Don’t start that blog until… You write your first 10 posts

This is Part 2 in a series. You can find Part 1 here…

I’m sitting across from a young woman or an old woman in a cantina or a coffee shop and, no matter the setting, I look into her eyes and ask her to tell me all about her idea. Why are we here? What do you want to blog about? Why do you want to do it?

I listen intently; I really am interested. Then, when she inevitably asks me what she needs to know to get started, I always tell her, no matter who she is, the very same thing…

First, write 10 posts that you love.

“Ten?” she asks.

“TEN,” I demand.

In the first installment of this series I shared that I’ve seen many blogs get off to a great start and then lose focus and fizzle out. One of the reasons I think this happens is a lack of thoughtful content. I realize that ten posts sounds daunting and maybe even overkill. I’m sticking with this number. It is the number of posts I wrote before we launched #staymarried and writing them taught me a lot about the process and helped me have long-term vision for what I really wanted that blog to be.

You could launch a blog today with just one post. People do it all the time. But, if you want to launch a blog that will grow, one that people will pay attention to and look forward to and share with their friends, I suggest you wait. Wait until you have written at least 10 posts that you really love.

Here’s why…

• You’ll discover how much you really have to say on the topic.

I have approximately 500 ideas every time I get out of the shower. I can’t possibly execute all of the ideas that enter my mind. But, I won’t know which ideas might actually be great if I don’t get started on any of them. Once you start writing, more writing will naturally come. You’ll find as you begin to explore one topic, another comes to mind. Jot it down on a note card next to you, and then keep going with the one you’ve already started. Or make a long list of possible blog topics, but then get to work on actually fleshing one out. Then another. The process itself will tell you a lot about how you feel about writing and what you want to say.

• You’ll be better equipped to answer those 3 important pre-launch questions

The homework from the last post could have been way too easy for you, or it could have been intimidating and difficult. Either way, your answers to those questions could change drastically once you start writing. The process of writing these 10 posts will help you find the common thread running through your content.

Truthfully, I wrote fourteen posts before we launched. Once I looked at all of them, I saw that I only loved ten and the four that didn’t feel right had something very obvious in common. They were rants. I was processing some raw and angry feelings about divorce, which is fine for a journal, but when I took a step back I knew that I wasn’t interested in infusing the internet with even more negativity. This is how I ended up with the tagline: Hope, stories, and resources for couples who want to stay married. Those first posts helped me get there. After that it was much easier to cut posts and ideas that didn’t have at least one of those three elements… hope, stories, and resources.

• You’ll learn what the average length of a good post feels like

You will be the best person to determine what constitutes a full and complete post on your blog. I now go by a 1200 word rule. In the beginning I wrote posts that were much lengthier, but time showed me that roughly 1200 words is the sweet spot that keeps people engaged. If you are writing a blog that is filled with photographs, or a step-by-step DIY, or a food and recipe blog with lots of images, you can do half of that or even less because your images are really telling the story.

The 1200 word rule is not strict. It just helps me make other decisions about my content. Sometimes I still write posts longer than 1200 words and after editing I may decide to keep the length because I think what I’ve said is valuable and readers will feel rewarded for making it to the end. Other times that word count helps me evaluate that I’ve actually rambled quite a bit, maybe like I’m doing now, and I can cut whole paragraphs or split one post into two solid ideas. Either way, it’s good to keep in mind that the people who read blogs don’t have a ton of time. That’s why they’ve come to you on the internet and aren’t browsing a library for a book on the topic. Don’t resent the short attention span. Use it to your advantage and keep your ideas to a consumable length.

• You’ll find out how long it takes you to write

Pace is an important thing to figure out right away. There are times I’ve written three posts in three hours and other times I’ve written three sentences in three hours. Once you start a blog that people enjoy, they look forward to more content. They like to know they can expect something new from you every day, every week, or every month. Keeping a consistent pace will be vital for helping you find your community and grow your audience. It will be difficult for you to set your blogging pace if you haven’t figured out how much time it takes for you to come up with your content in the midst of everything else that goes on in your life.

• You’ll be able to plan your editorial calendar

An Editorial Calendar is just another way to say “When you plan to publish What.” Once we had our 10 posts [read: 14, minus 4 that were crap], a natural order emerged. The first post I published was not the very first post I wrote. I think it was actually the fifth. But it was clear that it was the best opener for the blog as a whole. It is still one of the most visited posts on the site and I still feel like it represents the blog well.

Initially I published twice a week. I had ten posts, so that meant five weeks worth of content all lined up. I put them in the order that made the most sense to me and then didn’t stress about having time to write more. We later slowed our pace to publishing once per week and kept that up for a few years, taking month-long breaks here and there.

• Beginning with a stash of posts will free you up to work through the other aspects of the blog

This might be one of the biggest benefits of getting those ten posts out of the way. Once you push that publish button, other things start to happen. Your blog will break. You will have a 404 error that you cannot figure out. You will panic and agonize. The good news is you have TIME for this error and for panicking and agonizing. Even if your blog doesn’t break like mine did, and has several times over the years, you will have time to share your work across social media, respond to comments, learn analytics and find out who is reading your blog and where they are coming from. All of this is important if you want to build a blog that is more than a flash in the pan.

• You’ll buy yourself some time before you need new content

Now that you’ve written those ten posts and begun to publish, you have given yourself a gift of time. For those interacting with your first and second post, the content is brand new. But, for you, these posts are old news. So now you have time to be thoughtful about what you want to do next because you aren’t succumbing to the pressure of that editorial calendar and pace you initially set for yourself. Even as time went on for me, I’d still give myself a week or two of breathing room between writing a post and publishing it. I need the buffer because, in real life, I still have momming and other things to do throughout my day. Any time I published a new post and didn’t have at least one more post drafted, I felt a lot of pressure in the writing process which never helped me write what I really wanted.

I realize you may not need to use this ten post method.

For all I know, you could be Seth Godin’s long lost identical twin and you will write brilliant short posts and publish them daily without any drafting or editing or rethinking or regretting. However, if you and Mr. Godin are of no relation, I’d encourage you to start writing and keep writing and see if you find any of the things I’ve said to be true. Maybe four posts is a better number for you, maybe six, maybe sixteen. I’m willing to be wrong and I’d love to hear about your blog whether you go with this ten post method or not.

Next, I’ll tell you why you need a Squad to help you get your blog launched.