Recently I had occasion to start a blog. The very one you’re reading this post on right now, in fact. I’m going to be working freelance for the foreseeable future and I figured a website with a blog is a good way to keep myself entertained while showing people what I know and what I can do as a content writer. But when it came time to actually write the first post, I found myself thinking, ‘Damn, where do I start?’

Naturally I did a little research. When you’re starting a new creative project, it’s always good to get the lay of the land – that way you know you’re not just plodding over well-trodden ground, or at least if you are then you’re making sure to add something new to the conversation.

It didn’t take long to find a pattern. Most personal blogs start off the same way most Twitter accounts do. A sort of directionless, rambling essay that can be summed up by the words ‘Hello world! Welcome to my page!’ Invariably, they’re all some version of the same thing:

Hey there everyone! Thanks for stopping by my little patch of internet. I hope you find something you like :) This is my space to let loose and just get silly with it. A place to share my ideas and hopefully learn some new ones along the way. In this blog, you’re going to find some awesome articles and raunchy reviews about… well… whatever pops into my head I guess! So strap yourself in and get ready for a front-row seat in the randomness that is my brain. Bye for now!!

I should point out, there’s nothing wrong with the above. There’s not enough bubbly, harmless fun in the world. Especially not on the internet. Still, I couldn’t help but think that the blogs that start out this way are really missing an opportunity. So, after all my research I’m back to square one. I don’t want to launch my site without at least one blog post to give readers a bit of an idea of what they can expect, but I can’t think of anything else to write about other than the exact same thing all these other folks are writing about.

a mural on a wall that says 'everyone is welcome'

And then I realised that was it. I’m a copywriter. I’ll write about writing. More to the point, I’ll write about writing that tricky first blog in the hope that other writers might be able to express their creativity a little better than ‘Hello World!’ when they find themselves in the same position.

I’m not going to have the brazen neck to tell you what to write or how to write it. Your creativity is your own. Let your words and ideas take you where they will. But I will use my experience as a copywriter to help you build up a little framework around some common pitfalls to avoid outright. So here we go. Eight simple rules for how not to make your first blog post.

#1 | Don’t write an introduction post, jump right in.

A little bit of tough love: the Hello World post isn’t for your audience, it’s for you. That’s okay. You’re an aspiring writer. Writing a post about being a writer affirms your aspirations and therefore gives you a little rush. That’s natural and I’m here for it. But take a step back and think about what your greater goal is. Ask yourself what kind of content you want to be putting out into the world and what impact you want it to have. Then ask yourself if a Hello World fits into that box. If you’re honest with yourself, it probably doesn’t.

Sticker in a sign window that reads 'Your ideas matter. Write them down.'

This is the first opportunity for your blog to truly capture your audience’s attention. Don’t spend an entire post telling them what it’s going to be about, show them by creating a post that reflects exactly what it is about. Dive right into it!

Are you going to write a cooking blog? Write one. Are you a film critic? Go rewatch your most hated film and start reviewing. No TV show, comic book, or podcast ever started out with an episode where the creators just talked about what they wanted to do. They did the thing.

If you think your audience needs a primer for your personality, add an about page. That’s what they’re for and they’re a lot easier to find than trawling through blog archives if a reader wants to know what you’re all about.

It’s all about expectation and retention. The Hello World post doesn’t give readers a clear picture of the value you can provide to them. Without that, they don’t know if your content is worth their time coming back for. A first-time reader on a first-time blog is a unicorn (look at you, you sassy great unicorn you). Don’t let your excitement at having a new blog lower the potential for what your blog can be. Which leads me to my next point.

#2 | Don’t be too eager to publish.

A trope in criticism and how-to articles like this one is to lure the reader in by using double-edged-sword phrases like, ‘So, you’ve started your first blog. Congratulations! Now the hard work starts.’ I hate that. It’s insincere and condescending. So let me say it sincerely for once. You’ve started your first blog. Congratulations!

If you’re in a position where you’re reading an article like this, it probably means you’ve spent days or weeks designing your first blog site. Choosing the colours, the fonts, the images, designing the logo, paining over what size headings should be, all that fun stuff. That in itself is a big creative accomplishment. Sit back in it and enjoy that feeling. You might regret it if you don’t.

an old fashioned clock and a notebook against a bright blue red and yellow background

If you’re anything like me, you want to get that content up and out there. Don’t. Step back. Take some time for you. It’s very possible you might be suffering from some creative or mental burnout from the actual design process. Writing a homepage, an about page, a contact page, and all the other great content elsewhere on your site is creative work in itself and can be quite draining.

