Four Reasons to Write Extraordinary Articles when You’re Starting a New Blog

blogtips.jpgThe weeks or months after the successful launch of a new blog is fairly important. While it isn’t exactly a make-or-break situation, you do stand a better chance of getting more readers or feed subscribers if you create outstanding content and market it effectively.

Here’s a scenario that many of you have encountered: You’ve just set up a new blog and picked a brilliant site design.

You decide to write several articles to fatten up the blog so you can start promoting it to others. What type of content should you create?

I’ve recently received an email from Jonathan Fields, a Dosh Dosh reader and he asked me a great question concerning the type of blog posts he should put out for some of his new blogs.

His question in full:

I am about to launch a few new blogs and will be putting together a number of big pillar posts and series posts. Do you think it’s a better idea to publish them right away or hold your best stuff for a while until there’s enough traffic for your best work to really drive social buzz on a more viral level?

Here’s my answer: Publish cornerstone content or extensive, in-depth articles and a blog series right away from the onset instead of holding them for a later date.

Here are some reasons why:


1. You Want to Market the Best Material Possible

The most aggressive portion of the blog marketing and promotional process is done within the first few weeks and months of a new blog.

In essence, blog marketing is the same as promoting or selling a product that makes you money: You want the highest return on investment for all your time spent on commenting on dozens of high traffic blogs, advertising purchases, email pitches and social media promotions.

A mediocre collection of blog posts will limit your blog’s growth. You want to put out the best stuff and intensively market it for maximal effect. New blogs usually come under some scrutiny or sizing up and you definitely want your target market to feel that your blog is one that is worth monitoring and following.

You don’t want them to think that your blog is yet another new blog and then overlook it with the thought that they can always come back to your blog once it has developed some solid content.

It is also helpful to note that most social websites do not discriminate against new blogs or blogs with very little posts. I’ve seen many new blogs getting tremendous buzz on the strength of some excellent articles which appeal to social audiences.

What this means is that the age and size of your blog’s archives do not matter if you are pursuing a social media marketing strategy.


2. You can Always Create More Great Content Later

Putting out a strong series of articles from the onset doesn’t mean that you can’t create more great articles at a later stage when your blog becomes more popular. In fact, you should.

To attract and retain your target audience, it is necessary to develop interesting and link-worthy articles throughout the life-span of your blog. This is particularly important if you aren’t just blogging for fun but for monetary profit.

In any case, producing strong material from the onset allows you to gauge the response of social media audiences, general readers and other bloggers, thereby allowing you to tweak future articles according to the feedback you’ve seen.


3. Remarkable Articles Define Your Blog Immediately

Want to create an identify for your blog? There’s no better way to show any visitor that your blog is dedicated to it’s niche topic by putting out a extensive and well written collection of articles concerning the topic.

In the visitor’s eye, your blog will become inextricably identified with the topic at hand, which makes it much easier for word of mouth recommendations. Here’s a vain example: “Hey.. do you know any great blogs about making money online? Answer: Check out Dosh Dosh, it’s new but there’s a lot of relevant and good material there.”


4. Extensive Articles Provide Reference Points

Pillar articles or a post series serves as reference points. One of the great benefits about writing extensively about a specific topic is that you have a large amount of quality material to reference in the future.

For example, Dosh Dosh is a blog about website monetization and making money online. When writing a new post, I can drop references to my multi-post series and beginner’s guide to direct advertising sales whenever I talk about topics such as website monetization or advertising in general.

It is useful to build your series or pillar articles around fairly common topics in your blog niche so you can refer new readers to your take on the specific subject in question.

Another benefit of creating flagship articles from the onset is that they are likely to attract links over time and hence gradually rank better for the specific long tail keywords that you’ve targeted (Yet another reference to an article I wrote).


What do you think?

These are my thoughts on why you should put out your best material from day one and I’ll love to hear your opinion as well.

I know for a fact that many of you have been starting new flagship or niche blogs recently, with quite a number using the ProSense Wordpress theme.

Do you think its a good idea to put out your best posts from the beginning or should they be reserved for a later stage, after you’ve built up a decent audience?

For more interesting tips on how to market your blog for online profit and success, please subscribe to Dosh Dosh’s RSS blog feed.

31 Comments - Share Your Thoughts
  • This is the very reason I’m blogging like how I’d blog if I already have a great amount of traffic on my blog even if I still don’t. It’s to maintain the momentum or meet the expectations of the current and would-be frequenters.

  • Good post. I must work on a few more pillar articles…

  • I agree with Maki, and I venture to offer 2 more reasons:

    1. Most people will learn more about the niche they are writing about as time goes by through more research, interactions with users, etc. So, what they thought was pillar content at the beginning may not look as good 2 months later. As such, they should not be publishing something less than the best they had at the beginning. Given that, people should always publish the best articles they can write at the beginning.

    2. Depending on what niche you are in, the great content you have right now might be out-of-date by the time you decide you have enough traffic and publish it.

  • 1. I would mix the posts.

    Let your first post be ok and your second post be good. You dont want to waste all your best posts in the beginning. But you still want to have some good posts. This is especially important when you start submitting your good posts to social bookmarking sites. You’ll want to have some other good content when visitors hit your site after seeing your post on Digg or whatever.

    2.Install the popularity contest plugin right away to record which posts are getting the most traffic.

    Wait a few months until you display the results of the plugin on your sidebar under the heading “Popular Posts”. This way your older but good posts will be displayed on the side.

