First Blog Post Ideas That Will Help You Actually Get Traffic

Last updated on August 1st, 2018 at 06:54 pm

You have learned how to start a blog and WordPress is all set up. Now it’s time to write, but what do you write? Well, I’ve learned some lessons in my blogging journey in the first blog post ideas that you should write to make your hard work pay off quickly.

While I can’t guarantee that this method will drive a ton of traffic to your site. I can tell you that you’re more likely to have a better chance of getting more traffic than if you just sit down and write about what you want to write about.

No, it isn’t to announce to the world that your blog is set up and you’ve officially become a blogger. Because to tell you the truth, nobody cares. No body knows who you are and there are already millions of blogs online, why would someone care about you?

Yeah, I know that’s harsh, but trust me, I’ve learned a lot about writing blog posts. I currently have over 200 published posts on this blog and a lot of them get hardly an traffic.

The sad thing is that I am not even sure if some of them will even rank on Google even when this blog gets older. Because there are a ton of other blogs that are a lot older and have more authority than my blog ranking for those keywords.

Related: How to Find the Right Niche for Your Blog

Why?

Well, when I first started this blog, I wasn’t using LongTailPro or SEMRush to find low competition keywords. I would just sit down and write what I wanted to write.

Now, don’t get me wrong, my content is useful and I made sure to provide valuable content that helps people. But what good is writing a bunch of content if you have no chance in hell to rank high on Google?

Yes, I could focus my attention on Pinterest, but between you and I, Pinterest can be confusing. Plus it seems to be a lot better for certain niches.

Now I am not saying that you can’t get traffic from Pinterest. This blog gets quite a bit of traffic from the platform. However, it’s not near as much as some lifestyle bloggers get.

I don’t let that deter me and I still use it to help me drive traffic to this site. But I’ve decided that Pinterest will probably never drive 100,000 page views to this blog? If it does, that would be a nice little surprise.

If you’re not using Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog, then it’s time that you find out how to use it. I’ve written a few Pinterest articles that will show you what I’ve learned from using the platform.

Related Pinterest articles:

• Pinterest for Bloggers: How to Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
• 5 Unknown Pinterest Tips for Bloggers
• How to Use Keywords On Pinterest to Explode Your Traffic

First Blog Post Ideas That Will Help You Actually Get Traffic

Most newbie bloggers will make the mistake of writing their first few blog posts talking about themselves. For instance, when I started this blog, I talked about why I was starting the blog in the first place.

Yes, you do want to tell people a little bit something about who you are and what you do. This is how your target audience will eventually resonate with your blog.

However, this is done on the about page. You’ve probably heard people talk about mission statements and finding your avatar.

People say these kinds of things because once you realize who your blog is for and who you’re trying to attract, then the writing process becomes a lot easier.

So while you do want to tell people who you are and let them know you a little bit. You don’t want to spend a bunch of time writing a blog post that’s all about you.

Instead, here’s what you want to do. It took me so long to figure this out and when I did finally start doing it, I noticed a jump in my blog traffic.

Find Popular Topics From Other Bloggers

Chances are you’re an honest person who respects other people’s online content and virtual real estate. The last thing you want to do is cross the lines or do anything shady and steal people’s content.

Well, don’t worry, I am not going to tell you to cut and paste someone’s content and pass it on as yours.

What I am going to tell you is to visit bloggers in your niche and see what has worked for them. I know that this may sound a little bit confusing, but bear with me and I’ll show you exactly what to do.

Basically, you put together a list of bloggers in your niche who have been blogging a lot longer than you have. They don’t have to be very far ahead, you just want to make sure that they have a nice library of content.

If they just started their blog and only have five posts written, this probably won’t work. Unless they have 5 very popular blog posts.

Once you have your list put together head on over to BuzzSumo and sign up for a free account. Or you can just use this link that allows you to do 5 free searches per day without creating an account.

That’s not a lot, but if you do some searches every day, it will work.

Now just put in the domains one by one into the “most shared” text box and hit search. BuzzSumo is going to go out and bring back the blog posts that have gotten the most shares.

I’ll use my blog as an example. You can see which posts get the most shares on my blog. I’ve blurred out my popular posts because I can’t do all the legwork for you.

I know that this is public information, and you can figure this out on your own if you really wanted to 🙂

Now all you do is write a better version of my most shared blog posts. This is known as the Skyscraper technique and you can read more about it on the Backlinko blog.

Does This Work?

