How To Write Your First Blog Post

It can be very overwhelming when you’re learning how to write your first blog post. I remember when I started blogging way back in 2014 how nervous I was to hit “publish” for the first time. I made a lot of mistakes and have learned a few things along the way that will hopefully set you up for success as you begin your blogging journey. Today, I want to show you the steps to take to write your first blog post without fear!

I am going to teach you step by step everything you need to get started. One of the most important and basic things every blog post needs are images that complement your topic of choice. Now, if you don’t have any clue what you’re doing with that, I’ve got just the posts for you. Whether you’re an experienced designer or total newbie, I’ve got you covered. To start, hop on over to these posts about using Photoshop or Canva to create blog graphics and then come back. I’ll still be here waiting for ya!

Start by opening your blog.

Whether you use WordPress or another platform, to write your first blog post you need to open up your blog. Navigate to where your posts are and click “add new”. Depending on what platform you use, it may use different terminology for creating a post, but the idea is the same.

Once you are there, you’ve conquered the first step. Now, writing a blog post can sometimes take a little while if you don’t have a topic in mind. This is perfectly okay! Even seasoned bloggers like myself take a while to write posts, especially when life & kiddos are happening behind the scenes. It’s okay if it takes you hours or days because you have to think about it, jot down ideas, write, and repeat.

Think about and write out how you want to structure your post.

The next thing you will want to do is to plan out and write down how you want to structure your post. With writing, you don’t want everything to be one long run-on sentence, so it needs to have some sort of structure. With my own content, I like to break up my thoughts into multiple paragraphs and headings so that it is easier to read and I prefer to use at least 3-4 images that I place every few paragraphs to be engaging and easy on the eyes.

For example, a typical blog post structure for me–using this one as an example–would look like this:

Title
paragraph
paragraph
Image
Heading
paragraph
paragraph
Heading
paragraph
paragraph
Image

You get the idea. So, write out and play with the structure of your blog post depending on what you’re writing about. You can have multiple structures for different kinds of posts. This post of my quarter goals is an example of a different type of post structure.

Get to writing.

With blogging, I find it best to just start writing and then tweak later. So, sit down and just simply start writing. Get out all of your thoughts first into your blog post and then worry about the rest later. You will get better and more efficient and find your flow the more you practice.

You know the structure you’re looking for, you’ve read about how to create images, so now the fun begins of actually doing the writing! Blog posts don’t have to be extremely long, my first ones definitely weren’t, but I would aim for a minimum of 300 words. You will find as you go that it’s a lot easier that you might think to get to that minimum words goal when you know your topic.

Create and add images.

Remember the posts at the beginning I suggested you read? Now is the time to get to creating those images you learned to make. The first image you make should be one that has your post title on it. The next images you make or import can be anything from quotes to a photo of you. Anything you like that complements your post and your topic!

I like to make my images branded with my icon and match the color scheme of my blog, but you definitely don’t have to do that. You can add you own personal style or flare to your images. If you’ve made it this far into the process, I am so proud of you! Keep going and you will have your first post ready in no time.

Tweak your structure.

Now that you’ve gotten all your thoughts out & created images, it’s time to tweak your structure. Refer back to the beginning of this post and pull out your desired post structure. Once you’ve done that, you can begin organizing and rearranging your blog post to fit that structure.

If you’re on WordPress, the Gutenberg block editor makes this super easy by letting you drag the blocks up and down to rearrange. On other platforms it may not be quite so easy, so if you don’t have that option I recommend the old fashioned copy/paste/delete trick.

Hit publish.

You made it to the final step, hooray! You are now ready to hit publish. But before you do, take a few deep breaths and tell yourself that you did amazing. This post is a monumental step for you and you should be proud of this accomplishment.

This pretty much gives you the basics on how to write your first blog post. There are lots of things you can do to your own posts, and my encouragement to you is this: don’t be afraid to play around with things! No matter which platform you use, there are lots of options when it comes to add-ons within your blog posts. The easiest way for you to explore is to create a draft post and just have fun! No pressure, just tons of fun learning what options there are and playing with the layout.

I hope this post has been super helpful for those of you just starting out. Feel free to share this post, bookmark it, whatever you need to do to save it for future reference. As always, if you have questions please reach out! I will try my best to offer helpful advice.