Starting Your Blog Post Repository (Caroline Middlebrook)
Apr 18, 2009
This article primarily applies if you are starting a new blog from scratch but you can also use it to prepare for a period of absence from your blog such as when you might go on holiday for example.
Never launch an empty blog! When you first start thinking about your blog you will know what kind of direction that you intend to go in, what topics you'll be blogging about, your posting style etc but if when you're brand new readers arrive at your blog all they see is a single, "Welcome to my blog!" type post they won't know any of those things and they'll have little reason to hang around and subscribe.
Over time you will write more and more posts which you can use to encourage visitors to subscribe to your feed but of course you don't have these when you first start a new blog.
Write 6 Posts (roughly) in Advance
The trick is to compromise - I recommend writing about half a dozen posts in advance. In this way when you launch your readers have a nice selection of posts to read and hopefully you will have given them enough reason to remember you and to subscribe to your feed.
If you use WordPress you can control the timing of these initial posts but for now don't worry about that and just get some draft posts written. So what material should go into these initial posts?
Write An Introduction To Yourself
A good place to start is with yourself. You can talk a little about who you are and why you are writing this blog. This is more relevant for some blogs than others but every blog can benefit from the human touch as it shows the readers that there is a real person behind the words and this can help build a sense of community.
Change The Focus So It's Not ALL About You!
Now you want to talk about yourself to an extent but not exclusively. The problem is that if all you do is talk about yourself, the blog becomes boring and unless the reader is very personally interested in you, again you are not giving them any real reason to subscribe.
Write one of two posts that explain a little about you but then write some introductory posts around some of the major topics that you want your blog to cover. What you really want to keep in the back of your mind here is the question, "will this content make people want to subscribe?"
How To Use a WordPress Timestamp
If you are using WordPress to write your blog, when you publish a blog post it will immediately appear live on your blog. However there is an option to allow you to edit the timestamp of the post.
This can work in two ways. When you are writing your initial post repository you will write these posts before you launch your blog but you don't want to publish them all on the same day as it looks a little odd. Instead use the timestamp feature to backdate them so that it looks as though you have been writing for some time.
You can also set the dates in the future and what this does it schedules your post for future publication. This is especially useful if you know you are going to be away for a while and wont be able to publish posts live.
About the AuthorCaroline Middlebrook has written a popular Internet marketing blog since August 2007 which earns 4-figures a month. She teaches you how to make money blogging and you can download her free guides & courses..