This question from James of My Fitness Guide hit my inbox this week:
“My question is, when starting a new blog, do you write a list of all your blog topics first, then plan to write one of them per day, or do you write it all as fast as possible to build your archives, and then try and think of a fresh new blog topic every day?”
Here’s my answer (I’d be keen to hear yours in comments).
James – I generally suggest a few things with regards to content when I’m starting a new blog.
1. 5 Posts Already Published
I like to have at least 5, preferably 8-10, articles already published on the blog – so when people come they can see you’ve written useful stuff already and don’t just see a blog with one post.
At b5media we ask our bloggers to have around 10 posts already written before we launch but I think 5 would be my minimum.
2. 5 Draft Posts
I also like to have at least 5 posts already written but held in reserve as drafts that I can post in the next few days after launch.
I find that when launching a blog you can be a bit distracted by the excitement of it all, by promoting it, by responding to comments etc – so content creation can sometimes take a bit of a back seat.
If you have 5 posts in reserve (I’d even prefer to have more than that) it means you can keep any momentum from the launch going for at least 5 days without having to write a whole lot more. In fact I usually start a blog with just 3 posts a week and gradually increase the frequency of posts over time – so 5 posts in reserve can almost last two weeks.
3. 20 Post Ideas
Lastly – I also like to have a list of possible topics to write about in future (I try for at least 20).
I actually like to write this list as part of the process of even deciding whether to choose a topic or niche because it helps me to work out whether I’ll be able to sustain writing on that topic for the long haul.
If you can’t think of 20-30 post titles/topics pretty easily before starting a blog it could be a signal that you’ve chosen the wrong topic.
Having this list at your fingertips means you’ve always got a topic to write about in the first month or so of your new blog.
And You’re Off and Running
I find that between having a few posts already up on the blog, having a few in reserve for the coming few days and then having a list of topics to write about that creating content for a new blog is not that difficult.
The numbers of posts that I’ve mentioned above will vary from person to person (and even for me I’ve not always exactly followed this formula) but I think it’s probably a pretty solid way forward.
The only thing I’ll add is that it’s really important to put your best foot forward in terms of the quality of your content in the early days of a blog.
Of course you’ll want high quality posts as every post on your blog going forward – but a few really high quality and engaging posts in the first week of your blog can really launch it and help establish some good traffic and subscriber numbers in the early days of its life.
What Do You Do When Starting a Blog?
I’m interested to hear what your experience is with creating content on a new blog? How many posts do you launch with? How do you keep the posts coming in the early day of a blog?
Those are good suggestions. My second blog, a co-authored blog with Eric Hamm is all about blogging. We implemented many of these strategies before we started. Though we started with a single introductory post, rather than five, we have been keen to “fill the bank” with as many follow-up posts, drafts and ideas as possible.
It’s definately important to publish a few articles and have a few more ready to go. When your first visitors come thru, often friends and family, you want them to come back. You also want them to send it to their friends. If they don’t find content and design that inspires they may return, but they won’t recommend it.
The first weeks are busy too. Having a few extra posts written allows you to make sure the site links are working properly and it allows you to start finding traffic.
I am at 288 right now for a site that I just launched. Perhaps that is a tad overkill.
Some good tips, we always need to have extra posts ready to post. For the new years i’ve started posting every day and i’m seeing the results from it already. More subscribers, traffic, and comments. They way i do it is to just write as many posts as I can in a single time, and then use a wordpress plugin to post them each day. Now we can all post every day like Darren :)
I wish I had read this post before starting my blog! I kind of had a “oh crap what am I going to write about” moment right after I started it.
Since using a strategy I found on this blog, just sitting down with a piece of paper and brainstorming, I’ve not run out of things to blog about.
Thanks for the advice!
-CD
I looked around at what others were doing, especially those whose blogs I liked. I read as much as I could about traffic, search engines…
I’m continually sharpening my skills and learning. The running list is very important for me, I keep a running list of topics in my iPhone notes.
Really appreciated your strategies and plan.
Thanks for sharing your ideas ..
Best Wishes.
Research::
I think spending time in the industry you are going to blog about is a great place to start. Studying other bloggers in your niche, thinking about what the hot topics are, thinking about what angle you will take and the type of value that you want your readers to get from reading your blog.
I don’t know that it would always be doable, but having someone spend 6 months doing ‘research’ before they launch their blog would definitely benifit them.
Social Media::
You should also get deep into Social Media during the research time even if it’s not your long term strategy. Being in the social media world will teach you a lot and help you connect with a lot of great people. This may be where you start to build relationships with fellow bloggers in your niche as well as others.
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http://twitter.com/franswaa
These are good tips, and not just for the beginning blogger!
Having posts in draft and a good list of topics is essential to maintaining a good writing schedule, whatever the age of the blog.
