 word blog post, you can divide it into five points with each point covering approximately 500 words.
Blog posts that list too many ideas are likely to wear off the mind of the reader. By the time the reader gets to element number twenty, he would have forgotten the earlier points.
4. First Blog Post’s Introduction
After years of writing blog posts, I still struggle with introductions. For your first blog post, the hardest part is going to be the introduction.
Introductions to blog posts are difficult to write partly because it is in the introduction that you set the pace of your blog.
One blogger once said that he normally starts writing a blog post and then when he is done, he deletes the first two paragraphs. He said he does that because the first two paragraphs in his blog posts are usually pathetic.
Whatever method you will use, know that writing introductions to blog posts is hard. You have to accept that your introduction will be pathetic. Without that acceptance, you may never write your first blog post.
I usually force myself to write at least 100 words without caring how they come out. After the first 100 words, I then push to get the bearing of the article.
I have been using this method for long but I still struggle on many days.
With writing the introduction of a blog post, you have to start no matter how blank you are.
5. Using Images in your First Blog Post
Writing your first blog post will have many things to be decided. One other decision you will have to make is the number of images you will use in your blog post.
Images in a blog post help break the monotony of the writing. However, too many images in a blog post become a distraction to the flow of the article.
The general rule of using images in a blog post is that if you struggle to get your articles to flow, use more images. If your writing is appealing, use few images.
The quality of your images should match the quality of your writing. Let your writing and your images blend seamlessly.
Writing your First Blog Post Conclusion
Your first blog post is going to be hard to write. No lie! The points I have listed for you here are guidelines but you must gather the courage to start writing.
Remember that you don’t need to cover all ideas in a single blog post. You can always write another article to cover the ideas you left out.
Your first blog post may never get you any readers but remember that without it, you will never have a blog.
Have realistic expectations with your first blog post and give yourself a big room for error.
It is time for me to end this article so that I allow you to go write your first blog post.
All the best!