Writing and Posting a WordPress Post

So you’ve decided that a blog will be a great way to promote your business.  Congratulations – whether you are a technical guru or a technophobe – you are going to love WordPress.  What makes it so great is that it is easy to use – and has lots of advanced features that you can take advantage of as your skills grow.

The part of WordPress that you will use the most is adding a new post.  Depending on your business, this is something you might be doing weekly or maybe even as often as every day.  So let’s show you just how easy it is to create your first post.

Video: Writing and publishing a post

Step-by-Step Instructions

We are assuming that you have setup your WordPress installation.  If not, then you should first check out this article on How To Install WordPress in Five Minutes or Less.

1. Using your browser go to http://www.your-blog-name.com/wp-login.php?  That’s probably something you will want to create a bookmark for so you don’t have to retype it in each time you update your blog.
2. Enter your Username and Password and click on the Log In button.
3. You will be taken to your blog’s Dashboard (this is where the video starts) and you should select Add New under Posts on the left side of your screen.
4. The first thing you should do is enter a title. This is your headline!  This is also a key to your article being found via search.  So you need to balance accurate titles with descriptive keywords with eye-catching cutesy titles.
5. Then, as the video shows, you can move down to the body of your text.  If you have used Microsoft Word or any other word processor you should recognize at least a few of the icons above the body.  As the video mentions you can add text, images, video – whatever you need for your blog. Tip – for your first blog or two, keep it simple.
6. After you create your blog text, check out Categories.  If you have already created categories than all you need to do is put a check next to the category that applies to this blog.  If not, you can click on Add a New Category, type in the category name and click Add.
7. You will also want to enter in some tags.  Tags are one of the several ways that visitors and search engines can learn about your blogs.  Think of them as keywords, or words somebody would type in to Google search if they were looking for your article.  Always put commas between your tags.
8. Next you can go to the Publish section and click on Save Draft. If you are typing a long blog, it’s a good idea to do this part of the way through – don’t wait until the end!
9. After saving you should Preview your blog.  It’s always wise to do this – even for experts, but especially for newer users.
10. If you find any issues, you can go back to edit or if everything looks good than you are ready to click on publish.  As the video notes you can edit the visibility of your blog or even schedule to publish at a later date using this tutorial , but don’t try those on your first blog!

Wrap-Up

You have your first post done!  What are you waiting for, go back and do another!  Jot down all those ideas you have had in your head – things you want to share with customers and prospects.

See my Using WordPress series for more tutorials on how to use WordPress!

Tagged as: blog, blog post, how-to, tutorial, wordpress