I usually have at least 10 posts in various stages of completion, and maintain a file that currently has over 100 blog ideas, some with partial research. This helps me get through harried days and the inevitable “dry ” times!
Great post, Darren!
That’s a great plan.. will implement it for my new travel blogs which are linked to my travel sites :)
Great strategy Darren,
This is timely advice for me as I am preparing to “re-launch” one of my blogs which has been dormant for almost a year with no fresh posts.
Rather than rely on my old (year old) posts for existing content, I think it will be wiser for me to launch using your suggestions with fresh more recent content, drafts ready to publish and a notebook of ideas.
I’m also relaunching with a fresh new look and some goodies to encourage new subscribers in the hope this second launch will prove more favorable than my previous one ;)
Thank you for this sage and useful advice Darren!
When creating initial content for our blog, we thought as publishers would, not as editors. You have to think of what will drive sales a.k.a. comments on a blog, in addition to developing the fan base. What appeals to readers in the niche I address? If you step outside that niche, say “sayonara” to your subscribers. You can, however, do this once in a blue moon.
Thanks for these insights; we are now just learning the importance of scheduling posts and reserving drafts.
How I wish I have all the time just blogging -_-
Darren,
As always, your tips are great, I would add to stick with a single niche in the beginning, and stay with it for ever, unless ofcourse planned otherwise, when you have loyal readers, then you can start blogging in other niches, kind of what I did with my blog, in the beginning I had articles about blogging, then I joined 5 other niches all into one blog, but it was too soon to do so, that my RSS number went down over 4000 less subscribers within 2 weeks from doing so.
What do you think? Will sticking with one niche be better for the launch?
With regards,
Alex,
http://www.GuruOfSales.com
http://www.WAHOL.com
Hey Darren. I’ll launch a blog next month and I’m currently working on a glossary with common words in my industry.
Plus, I came up with a category for “people”: you’d be surprised to realize that it’s hard to find information even regarding government officials.
I’ll do lots of linkbaiting as well. I’ll review one blog a week and do some contest of the top blogs in my niche. I’ll just come up with 10 items, check which blogs have which items and do a grading system. Just to generate some buzz!
Been lurking around your files and I like your one-question interview. I’ll do that as well.
This is what I’ve been doing, some of it is from watching other but the vast majority of tips is from Problogger. It’s really not hard to come up with ideas and quality content if you take the time to plan your blogging activity. Thanks a bunch!
Cheers, D.
Well, planning is a good thing but as for my technical blogs, it is impossible to write a very deep article each day, the day is not long enough. So I help myself writing much shorter articles usually about something that I’ve found on other sites with links to those, and of course I sometimes write something bigger but it depends on the time needed for preparation, testing code listings etc.
Thank you so much for this information.
I am in the process of creating a blog to accompany my website and this has been a great affirmation of the planning and work that I thought I would have to make.
Thanks again,
Stephen
this strategic tip works great for most blogs; bloggers who write about current events, in the world or in personal life, would still need to blog daily. then the tactic there would be to blog about what happened that day ;)
Great tips, I would go one step further and have at least 2 other contributors lined up to help in some way (weekly, monthly, etc.). I would also line up guest posts from at least five people for the first couple months prior to launch (you may have to get some content up first to convince people it is legit). One thing I have come to put more focus on the more blogs I create, is that having multiple perspectives, authors, etc. creates a higher quality and quantity of content. And it just makes it easier on all involved. Not perfect for every situation, but most people can bring in outside help or find someone else in their company/friends to help.
Very good tip. Before I started my cooking blog, I made sure my recipes were all typed up beforehand. Then I organized them together in my recipe box so now every week when I get ready to post, I go to my recipe box and I can pick/choose which recipes to post. I usually add my intake but that never takes me a lot of time to write. It just helps to have the content done ahead of time then posting doesn’t become a pain. In fact, that’s the most exciting part for me because the content is done in advance. Can’t stress how important enough is to be prepared ahead of time, makes the job much easier to do!
That’s a really good starting list. It’s also makes for a good blogging business plan.
It is always a good idea to have fresh content already written so that people have the opportunity to see what kind of content you’ll give them. Do not want people coming to your new blog and then seeing that you only have one post them. I highly doubt that they will ever subscribe to your blog then. So have plenty of content already posted and you’ll have a much better launch.
Good advice… planning ahead really does save time day to day when you cannot think of what to write about!
Being prepared for launching a blog is important – and you’ve laid out some great tips for setting groundwork; before a blog is launched.
Launching the blog I feel was the easy part. Topics were everywhere and I always had more to say. After about 3months is when it started to become work and I had to start thinking of new ways to keep it fresh and fun.
But I think when launching the best thing to do is to get 5-10posts up so there’s some content there for people to see. Don’t waste time promoting it until there is a bunch of stuff there because you risk losing those viewers forever if they only have 1 article to judge you on.
