How to fail and ace your first blog post

I posted my first ever blog post and I failed. Ok maybe I’m slightly exaggerating.

But, I also aced it. Let me explain why…

Last week, my journey of personal branding started with the creation of my own website accompanied by my first ever blog post. I was so excited to get the content up online that I quickly put together the post and had a bare boned website up and running. There was nothing on the website, no content, no theme, no pictures, no mission statement, no logos and basically no clue at all.

So I go ahead and post the link on LinkedIN and Facebook thinking that a couple people might take a look at it and happily log out for the night.

Wow was I wrong!

By the end of the second day I had people calling me, family and friend’s texting and instant messaging me on Facebook all over this one blog post. So I decided to log into my WordPress account and see over 150 views on the blog! How Exciting!

Then a good dose of reality hit while at work the next day. A good friend of mine who I consider an expert in personal branding and social media Keiron Berndt sees my webpage and literally face palmed in front of me. He gave me a quick 30 minute tutorial on creating a webpage theme and introduced the idea of using images to compliment the wording. He also pointed out that my blog was one very long winded paragraph that was difficult to read.

So I was back at square one, I wanted to redo everything and rewrite the post. I thought about it more and decided to make this a true learning experience by keeping the original post to look back at one day. You can find the original post here.

Some takeaways for you when you’re creating your own website and blog that I learnt in this process:

• Devise a plan and ask yourself who your blog is for? What will it offer? Where will it be available and published?

• Create written goals such as a basic publishing schedule whether it is once a day or once every couple weeks.

• You are your brand and your website is a direct reflection of the image you want to portray. Be sure to include an “about me” page with a picture of yourself.

• Research experienced bloggers and some of the content they create by focusing on what their website theme looks like, how it is laid out and the writing style. WordPress and Blogger have some great blogs to explore.

• Be authentic and you’ll find that it doesn’t take energy to create content that you truly enjoy.

Thank you for reading and please follow my blog through the menu of this page. Also, please follow me on Instagram at trevorlubinski to keep up to date with my learning journey!