Should your new blog have more than one post on it when you launch?
This is one of the most common questions I get asked and so I thought I’d share a few thoughts on what a blog “should” look like when you first show it to the public.
There are a few different factors that might impact your decision.
Let’s take a look.
What should a new blog look like?
If you’re looking to start a new blog you might be wondering what it should look like when you first show it to the public.
What elements are essential and what things can you leave for later?
The truth of the matter is that you can really do whatever you want. Even a butt-ugly website like this has a chance of success…
The very first week of Blog Tyrant. Gross.
There really are no hard and fast rules, and what works for one blog might be totally ineffective on another.
That being said, I have compiled a 44-point checklist on how to start a blog that goes through some of the items you might want to think about in order to give yourself the best chance of success.
For example, you’ll want to have a place for readers to subscribe by email from the very beginning so that you can starting building your email list for the future.
But what about the number of posts?
How many posts should your blog have before launch?
A lot of new bloggers think it’s important to build up a mini archive of articles before making things public.
But, in my experience, it’s much better to just launch your blog with one article that really sets the tone for what your blog is going to do in the future.
Darren Rowse from ProBlogger used to call these pillar articles.
So, ditch the idea of a “welcome” post and just dive straight in with some incredible long form content that solves problems and makes you stand out from the crowd.
So, why no archive of posts?
The reason is pretty simple.
If you publish five blog posts before you launch the blog there is very little chance that they are going to get seen by anyone. Some of your best work might be stuck back there.
But if you launch (and that means promoting…) with one amazing article then chances are people will subscribe to your mailing list in anticipation of the next thing.
And the really cool part?
They will then help you promote that next article by sharing it on social media.
It doesn’t have to be perfect
One other thing that I wanted to mention is that a lot of bloggers want every thing to be perfect before they put themselves out there.
I used to be terrible at this.
I’d spend so much time tweaking these tiny little things that I never got anywhere. The worst part about it was that those tiny little things would only ever be noticed by me anyway.
So, when it comes to launching a blog, I highly recommend not finding new reasons to put it off. I talk about that a little bit in this post from a few years ago.
Try creating that brilliant first article and then ensure you have a quality mailing list incentive for people to download once they’ve subscribed.
It works.
Got a question?
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer here on the blog (even if you think it’s a beginner one!) hit the button below and send me an email. I obviously can’t do them all, but if I think enough people will benefit from a longer-form answer I’d be happy to do it.
Should You Launch a Blog with One Post or Build Up an Archive First? originally posted at Blog Tyrant
No comments:
Post a Comment