I like the idea of making a physical list to refer to, rather than just picking topics out of my head. I think we’ve all had our moments of staring at the screen trying to come up with something.
Sometimes if I get hit with an idea, I’ll write it as a draft and save it as a scheduled post for the next day. That little feature has helped me out many times, especially when things were so crazy that I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to blog daily.
@Alex: I think it’s always important to stick with a niche — unless you’re blogging about your own personal life. When you try to go outside of that niche, your readers — who are used to your content the way it is — get a sense of disorganization. If you want to write for several niches, you can always set up multiple websites.
Great post Darren, thanks for the ideas. Another good idea I have learned indirectly from observing you is the way you’ve used guest articles to help rapidly give twitip.com momentum. While this strategy won’t work as well for somebody without a lot of existing contacts and notoriety from an existing blog like yourself, it sure seems like a strategy that has worked well for you.
Hi!
Great suggestions on how to keep your blogs coming regularly and fresh. I am in the process of focusing my blog and one of my ideas was to make lists of topics. That way, I don’t have to dig deep each time to come up with a good idea. :)
Please let me know if you need anything. I figured that the fastest way to learn how to go about things is to be available to people. :)
All the Best!
Regards,
Erwin Chua
http://winning2win.com
Having a backup plan is always helpful. The Running List is a MUST! I have a notebook on me at all times to write down anything that comes to mind. I love my tech gadgets, but after I sank my cell in the great white bowl several times, I stick with traditional ways.
Having a LARGE pool of ideas is a must and I agree with previous comments that if you don’t have it, consider writing about another topic. What you enjoy learning about is a good place to start in picking a topic WHEN it is paired with marketability.
My Top 5 Picks to focus on when you are doing a pre-launch would be:
1.Research at least 6 months
2.Social Networking
3.Getting a Focused Topic
4.Planning your Strategy and Tactics for the blog
5.Implementing a good record keeping for yourself
…All your login names and paswords in one place
…A Media Management File: when you posted advertising, where, when does it expire, ect
… A consistently visible schedule of things to do WITH a deadline
thanks this will help me out for sure :D
Great tips :)
Thanks for sharing
One of my mistakes was to launch my blog with just 1 post there :(
I am gonan be a lot more careful to my next blog though since i’ve learned a lot since then
Thanks again!!1
Have unique features in store that you can pull when you can’t find anything to blog about.
For example, a top ten list, photo caption contests or article reviews. Something that is a regular feature and can fall back on. Then when you do write good creative content, it’ll balance everything out.
I have a notebook full of ideas, and my RSS feeds also give me up-to-date topic ideas.
For my blog, personal experiences are playing a large part…and 15 years’ worth of those could probably keep me talking for at least one year, maybe two. ;)
When I officially launched, I only had a couple of posts. But, the vast majority of my new readers also came from my previous blog. As I promote more and more, and post more and more…the content will naturally expand.
I hung out my shingle this past Monday, and while I understand it’s important to be strong from the get-go…I do think a lot of bloggers don’t find their “true voice” until they have at least a few weeks (or months) under their belts. It isn’t really until then that you find your true niche, based on responses to posts, comments, etc. That’s how it was for me with my previous blog, anyway. Plus, it takes about that long to vet out those who have the endurance to keep up a blog.
Thanks for the great tips! Wish I could have read them before starting up my blog! Will definitely keep this in mind should I start up another blog.
Some very good advice here – certainly for moving forwards! I tend to keep some ideas bouncing around in my head for awhile and then they crystallize into a notepad document. I’m certainly nowhere to close to as prepared as you, so the advice and ‘how-to’ is much appreciated!
http://www.sthursby.com
http://sthursby.wordpress.com/
http://www.twitter.com/sthursby
I only have one blog that I’m truly passionate about and that’s mymymochamoney.com blog. I started with two posts but I write an article every day (just about every day). If I have an idea for a headline, I put it in my draft section on my blog. I have ten in reserve right now. Or, if I think of an idea in the car, etc. I’ll write it down right away. I also spend time commenting on other blogs (like this one:), doing some social bookmarking, and some tweets. I think consistency of writing is so important and looking for fresh ideas is top priority!
The timing of this article is just perfect – I just launched my site yesterday.
I’m feeling confidant now because it seems I have followed most of the steps that you’ve highlighted here. I think the reason I’ve already implemented these ideas is because I’ve been reading your blog for awhile now and these step have naturally suggested themselves after reading 100’s of your articles.
So this immediately suggests to me an answer your question of what to do when starting a blog, i would add this:
4. Make sure your list of 20 ideas displays a consistent theme or thread over time. If it doesn’t perhaps you need to separate it over two blogs or ditch the off topic ones and come up with on topic ideas.
