Publish your first Blog
Post!
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The
secret of getting started is breaking your complex
overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks,
and then starting on the first one.“
~Mark Twain
Brainstorming your first
& future posts
• “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the
reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling
of being rained upon.“ E.L. Doctorow
Brainstorming your first
& future posts
• Set yourself a strict five minute limit to scan through as many of your
favorite blog, news, or niche-focused websites as possible and scribble
down as many posts or news items that really interest or call out to you.
Then, take a second minute to select one of those posts that you’d like to
tell your readers about with a line or more of your personal commentary.
• Take five minutes to write as much as you can about why you’ve decided
to write a blog about X. This will be the basis for your introductory post.
• Take five minutes to introduce yourself, and let your audience know what
you’ll be writing about.
• If none of those take your fancy, head over to Plinky.com, our site
dedicated to giving you ideas for things to write about. That should get
your ideas flowing.
Questions to ask yourself
• Does my idea give people a sense of the type
of blog they’ll be reading?
• Does my idea give me a chance to really show
off what I’m passionate about, and
communicate something unique to me?
• If I were checking out a similar blog, would this
make me want to read more in future?
Publishing your first post
• Log in to your WordPress.com
dashboard
• Over on the left you’ll see a
bunch of menu options. Click
on the little arrow to the right
of the word “Posts” and
choose the “Add New”
option.
Publishing your first post
• Write your title in the box up at the top, just
like you would with an email. This is your
blog’s title, like a headline. It’s important, so
be sure to use your blog title as a way to
captivate your readers by intriguing them with
a fascinating, well-written headline. Verbs are
important.
Publishing your first post
• Now, write the body of the post. This is what
comes below the headline/title.
Publishing your first post
• Should you need additional formatting
options, you can expand the editing toolbar by
selecting the Kitchen Sink icon.
Publishing your first post
• Type in what you want here. You can save it at
any time (without sharing it with the world) by
hitting the “Save Draft” button.
• When you’re ready to share your content with
the world, it’s as simple as hitting “Publish.”
• Once you’ve done that, click on “View Post”
and you can check out exactly how your
content looks to the rest of the world.
Creative Commons
License
• This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Unported License. To view a copy
of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/lice
nses/by/3.0
15
Hinweis der Redaktion
You now have your Big Idea and a nice design to boot. The only thing you need now is to start publishing to show the world what you’re made of. This is the point where procrastination can kick in – moving from that endless list of the possible, and narrowing it down to that first vital post that moves you into publishing mode. So resist the urge to go back and tweak the way your blog looks, or make changes to your settings for the fifth time in a row.Instead, break out that napkin or scrap of paper for some brainstorming. You’ve now cooked up some ideas about the driving idea behind your blog. Take a look at those ideas now and you might already start to feel less uncertain about what you’re going to write about. If not, don’t worry, we’re going to generate some ideas for your first and future posts right now. We’ll also show you how to publish your first post!
So you’ve had a look at the ideas you scribbled down, and now you’re ready to get a little more specific. Grab another scrap of paper, napkin, or whatever you’re using, and put a single word in the center – the one word or short sentence that defines what your blog is all about. If you can’t do that, you might need to focus your idea a little more.
Now, reset your timer for 2 minutes. And race out as many random post ideas as you can think of that relate to that key idea. They don’t need to make sense and you don’t need to ever use them, this is just an exercise in letting your hand do the thinking. Here’s mine:
If any of those look promising, give yourself another minute to make a hard, fast decision about which one you’ll write first.
If that didn’t work out as well as you planned, you can try the exercise again, or:
If you make sure the “Visual” tab is selected (top right of the editor), rather than “HTML,” you’ll be able to use a familiar set of Word Processor-like tools for bolding, italicizing and otherwise formatting your content.
Type in what you want here. You can save it at any time (without sharing it with the world) by hitting the “Save Draft” button. When you’re ready to share your content with the world, it’s as simple as hitting “Publish.”Once you’ve done that, click on “View Post” and you can check out exactly how your content looks to the rest of the world.