Creative people thrive on their work being experienced. It’s very possible that you’ll be so eager to get some content out there after designing your site that you’ll just throw together any old rubbish without thinking (as an aside, I would argue that’s where a lot of Hello World posts come from). Don’t do it. Give your brain time to recharge so you can approach your first post refreshed.

The work you put into a post is directly linked to the reaction you get out of it. Put a little more thought in, give yourself some much-needed creative space, and make sure your content has value outside of the butterflies you get from seeing your name under a headline. If you’re creating this blog for fun, odds are there is no deadline outside of the one you set for yourself. Show yourself some creative empathy and take a little more time before launching. Your readers will thank you for it by coming back.

#3 | Don’t try to be someone you’re not.

Your blog is yours. Be you. Are you a brand? Be a brand, talk about your product or industry. Are you an anime fan? Get nerdy and geek out on some Studio Ghibli deep cuts. Use your unique voice and language. Don’t try to sound like someone or something that you aren’t.

street art in green yellow blue and orange that reads 'the best gift is you'

I’m not talking about spelling or grammar here. I have a personal rule: I do not judge a person’s spelling or grammar. Ever. I’m a professional writer. Words, grammar, and spelling are my job. If someone isn’t a professional writer – and by that I mean if they don’t pay their bills each month with money they made from writing – then it doesn’t matter one tiny bit how accurately they spell something. If you can understand clearly what someone means and you still decide to correct them within the bounds of casual conversation, you are the one making communication difficult.

What I’m talking about is tone. Worry less about the linguistic accuracy of what you’re saying and worry more about how true to your persona the way you’re saying it is. If you focus too hard on being grammatically and formally correct, you run the risk of losing all sense of personality in the text.

Use colloquialisms. Swear if you feel like it. Fuck it. Speak as you would to your friends over a beer. I guarantee you, if that’s who you are, audiences will be more excited to read that than something run through a Stepford wife filter.

#4 | Don’t forget good SEO practices.

Okay so this is the boring one that no creative writer wants to hear about and first-time writers want to hear about even less. But it’s important.

You’re probably thinking ‘I’m a first-time blog writer. My blog is small and just for me, I don’t need to worry about SEO just yet.’ It’s exactly because your blog is small that you should worry about SEO all the more.

a screencap of google search console showing some website analytics

I’m not sure how new you are to the internet, but there’s a lot of sites on here. Like, a whole lot. Every time a Google search is made, a battle rages over whose page is going to appear highest on that results list. Most SEO heads will tell you that if a site doesn’t appear within the first three pages of a list, it may as well not exist at all. The smaller and newer your site is, the less chance you have of ranking highly in those searches. No search placement, no organic traffic. If you’re constantly relying on direct and referral traffic, you’re operating in an echo chamber of your own network’s good will.

Work on your meta titles and descriptions. Use relevant alt text for images so search engines can read them better. Think about which keywords you should be using to plan your content and work those words as unobtrusively as you can into your posts. When relevant, link your content to reputable sites and articles. Link to other places on your own site. Start thinking about where you can place backlinks (links placed elsewhere on the internet that drive traffic to your site) to help build your site’s reputation.

Your blog may be small now, but without at least some semblance of an SEO strategy, you’re putting it at a hell of a disadvantage in growing into something bigger. Start as you mean to go on. That means in your first post too.

#5 | Don’t forget who or what you’re writing for.

I’m not really sure what people mean when they say, ‘I just write for me.’ If you’re publishing something, online or otherwise, you surely have at least an awareness that someone will read it and hopefully a desire that they do so. Keep those someones in mind when you’re writing and planning content.

an audience of people celebrating with powdered paint like you would find at an Indian festival

Businesses talk about ‘value’ in content. That’s not necessarily monetary. Sometimes ideas are more valuable than money. Value in content is the takeaway someone has from your piece. So what has value? That depends on what’s important to the reader at the time of reading. Did they learn something? Were they made to laugh? Did something reach them on an emotional level? What is your unique selling point or value proposition that makes someone click on your content and decide to read it the whole way through?

An exchange happens when someone reads your blog for the first time. You are (hopefully) giving them well-researched and informed content on some subject or other. In return, they’re giving you their time and an opportunity to turn a casual reader into a fan. It’s a two-way street. Never forget that. Think about your audience and what they need when you sit down to write. It’ll make for more engaging content, and it’ll keep your writing a million times more focused.

#6 | Don’t be disheartened by low views, comments, or clicks.

It’s your first post. It’s going to happen. You might think it won’t. It will. Your domain doesn’t have a lot of SEO clout right now and probably zero backlinks or referral sources outside of where you and your friends or family (if they are kind enough to) share it. In other words, there are very few avenues for your audience to actually find you.