Well, if you read the Skyscraper technique article, you will notice that is how Brian Dean grew his blog. You will also notice that he said in order for this to work, you need to:

• Find content that people actually want to link to.
• Make your content even better than what’s already written.
• Once it’s written start reaching out to people who would possibly link to it.

Notice how I said make your content better. This is why the copy and paste method won’t work and you never want to do that. Plus that blogger worked hard on creating their unique content, don’t be an ass and just steal their stuff.

If you browse some of the blog’s that people love, you’ll notice many of these people used this method. It’s much easier and faster to grow when you’re writing great content that has already been proven to be popular.

Another Way to Find Popular Content

As a newbie blogger, the last thing you want to do is to start paying for blogging tools before your site makes a penny. Well, the cool thing is that you don’t have to.

In fact, you can use Pinterest to help you uncover some popular blog topics. From what I’ve seen since my blogging journey is that a lot of bloggers tend to use Pinterest as their main traffic source when their blogs are brand new.

Besides, we all know that it can take a few months before Google starts sending you some traffic. So I really wouldn’t focus too much on Google if you’re a new blogger.

Yes, you want to make sure that you’re using Yoast SEO to optimize your posts. But don’t expect a flood of traffic from Google if you’ve just started your blog.

Using Pinterest to Find Popular Topics

It used to be a lot easier to find popular blog topics on Pinterest, but now that they no longer show the repin numbers, you have to do a little bit more legwork.

Yes, it takes time to do this but it’s definitely worth it instead of spending months throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what people like sharing on social media.

It may take you a little bit longer at first to find some popular pins on Pinterest, but once you do this a few times, you’ll get faster at finding them. Plus who knows, maybe you’ll come up with a unique system that works for you a lot faster than how I do it.

Plus once you learn how to find popular blog topics, you should be able to see success a lot faster. With more traffic comes more subscribers and the ability to monetize and hopefully see a return on your efforts.

Here’s How to Do This On Pinterest

Once you’re ready to start writing, head on over to Pinterest. Hopefully, you’ve already set up your business account and started pinning other people’s pins.

Pinterest needs a little bit of time to trust you, so start pinning to your boards as soon as you know that you’re going to be starting a blog. If you have never used Pinterest for business, I recommend the Pinning Perfect course, it helped me learn the basics.

Finding a Popular Pin On Pinterest

Here’s a popular pin that just caught my eye. It’s in the frugal living niche, which does very well on Pinterest. (at least from what I’ve seen)

So when I click on the pin on my desktop computer, I can’t see any repin numbers. Which you used to be able to see in the past. However, what I do is I will click over to the blog to take a look at the social share numbers.

Most social share plugins allow you to see how many times the pin has been shared. Especially, if they are using the Social Warfare plugin which is the same plugin that I use for this blog and I personally think it’s the best social sharing plugin.

Even if the blogger is not using the Social Warfare plugin, you might still get lucky and be able to see the share numbers.

The blogger for the pin above is using a different social share button. At the time of this writing, they are using the Genesis Simple Share plugin.

However, it still shows me that this pin has been shared over 29,000 times.

Which is amazing in my opinion. So if I was in the frugal living lifestyle niche, you could bet that I would be writing my own version of “things that you should always buy at a dollar store.”

Oh and list posts get shared a ton a ton on Pinterest, that’s why so many bloggers write them.

Once You Find Your Content Ideas

At the most you should spend maybe a couple hours looking for blog ideas for your next blog post. Once you’ve gathered your content ideas, it’s time to sit down and write.

Your main goal should be to write a much better blog post than they wrote. You’re NOT copying their content, it’s okay to see how they wrote their content, but don’t copy.

Sit down and write, don’t worry about getting it right the first time. Your goal is just to sit down and write at least 1,000 words. It’ll probably take you some time to get used to this new way of writing and coming up with blog posts.

If you’re using affiliate marketing for your blog, don’t forget to sprinkle some links in your content.

You’ll Be Tempted to Skip This

Most new bloggers just want to start writing without thinking their strategy through. I did that with this blog and it has taken me a long time to get it to grow.

Yes, your blog will grow if you write good content. But wouldn’t it be nicer if you wrote content that you already knew was working for other bloggers in your niche?

When I started my second blog, (which I just set up yesterday and still haven’t started promoting it) that’s the approach I took. I can definitely tell you that it’s a lot nicer to write content that has already been proven to work. Instead of trying to figure out what I am going to write.