    3. Another suggestion would be to create a list of the posts you think are the best and create a heading titled “Best of Sitename” or “Favorite Posts” listing these posts. Again, you would do this after a few months. This way your posts from the early days arent lost. I have seen sites that have both “Popular Posts” and “Favorite posts”.

    If you do this you dont have to worry about having your visitors miss out on the good posts. Also even if you think you have amazing posts in the beginning you might come up with some greater ones down the road.

  • Hey Maki,

    Awesome / powerful content is the only way to go if you want people to stick around, come back often, AND tell their friends.

    Think “Steve Pavlina” content. At least if you want to have a very successful blog.

    That’s the approach we take with our Dating & Relationship advice column, and the same thing we’re doing with our brand new Pro Blogging blog.

    Have an awesome day!
    Dan & Jennifer

  • Maki,

    Having followed your blog from the very beginning, I must say that “you certainly practice what you preach.”

    Your blog has been amazing from day one.

    Another great article again.

    All the best,
    George

  • Kontent is King!

  • Writing a Unique article can get attention of other bloggers and will increase traffic. It is worth its effort.

    By the way your blog doshdosh is in my top alexa ranking list. Congratulation!

    Cheers

  • Yes Chris, content is still king.

    When I started my first blog, I posted good content and still do.

    When I started my second blog(2012movies.net) a week ago, I moved the content related to it from Steve’s Tech Blog thus having good content to start.

    Plus, having good content from the start will help in search engine result.

    P.S. I got weird stuff(select all text) when trying to write the post in Firefox and IE

  • I think you’re bang on. Great content is the best way to build your readership. When I first found this blog I was so impressed by the detail in which you go into and explain each concept. Your posts are not short entries that just link away to other blogs. You put a lot of thought into each post and they are always jam packed with information.

    That’s why I subscribed and I can’t wait for the next entry!

  • Spot on Maki. As ever your posts are right on the mark. By posting great articles straight of you can generate a buzz in the community and people will sit up and take notice of you. Kudos, Links, Traffic will all follow.

  • Hi maki,

    there is something wrong with your blog template.
    I am seeing the comment section as a links instead of plain text. All the comments get highlighted on mouse hoveras if they are a link.

    please verify.

  • I agree the best content shouldn’t be delayed, but poplar blogs definitely have a big advantage on social sites like Digg where readers of the blog will push the post to page one. It isn’t realy democracy.

  • I would hope that more of a strategy would be employed to determine when to release the “best content”. If “best content” is objective to grammatical errors and the like, there are several variables that should be acknowledged.

    Some content draws a large amount of readers but retains a small percentage of them. Other content results in multiple iterations of visits from the same individuals. It would be wise to ensure you have the “hooks” setup for the large surges of traffic your buzz worthy content brings.

    I would recommend creating buzz worthy content (covering a highly search news topic, new technology, popular event, etc) that compliments a “value add” article (access to information, a tool, tips, tricks, etc).

  • Hey Maki and everyone else,

    Thanks so much for the amazing responses to my question. Your feedback is incredibly helpful.

    I wonder, if you looked at the content-driven blogs that have shown the fastest 6-month growth rates over the last year, whether you would see a consistent pattern of launching with exceptional, pillar content or not. Would be an interesting survey, though I have no idea how to pull that one off.

    Again, thanks all!

    Much peace,

    Jonathan Fields

  • Your blog is very useful, i have study more from you, thank you!

  • My take:

    I think if you are not really sure about how to market and SEO a blog, it’s not really advisable to put out your best posts from the start, they could get wasted..

    You can mix them up a little, but I wouldnt go about posting the best right away…

    The rule is “a good website doesnt mean much without traffic”.

    Traffic only comes with a combination of good content and clever SEO strategies. The latter is likely to be more important in more respects than the former.

    For example, you could write ordinary or sub ordinary posts on your blog…but you might be a coder by profession and release a good theme with your backlink in the footer…this will surely get you thousands of backlinks. It is very viral.

    After that, your traffic should go up no matter what you write…even if its not so good. The more people come, the more they will stay. Its due to how popular your blog is, rather than anything else.

  • Thank you for the post.

    It would seem the more successful one became at something the more experiences they would have, effectively given them increased content to post on their blog. Of course, if a person ran out of “good material” they could always interview another professional or expert or review a site, blog, book or product that’s related to what their blogging on.

    Please review my make money online blog, as the blog is still new and every comment helps me improve it.

  • Maki –

    I agree that pillar content should be added from the get go, if at all possible. I’ve always viewed this strategy as an offering to the community - by serving up some valuable content early in the blog’s life, you’re showing the relevant community that you’re willing to give value. When you do that, the community will be more apt to respond in-kind.

  • I’ve always believed that you should come out of the gate swinging - put up some extraordinary content right away.

    I typically write one or two high-quality posts that serve to define the purpose of the blog. This early content helps me define the purpose or mission of the blog - for myself and for readers (early readers and those that come later).

    Another benefit of this approach is that it helps other bloggers in the space understand the purpose of your site - how it relates to and differs from their site. They’ll be interested to know your plans for the site, and will likely appreciate seeing a good, quality definitional statement early on.

    I’m actually in the first stage of this process on a blog I just launched - Big Time Blogging (bigtimeblogging.com). My definitional post - Ten Rules that Guide Big Time Blogging - just went up this morning. ;-)

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