How to Write Your First blog Posts

Write Your First blog Posts 

With just a week before launch, it’s finally time to start writing your first posts and building a bank of content to publish during the first few weeks your blog is live. If you focus your energy on writing in advance, you’ll give yourself more time to get ahead of schedule and deal with other items that may come up when launch day arrives. Remember back in Week 2 when you generated a list of evergreen content ideas? Start with that list, and choose a few of your top ideas to start writing. You can always continue thinking of new ideas or timely posts to write about. 

Make it skimmable 

Use images, bullets, lists, and short paragraphs to make your blog posts easy to read and easy to skim. Your goal is to encourage your audience to keep reading, not scare them away with large chunks of text. 

Plan a promotional strategy for your first post 

Once you’ve written your posts, how are you planning to promote your blog launch? Go back to last week’s tips on SEO and social promotion, and create a promotional checklist for launch day. Consider writing an announcement blog post to tell your visitors about your blog and why they should follow it. Plan out your promotional strategy across social channels, email, and paid promotions. 

Images 

Did you know that colored images make readers 80% more willing to read a piece of content? Use images, graphics, or even videos to make your blog posts more appealing to readers. Start with stock photos, or use Canva to make custom graphics. 

Link to other resources 

Don’t forget to use hyperlinks in your post to connect readers to other resources. This is important for two reasons; First, people want to know where information and facts are coming from, so due diligence and proper citations are critical. Second, you can use your blog posts to link to other resources and content from your brand, which also helps keep people on your website. The goal of blogging is to disseminate information, so make sure to use links that provide additional helpful content to your readers.

Determining the Success of Your Launch: Metrics to Analyze

Your first blog posts have been written, everything has been planned out, and you’ve spent that last 10 weeks setting your blog up for success. Now, it’s time to determine how you’ll measure that success. When it comes to blogging, it’s important to set up and analyze key metrics over time. First, identify your team’s goals for your blog. What are you trying to accomplish? Likely, the goals will be gaining subscribers, leads, and then customers by bringing blog visitors through the buyer’s journey to your product or service. Once you’ve answered those questions, set realistic goals based on the following metrics:

Page views 

The main way to measure how much traffic your blog receives is tracking the number of page views each post generates. In other words, how many visitors are coming to and reading your posts? 

Click-through rate (CTR) 

One key component of building SEO juice is the click-through rate that each of your posts see. Are people coming to your blog, then clicking on hyperlinks within the post? The more visitors click through and stay on your site, the better it is for the overall authority of your blog. 

Sources of traffic 

One important measurement to consider is where you traffic is coming from. Are your promotional efforts paying off? What are the big levers that drive most of your traffic to your blog? Whether it’s your social promotion, emails, or paid campaigns, make sure you’re tracking which channels drive the most traffic. This information will help you tailor your content strategy over time. 

Leads and customers gained from your blog over time 

It’s up to you to decide how you track this number. Some companies track leads from their blog on a monthly basis, while others do so each quarter.

So, how do you track this data? Most content management systems enable you to track these metrics easily, so make sure you know how to analyze them within your CMS before launch. Now that you know what and how to track the right metrics, it’s time to set post-launch goals for your team, both short- and long-term. Hold a planning meeting with your team to set goals for page views and click-through rates within the first month, six months, and year after launch. If you set realistic goals and hold your team accountable accordingly, you’ll set yourself up for success at the outset of your blogging adventure.

Congrats! Now, Some Things to Avoid

Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of guide and have (hopefully!) successfully launched your blog. We’d love to say your work here is done, but, blogging is a long-term effort. Luckily, it’s one that pays off. Now that you’ve launched your blog, keep this checklist of dos and don’ts in mind:

DO 

Test your content strategy over time. 

Find out what works for your audience and what doesn’t, then tailor your content accordingly. 

Keep blogging 

even if you don’t see immediate high-traffic volume! Blogging is beneficial for your business, but only if you keep at it! 

Continue to research tips and ideas for better blogging. 

The HubSpot Marketing Blog has tons of posts that can help you out.  

DON’T 

Keep using a CMS that doesn’t work for you. 

If your CMS is hard to use or doesn’t easily track data on your blog, it’s not doing its job. Luckily, HubSpot can recommend a great CMS for you to try! 

Forget to do your keyword research, or optimize every blog post for SEO. Rely on organic traffic alone. Don’t forget to promote your blog posts and drive traffic to your posts as often as possible! 

Try to rank for highly competitive keywords right off the bat. 

SEO is a long-term game. Trying to rank for highly competitive, high-volume keywords won’t work for a brand-new blog. Keep looking for niche, long-tail keywords that will build up your SEO juice in the short term.