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You’ve done it. You’ve finally made the decision to start a blog. You’re probably excited, but overwhelmed by the amount of information you now have to learn!

I get it, I’ve been there!

You’ve probably already picked a theme for yourself and decided on a blog name! Now it’s time to get down to the content.

But… what do you write about? You want the perfect first post to go on your blog.

Hang on there! Before you even think about starting to write your first blog post, there are some things you should set up first! Let’s check them out here!

1. HAVE YOUR NICHE PICKED OUT

This is really the first thing you want to do when creating your blog because it will be the basis for your blog as a whole! If you don’t have a niche, you don’t really have a blog.

I go over more about what a niche is and how to pick one here, but briefly, the reason you need a niche is simple. You need to know what topics you will be talking about.

Obviously, you can’t write blog posts if you don’t know the subject! You want your blog posts to be cohesive and based on similar topics. You can have multiple topics to write about, or you can just have one! It’s up to you, but make sure you have that figured out first!

2. CREATE AT LEAST ONE SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT

It’s important to create social media accounts as soon as possible. I recommend you start them even before you start your blog! There are multiple reasons why you need to start social media accounts ASAP;

• Begin building your audience before you even launch
• Test out your brand
• Make connections and blogging friends
• Learn from other bloggers about what they do
• Come up with blog post ideas

Each social media network has very different algorithms and ways to work. Some strategies that will work on Instagram will not work on Twitter, for example. And the sooner that you can get familiar with these platforms, the better it will be in the long run for your blog.

Plus, if you gain a following before you even launch your blog, you have even more chances for your content to be seen right away! And everyone would like a good first month launching a new blog, right?

3. HAVE A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

As I mentioned briefly before, each platform has its own algorithm and way of working. You’ll need to create a social media strategy around each of those sites to get the most out of each post you share on the internet.

Your social media strategy should be;

• Simple
• Easy to replicate week after week
• And, obviously strategic!

The two worst things you can do on social media is;

• Posting inconsistently
• Posting just to post

In the beginning, you should experiment to see what would work best with your audience. Test out different styles, different hashtags and even different times. But once you have a good idea of what will work best, then you’ll need to have in on your strategy.

Each time you share something on the internet, you have to think about who is this helping? What value will this post bring to someone in my audience?

To best understand what your audience needs, you should create a reader profile.

4. HAVE CANVA READY TO CREATE IMAGES

Once you have a good social media strategy down, you’ll need something to create all of those beautiful images you’re going to share! And, as you may have guessed already, I recommend Canva.

Canva is the holy grail for bloggers. I use it multiple times a week to create all of my social media images! I create pins weekly for my blog posts, which contributes to 90% of my blog post traffic!

Thanks to the Pinterest strategies I learned in this course here! and I create all of my featured images for blog posts.

Sharing your blog posts is important to boost your traffic and one way to increase your click-through rate is with images!

If you plan on using Canva a lot, I really recommend upgrading to Canva pro.

I upgraded a while ago, and I have to say, I LOVE IT! The main features I use with Canva Pro are access to more images and the resizing feature.

This has cut a lot of time out of my creation of images. I don’t have to create an entirely new template for each platform, I can just use the resize tool.

And I don’t have to pay for a photo subscription site (which can get pretty pricy!) because Canva has so many images available on their pro plan!

So if you’re looking to up your Pinterest game and make great-looking graphics, Canva Pro is the way to go!

5. COME UP WITH A TON OF BLOG POST IDEAS

This is one of those things that you *technically* could start writing without, but it would help to have handy. Having a ton of blog post ideas is crucial to the success of a blog because if you don’t have ideas, you can’t post!

You want to remain pretty consistent with your blogging schedule, and one thing that will help that would be lots of blog post ideas! 

Once you get started blogging, there will be so many other things taken up your attention or you may just run out of blog post ideas.

But, before you launch your blog, before you even write your first post, you’re likely to have a million ideas in your head! Make sure to write them down and save them for a rainy day!

6. JUST START WRITING

This is the final tip I’m going to give you, and probably the most important. Just start writing. This tip is the one that trumps them all.

Don’t have a niche picked out yet? Just start writing to find what interests you.

Don’t have a brand picked out just yet so you can’t create social images? Just start writing, a brand will come to you later.

Don’t have a lot of blog post ideas just yet? Just start writing, you’ll think of ideas as you go.

Seriously. Do you know how many blog post ideas have come from me just writing about my topic? A lot!

In the end, you can plan all you want, you can prep for years but at the end of the day, planning will only get you so far. No one ever planned themselves into a million dollars. They took action.

So, plan your blog posts up until a certain point but there comes a time where the action will be more valuable than any plan you come up with.

Just get writing and the rest will fall into place!