Over the years on this blog I’ve shared all sorts of advice about how to set up your blog, the advantages of blogging, top tips for newbies at blogging, etc. But a client asked me a very good question recently: “What should I write my first blog post about?”
Now, it’s very tempting to write your first blog post about yourself, introducing yourself and your expertise. You want your readers to trust you, right?
Well, I think more than that, you want your blog posts to help you to be FOUND.
My first blog post on this blog was this one: Introduction (on 14 October 2009). How many hits has that had? Not many. In fact, I didn’t have many hits at all those first few years – because I was just talking about myself and what I did, yes, sharing loads of keywords, but not really talking about what I could do to help people.
On 6 November 2011, I had a terrible problem with a Word document. It was sent to me by someone else and all the comment balloons were teeny-tiny and unreadable. I found out what to do to sort it out and thought, “Hm, I’d better make a note of what I did”. So I created a new blog post, called it What to do if your comment boxes go tiny in Word, and at that point, I just wrote a list of the steps I’d taken. None of the fancy screen shots that festoon this and other posts nowadays.
But what happened? People had always been searching that question, and now they started to find my blog. People STILL find that article and find it helpful today! Just today, at the time of typing this, 41 of the views of my blog have been of that post. Over 23,000 views in the last 365 days. It’s consistently in the top 10 of viewed posts. Still.
So if you want to start blogging for your business, your recipes, your book reviews, I recommend that you start your blog with an informative, useful post that will help people (buy a greenhouse / cook a nice meal / find a new book to read).
Where should all the stuff saying how trustworthy, knowledgeable and generally amazing you are go? In your About Me page. If someone finds something useful on your blog, they might well click on that, have a look and even get in touch to order services or products from you.
In this article I’ve shared my ideas and experience around what to write in your first blog post. If you’ve found this useful, please share using the buttons below, or leave me a comment!
Other useful articles on this blog
10 reasons NOT to write a blog
Scheduling blog posts and keeping going
Five ways to drive and increase engagement with your blog
How to keep people engaged with your blog
LibroEditing proofreading, editing, transcription, localisation 
Katherine Dolan
January 10, 2018 at 9:58 pm
Thanks! This was really helpful as I am agonizing over what to write right now!
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Liz Dexter
January 11, 2018 at 7:23 am
I’m glad I could help! Good luck with your first post: just go for it, no more agonising!
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Mike
January 11, 2018 at 12:40 am
Hello Liz! That was awesome, a most helpful post as I am sure if’s a big questions for ‘first timers!’ Thanks!
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Liz Dexter
January 11, 2018 at 7:22 am
You’re welcome, I think it’s a useful question to answer and it was fun checking what my first post was!
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Don Massenzio
January 11, 2018 at 1:53 pm
Reblogged this on Author Don Massenzio and commented:
Check out this great post from the Libro Editing blog on what you should write in your first blog post.
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lorigreer
January 11, 2018 at 2:26 pm
Helpful perspective also for those of us who have been blogging for a while. Thanks!
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Liz Dexter
January 11, 2018 at 2:55 pm
That’s great to hear – thank you!
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pawprintsandmint
March 3, 2018 at 2:29 am
Congrats on your first post! Don’t stress with writing, write with things that inspire you and from your heart and you will have fun 💗 and success
Cheers,
M & Bear
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Liz Dexter
March 4, 2018 at 5:47 pm
This is good advice to new bloggers, thank you for adding your comment.
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The Brightest Hour 💫
March 4, 2018 at 6:14 am
thank you so much ! this helped me alot
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Liz Dexter
March 4, 2018 at 5:46 pm
I’m glad to have helped you, and good luck with your new blog!
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detalepen
May 31, 2018 at 9:04 pm
Thank you, I appreciate the advice!
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