It cuts down on your learning curve and makes blogging a lot better. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spend years trying to figure out what people need from my blog.

Yes, I know that you can always look at your most popular posts on Google Analytics. By the way, here’s how to install Google Analtyics on your blog.

But what I’ve found works really well is finding other popular blog topics that have already been written by other bloggers. Then you rewrite them and put your twist on it.

You still won’t get traffic overnight, but you’re more likely to get your blog off the ground faster. Plus who knows, you might even be lucky enough to get have a pin go viral.

Don’t worry about getting it right the first time, the important thing is to just write a great post that helps your audience. Once you’ve published that post, you can always go back and update it and make it better.

The important thing is to just start writing and getting it out. Many people make the mistake of trying to get everything perfect from the start. Trust me, I know you don’t want to put crap out on the Internet.

But if you just sit there and keep tweaking and wasting time, you’re never going to be able to create a successful blog.

I know that you’re wanting to earn money from home that’s why you started your blog. Well you can get there and the fastest way to do it is to find out what someone else in your niche has written and do it better.

This is the approach that I am taking with my second blog.

I am working hard on my second blog and that’s one of the reasons that I’ve cut back on the content for this blog. Plus I won’t be doing any of my traffic update reports for the Summer.

So if you love reading my traffic reports, they will be back sometime in the fall. I am working hard on getting my second blog off the ground and I need to devote as much time as I can to it.

It Doesn’t Mean It’s Going To Work

I hate to break it to you, but just because that blogger that I showed you above has gotten over 29k shares on their pin. Doesn’t mean that if you create a post like that you’re going to get that many shares.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot to Pinterest that comes into play. For instance, they might be on some amazing group boards that have a ton of followers and they are always pinning stuff.

Maybe they got lucky and a power pinner pinned that pin and it took off and became a viral pin. I’ve heard a lot of bloggers talk about something like that happening to them.

Me, I’ve never been fortunate to experience that experience with this blog. Maybe my second blog will be luckier because it’s a totally different niche?

Who knows, it’s still very early to tell and I really don’t spend as much time as I should on it to get it off the ground and running.

Your Pin Sucks

If you notice the pin I used as an example looks amazing. If you saw it on your Pinterest Smart Feed, you’d probably click over and repin it.

One of the best blogging tips I can give you is to work on making your pins stand out. I am constantly working on this myself because I still think that some of my pins look terrible.

It doesn’t matter if you use Canva, PicMonkey or Photoshop. The truth is that all of them will do what you need them to do.

You’re just going to have to work on making some eye-catching pins. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter what type of content you share on Pinterest, you’re never going to get a crazy amount of shares.

I’ve seen some pins that look amazing when I click over I am so disappointed with the content. There’s hardly anything there of value, but the blogger gets a ton of traffic from Pinterest because they can create amazing pins.

Work On Your Pin Designs

It takes time to create amazing looking pins, I make it a point to try to work on my pin designs every day. Yet, I still can’t create amazing looking pins like some bloggers.

It doesn’t matter if you’re great at academic writing and you write the most valuable content around. Well, it may rank on Google months down the road.

But that’s not going to help you if you want traffic today. Nope, Pinterest is all based on how amazing your images look. So whatever you do, if you’re using Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog, work hard on learning how to create great pins.

Final Take Away

Use this step-by-step method to help you uncover popular blog topics that will actually help you drive traffic to your blog. Don’t make the mistake of just sitting down and to start writing.

Yes, you can still end up with a successful blog. But the truth is that it will take you a lot longer to see success than someone who starts out writing every single post using this method.

You might not get the same crazy amount of traffic as the original blogger. But I can bet that you’ll get a lot more traffic than if you just write a post that you think your readers will love.

Especially, if you are a brand new blogger and still don’t know who your targetted audience is. Once you starting to get traffic from Pinterest without really having to spend a lot of time on it.

Then you can invest in a tool like SEMRush or LongTailPro and start gearing your content more towards SEO. I always make sure that my content is properly optimized for both Pinterest and Google, here’s how to do that.

Final Take Away

• 171 Lifestyle Blog Post Ideas That Will Last An Entire Year
• 15 Types of Blog Posts That Will Help It Grow Like Crazy
• How to Get Your Blog Noticed When No One Knows You

Did you use this method to help you come up with your first blog post ideas? If not, let me know how you wrote your first blog post and was it a flop or a success? I’d love to read about your experience.