After You Write

Lesson 2: After You Write

In the previous lesson, we discussed about writing a post and all of the things you need to consider when you are writing. Now, we need to focus on what to do after you write. Up until now, we have only been teaching you the easy part of creating a blog. The hard part is continuing to contribute to the blog, finding the direction that you will take your blog, and creating an audience for your blog. This is the focus of this lesson, as well as the unit to follow.

Now What?

You have created your first post. You have some great written content with a purpose, you have added some images (Media -> Add New), and maybe you have even added a video of your experiences. You are ready to click that enticing blue Publish button. Well, our suggestion for now is to wait. Be patient, and create more content. Remember that list of 30 ideas you have to write about. Continue with those, one at a time.

Create a backlog of posts before you publish your first post. This provides you with a buffer if you ever get too busy for a week or two to write a post. To know how many posts you need in your backlog, you need to decide how often you are going to publish a post.

• Once a day?

  This is good for your readers, but do you have more than enough ideas for posts to keep you going. Remember, quality is better than quantity when it comes to writing your posts. Also, the more you post, the more your fresh content becomes buried and harder for new visitors to reach.

• Once a week?

  We believe posts once a week allow for beginning bloggers to create quality content. Especially if your blog is not your full time endeavor. Creating a backlog of ten posts will ease the pressure of writing continuously.

• Once a month?

  I would not recommend this. It is too long between posts to keep readers coming back for more. However, if you want you can begin with this if you want to start getting your ideas out there, but be prepared to lessen the time between posts.

Consistency

Consistency is key, and content is king. Create quality content on a regular basis, and readers will come back for more. This is the goal. It is not about creating a post everyday, but about consistently releasing quality posts. This allows your readers to become engaged with your blog.

We cannot stress this enough, you need to choose how often you will publish a post and be dedicated to meeting that expectation. Do not set unrealistic expectations for yourself and fail in doing so. Or even worse, release unworthy content.

When we say content is king, we mean there is nothing else more important than the content you write. You need to create quality content to have returning readers. Spend more time than anything on creating content with a value and purpose for your audience. If you do that, readers will come.