Like I said earlier in the e-course, content is very important when it comes to running a successful blog and attracting visitors to your blog.
Having said that, many new bloggers get stuck on writing their first few blog posts. And I get it, it can be daunting to do, especially when you’re not sure if your initial content is good enough. I felt the exact same way too!
This is exactly why I felt the need to create this bonus lesson for you guys!
Here is what you need to do to write your first few blog posts that you feel great about sharing with the world.
Before you start, go over this posts I created that walks you through the process of understanding what a post is on WordPress.
Now for the real bonus.
First of all, every single piece of content you write must answer a question or solve a problem for your readers. Your posts cannot focus on you! You should only use your experiences as anecdotes within your content.
But how do you even know what problems people are facing or need solutions to?
The simplest way I and multiple other bloggers have been able to discern this is by using Pinterest, more specifically, the Pinterest search bar.
Do you occasionally use Pinterest to find…well stuff?
If you do, you know that you often use the search bar to search for ideas on Pinterest. Then, when you find a pin that seems to answer your question, you click through to it to read what it says.
What does that mean for you? And how does it relate to finding people’s problems?
This means that these are the topics you need to be writing about. These highly searched phrases are problems people are searching for solutions too!
This means that you need to search for topics related to your niche using the Pinterest search bar. This is where you find out what problems people are having or what answers they are looking for. Once you’ve done that you will know which posts to write.
For example, in my niche which ‘personal finance’ I will search for a phrase and these are the topics Pinterest recommends.
Naturally, if you I were to write a post about making money, it would focus on the phrases ‘make money from home, make money online, or make money at home.
That way, I would be creating content that was highly relevant and stood a high chance of doing well on Pinterest simply because this post answers people questions or gives people a solution to a problem, which is finding ways to make money from home.
What you should do:
- Open up Pinterest and type in a phrase that relates to your niche.
- Assess the popular phrases that Pinterest suggests (as shown in the screenshot above)
- Click on a phrase that you’re really interested in and click through to some of the pins (just to see what kind of content is doing well, how this blogger presents their content and so on)
- Go back to your blog and write down a few points that you’d like to cover based on the popular phrases.
- Also, have a look at which ‘Titles’ do really well on Pinterest and take some ideas from these for your own blog post titles.
- Start elaborating on the points you will cover in your posts. (Remember, your post is focused on answering a question or giving solutions to a problem that people are having)
- Sometimes, you can write a post straight from your head and other times you will have do do some additional research to validate your points.
Once you’ve written the first draft of your content, you need to structure it properly so that it’s very easy for your readers to understand (no big blocks of text, that turns people off really quickly!)
How to structure your post well:
- Make sure your content is in point form. This makes your content more digestible.
- Make sure you have relevant images within your post. They serve as welcome distractions to readers and also help you create ‘breaks’ in your content (again, this makes content more digestible). I use Pexels.com for free stock images.
- Make sure that your post is at least 300 words long. Most of my posts are 1200+ words.
- If you’re concerned about typos or grammatical errors, try Grammarly. It’s free grammar checker that helps you avoid writing errors.
Also, you can check out this post for some more tips on writing your first blog post.
I hope this lesson helps you out a lot, but if anytime during writing your post, you find yourself stuck on something, reply to this email with your queries and I will gladly help you out!