As I said earlier, writers get their kicks out of being read and the reaction readers have to their pieces. Putting a lot of effort into something only for it to underperform in your expectations can be crushing. Even more so if you’re a newbie writer. Allowing those negative feelings room to breathe will keep you from writing the second and third posts.

Accept the reality now that it’s extremely unlikely your first ever blog post is going to break the internet and you’ll be a lot more appreciative of the people who actually do take the time to read it.

Pro tip: You’re at nothing paying too close attention to analytics on a first blog post anyway. You have nothing within your own unique network and data set to compare it to and the site hasn’t been online long enough for any notable patterns to have emerged. Close Google Analytics and let it brew for a while.

If this post gets 500 views in its first month, I’ll be blown away. If it gets even one comment in that time, I’ll be buying a bottle of prosecco. Keep your expectations realistic.

#7 | Don’t pay too much attention to articles like this telling you what to do.

It’s worth reiterating, this is your blog. Please don’t put too much heed into what I think you should or shouldn’t be doing with it. Besides, it’s your first post. There’s always a learning curve. Make mistakes early and keep making mistakes until you learn how mistakes happen and how to avoid making the same mistakes again.

a neon sign that reads 'and breathe' against a backdrop of leaves growing on a wall

I find these rules, or more guidelines I guess, useful because they provide structure. I’m a demon for structure. When I write scripts, I plan scenes and acts meticulously. I know what happens when and where, beat by beat, before I ever create the document the script will be written in. Hell, even this article uses a list structure to give it a cohesive frame. Once I have the structure down, then I can let the words start to flow out in whatever order they decide to.

My point is, you need to know and understand the rules in order to break them properly. You need to understand structure and the boxes it puts you in so that you can learn to work outside those boxes. If you don’t know what the pitfalls look like, you’re going to end up in a pit. So read these rules, internalise them, take what’s valuable and try to integrate it into your first blog post. And after that, forget all about them.

#8 | Don’t forget your readers with sight impairment or other disabilities.

Here’s a little bonus rule for you. The internet isn’t always the easiest place to be for people with disabilities. Blind people especially. If you’ve got your full sight intact, which I’m assuming you have, think for a second about how you’d even begin to use your phone or computer if you couldn’t see it.

I admit this is a bit of a strange one to finish off with, but I think it’s important nonetheless. I’ve been following some people with visual impairments on Twitter recently because I find their resilience in not letting their disability get in the way of their joining online communities and their fervour in keeping up to speed with technology beyond impressive.

There are a couple of simple things you can do to make your blog posts more accessible to blind people. Start by adding image descriptions to your posts, meta, or site code. This helps readers understand what’s in the images on the page and how they resonate with your text. This is especially important if you’re a visual artist or rely heavily on graphics or charts to communicate your ideas. Avoid writing ‘click here’ or ‘more’ on buttons. What do they mean out of context for an automated screen reader? Besides, buttons are more engaging with unique text on them anyway. Steer clear of CAPTCHA functionalities that ask readers to enter words that appear in a picture or box. If you need to, instead opt for a CAPTCHA with an audio description option.

a street sign reading 'accessible entry' handing on a brick wall painted in green orange black pink and yellow

Try not to use links that force sites to open new tabs or windows, they can be pretty confusing for blind readers and make it more difficult for them to navigate back to pages they’ve already been on. Homebrew rule: if you insist on using new tab/window link functionalities, keep it strictly to third-party sites. That way readers don’t have to work too hard to get back to your site and you aren’t actively driving traffic away by redirecting.

I’m still only learning about making sites disability friendly so don’t take me as an authority on the subject at all. You can find a lot more helpful information over at the American Foundation for the Blind or the National Council for the Blind of Ireland if you’re interested in opening up your blog to wider potential audiences. I’d also recommend following Dr Amy Kavanagh on Twitter who constantly posts interesting content on the topic of blindness and technology.

To make a long point short: your site is brand new, you have the perfect opportunity to develop good accessibility habits from the off. The internet is only now really becoming a more habitable place for people with disabilities and it’s up to people who create content to do what they can to make sure online spaces are more accessible. It’s not actually that difficult to do and if it widens your readership, that’s a great bonus.

Now get out there and start writing.

the words 'thank you' painted in mint outside a steel factory door

And there you have it! Eight simple rules to help you on your way to making a first blog post that’s a little more considered and web-friendly than the boring and unhelpful old Hello World trope.

At the risk of breaking my own rules, I do hope this article was helpful to your project or process and that you’ll consider coming back to my site from time to time for some more thoughts and meanderings. I’ll be updating the blog regularly with posts on writing about writing, news and reviews, helpful tips and hints, and some opinion pieces that hopefully won’t be too drastically indulgent. See you soon!