Patrick
Those are good ideas when starting a blog. For a couple of my blogs that would not work. One blog is a chronicle of my Photo-A-Day project and the other a chronicle of my attempt to teach myself Chinese in 15 minutes a day for a year. For those blogs a buffer of posts is not going to work. However if I wanted to intersperse articles within either of those blogs then I would have drafts ready. I do that from time to time. For my more stagnant blogs I do need to sit down and get a buffer of articles written.
For my blog (www.GeekMBA360.com), I set up the blog infrastructure (e.g. installing wordpress, registering domain name, installing various plug-ins.) Then, I spent a month writing posts and made all of them private. So, when I officially launched my blog, I had about 50 posts ready.
I highly recommended this approach because
1) it helps me establish a rhythm to write blogs consistently
2) when I launched the blog, I could spend most of my time on marketing my blog, which takes a lot of time. Having an inventory of posts really helped.
3) it’s very important to post frequently right after you launch the blog in order to establish and maintain momentum with your reader. Again, the 50+ posts really helped.
GeekMBA360
Ideally I’d have read these suggestions before starting! I’ve always tried to post every day. I read a lot and I always have many ideas swimming around in my head to post about. If I was ever to be short of ideas I’d check my INBOX – I can never keep up with all the possibilities.
To keep it all manageable I’ve started making lists with some ideas for very short posts, which I can use on days when I have less time and energy to write. Some of these are quotations that express something about the topics I write about and the way I think about the world.
At one point I tried to get more organized and post on certain themes. I notice a lot of people do this, you know, Tuesday is such and such. But then several of my readers told me that the thing they like about my blog is that they don’t know what is coming next. I prefer to just write about whatever catches my imagination and interest – it was nice to have permission to do that – so I dropped the idea of being more focused and predictable :-)
Whichever niche I decide to start a blog in, I spend time looking at the top rated blogs in technorati. This will give you a good scope of what you should be blogging about. I also join their list so I get an email when ever they post. Once I start my blog, I use 3-5 post. once these post are up, I go and comment on all of these other blogs (relevant comments). I network with other bloggers in the niche to build readership.
I have an Excel spreadsheet with a schedule of posts I have, and the date I plan to post them. It is fairly flexible as sometimes a news story/current topic can crop up.
It gives me an idea of what’s to come, and I can see if there are any ‘holes’ or subject ares that may need more posts in the near future.That helps concentrate my mind when thinking up new posts!
I wrote 52 “tip posts” of 50-100 words and set them to all publish on Tuesdays for an entire year.
Then I made it a goal to publish at least one current topic a week, more if good stuff was happening on the webz.
That way, no matter what, I’d have a post a week so the blog did not completely fall off the radar.
My next blog? I’d probably write double the tips so there would be no less than two evergreen tip posts a week.
I think it depends on what KIND of blog you are starting, too. I just launched a blog that features great tweeps, and I really wanted to make sure that each of them were spotlighted. I only launched with two (even though I had 7 others in reserve), because I didn’t want to take away from the individuals.
Thats just about exactly what I did, and my blog is three months old and off to a great start. The only thing I did not do, however, was make a list of the 20 blog ideas. I ended up doing this later, and realized that it should have been done in the initial planning stages.
Great post, well thought out.
This is a really timely post.
I launched my blog this week and my planning process was a little bit different.
I had about 10 posts published – but also have about 50+ drafts. In my google docs file, I have about 200 posts titles organized into a couple of key ‘sneeze page’ concepts. I also notes on who I eventually wanted to guest post for and the concept i’d use for each post.
I can vouch for the tip to have great content before you launch. I had two killer articles that I was really proud of. Those two are responsible for over 1300 page views in 3 days because people took their story back to their blog, and voted using social media.
Jeff Chandler had a great post on performaning about launching a blog recently. In it, he said that spending a good 6-12 months networking before the blog launch can benefit you. By the time it comes to launch, you have established friendships and people genuinely want to help you out. I would agree – any success I’ve had with my blog is due to my good online friends. Jeffs article is here if anyones interested: http://performancing.com/planning-launch-new-blog.
Thanks again for the great post. Its always nice to know when your doing something right in the blogosphere :)
First off, I create buckets (my categories) that are relevant to what my blog is about (along with keyword research to make sure i name the categories correctly), then I try to fill up the buckets with at least 5 topics each. Then after I’m done, I try to write down a schedule of when I would like to post these articles. Once I have a routine down, the monotony of blogging becomes do-able :)
Thanks very much for the tips. I had to relaunch my blog using WordPress because of some blogger fustrations and wanted this lauch to go smoother than the pervious one. I’ll use this as a reference as I’m contructing it.
Thanks so much, this is really helpful advice – from you and your readers.
Many thanks for a great post, Darren. I just love having my head banged with solid, principled advice like this.