If you dream of becoming a full-time blogger, WordPress.com can help you create a site within minutes. However, after completing the setup, you may be unsure about the next steps.
That’s why we’ve created this guide for the first 24 hours with your new blog. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list or completely lost at sea, our plan will help ensure a successful first day in your blogging career.
In this post, we cover six must-do tasks that every WordPress website owner should know about. Along the way, we’ll be sharing tips, tricks, and resources to help set up your new blog for stardom. Let’s get started!
1. Identify Your Blogging Goals
Before you start writing, it’s important to set some clear goals. By defining your destination early, you can ensure that every action takes you one step closer to those goals.
Without a plan in place, you may try to grow your readership by creating a few email campaigns, posting on social media, or running the occasional competition. However, consistency is key to building a loyal readership. Without goals, you’re unlikely to perform these activities consistently. This can make it challenging to establish your blogging brand and grow your audience.
The best goals are specific and measurable. Instead of aiming to earn money from blogging, we recommend specifying an exact amount of income and setting yourself a deadline.
It’s also important to be realistic. Making a full-time income from blogging may be the ultimate dream. However, this desire can also set you up for disappointment, at least in the short term. Instead, find realistic goals and then break them into increments.
By establishing lots of attainable short-term goals, you’re less likely to become overwhelmed. You can also keep motivation high by treating your blogging journey as a series of short sprints rather than a marathon.
For example, you might be aiming to attract 1,000 visitors a day. However, as a brand-new blog, it may take a long time to build this audience. Instead, you might decide to increase your traffic by 100 visitors every month until you reach your goal.
2. Assemble Your Toolkit
It’s not enough to simply set measurable goals. You also need a way to monitor whether you’re on track to achieving those aims.
By continuously evaluating your performance, you can make any necessary adjustments. This approach maximizes your chances of hitting your targets.
For example, a particular blog post may attract an influx of traffic. In this scenario, you’ll want to investigate this specific post to see whether you can recreate its magic.
Without measurement tools in place, you’re essentially setting out to sea with a destination in mind – but no map or compass. The tools you need may vary depending on your goals.
However, most blogs will benefit from an analytics platform such as Google Analytics:
You can use this platform to monitor various important metrics. Much of this data is related to traffic, making Google Analytics a vital tool for achieving traffic-related goals.
You may also want to track your search engine performance using a platform such as Ahrefs. With 40–60 billion searches happening on Google in the US every month, it’s almost impossible to underestimate the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
In particular, you can use Ahrefs to track your ranking progress for specific keywords:
3. Identify Your Target Audience
When you start a new blog, it may be tempting to target as many people as possible. Reaching a broad audience may seem like the perfect way to attract lots of traffic. However, in reality, when you try to appeal to everyone, you often appeal to no one.
By targeting a small, clearly-defined audience, you can ensure you’re creating content that appeals to that niche. You can also tailor every part of your blog to resonate with your readers. This strategy can help build a strong brand and make sure people know exactly what to expect from your blog.
Moreover, when you have a narrow target audience, you can often market your blog more effectively. For example, you might advertise your latest posts on the social channels where your target demographic spends most of their time. You can also optimize your messaging to appeal to that specific audience.
While it may be beneficial to have a clearly-defined readership, it’s essential to find a niche that’s large enough to support your growing blog. Here, it may help to research the market using a tool such as Google Trends:
You can use this platform to see how many people are searching for different keywords. Google Trends can also filter the data according to location, interest over time, and related search terms.
For example, suppose you’re planning to cater to local foodies. In that case, you might research how many people are searching for “New York food reviews” or “New York food bloggers.”
During your research, keep in mind that you’ll want to grow your blog over the long term. Therefore, there should be enough interest to support your future expansion.
It’s not unusual for successful blogs to move into new areas as they build momentum. For this reason, you should consider whether there are any related niches that you can explore.
4. Brainstorm Potential Blog Posts
Launching a blog with zero content usually won’t make a great first impression. Ideally, we recommend publishing between three to five posts before attempting to drive any traffic to your website. These articles will give your visitors an overview of the kind of content they can expect from your brand.
Writing your first few posts can be a daunting prospect. If you’re currently unsure where to start, a brainstorming session can help you clarify your ideas and come up with new ones.
To fire up your imagination, it may help to identify a few blogs that are operating in your chosen niche. While we’d never recommend copying content, reading through competitor posts can fuel your brainstorming session.
If you don’t already have a list of competitors, try entering some of your initial post ideas into your favorite search engine. With more than 600 million blogs on the web, someone has likely already covered your topic, no matter how obscure.
As such, a quick Google search should throw up several relevant blog posts. You can then explore these sites to see what other topics they’ve covered.
5. Create a Content Schedule
Next, it’s time to pick between three to five posts that will serve as your blog’s initial content. This isn’t always an easy decision to make, particularly after a fruitful brainstorming session.
To start, consider all of the categories that you want to feature on your blog. For example, if you’re creating a food blog, you may plan to share recipes and review your local food outlets. Ideally, you’ll want to publish at least one post in each category before promoting your new WordPress blog. This diversification will ensure that visitors know what to expect from your site moving forward.
You may have several solid ideas for each category. If this is the case, it makes sense to start with the content that could attract the most search engine traffic.
According to research, over 53 percent of all traffic comes from organic search. By optimizing your content for the search engines, you can set your site up for success.
Moreover, you can gauge the level of potential interest by performing keyword research. By publishing content that targets the most lucrative keywords, you can rank high with the search engines.
You can conduct keyword research using tools such as the Semrush platform:
You should consider finding highly-specific keywords that have decent search volumes and low competition. These are called long-tail keywords, and you can use them to achieve high rankings in the search engine results.
After you’ve identified the best keywords within your niche, you can refer back to your brainstormed blog ideas. Ideally, your first few posts will target these keywords. You can then write your content with these search-engine-friendly phrases firmly in mind.
6. Write Your First Blog Post
Getting readers to your blog is only the first step. You also need to convince them to stick around by creating engaging content.
When writing your first posts, your ultimate goal should be providing value to your readers. Visitors should come away feeling that reading your blog was well worth their time. This strategy may involve teaching users something new, providing the answer to a burning question, or simply keeping them entertained.
Although the point is hotly debated, it’s widely thought that the average human attention span is shrinking. With this in mind, we suggest capturing the reader’s attention with a compelling headline and getting to the point quickly:
With so much content vying for the reader’s attention, you don’t have the time to craft a clever introduction that spans several paragraphs. Instead, aim to create an opening that surprises or intrigues the reader and then clearly communicates what your post will cover. Bonus points if you can achieve all of these characteristics in a sentence or two.
When writing your first posts, you may be tempted to show off your writing skills with long words, complex sentences, and flowery imagery. In reality, these posts are difficult to read.
Your typical Internet user prefers simplicity over complexity. To tap into this preference, always favor short sentences and accessible language.
Furthermore, half of the human brain is devoted directly or indirectly to vision. This means that your blog posts have to look appealing – and a page of solid text usually isn’t everyone’s preference.
Instead, you can use line breaks, subheadings, and bullet points to break up your content and make it easier on the eye. Relevant images and engaging videos can further boost your blog’s visual appeal.
If you’re still concerned about hitting the right notes with your blog posts, check out our blog post checklist. Following the checklist can make the task much easier.
Conclusion
Starting a new blog is exciting, but it can also be daunting to start with a blank slate. After performing the initial WordPress setup, you may be wondering where to go from there.
To set your blog up for success, you’ll need to define what success looks like. This means setting clear, measurable goals. To help keep your motivation sky-high, we also recommend breaking your goals into small achievements and ensuring they’re realistic for a brand-new WordPress blog.
You might also like: Point of View in Writing: How to Choose the Right One for Your Blog
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