Knowing exactly what you can do after you’ve released the first few blog posts can be really challenging. So in today’s article, I’m going to be outlining five steps that you can take after you’ve released the first 10 blog posts on your site. By the end of this article, you’re going to have a better understanding of how you can start to think about scaling up the blog that you’re looking to build.
Step #1:
Step number one, five things to do is wait at least two weeks. Sometimes you’ll even want to wait four weeks. Here’s why you want to do that. Oftentimes, when you are first creating your blog content, you have no idea where Google’s going to place your content. You might have very little domain authority. You might not even know what you’re really honestly doing, and so sometimes the best thing you can do before you start scaling up your blog is simply to sit back and let things sit.
The reason why is because during those first few weeks that your content has been released, Google is going to be testing it against so many other pieces of content. They’re going to be testing your click through rate, they’re going to be testing how long people are spending on your posts, and so it’s a great time for you to just not actually panic or do too much before you’ve had the time for that testing period to sit.
This is also the time in which if you haven’t already, you’re going to want to make sure that you have your basic analytics set up. Google Analytics and setting up Google Search Console can be really important, just so that you can kind of see what are your impressions looking like, what are your click throughs are looking like, and what is the initial data telling you about your blog.
In the case where you are a super new website, don’t be surprised if, honestly, not all that much shows after this initial testing period, but I’m assuming that you do have some sort of a site that has some level of authority and that you’re going to be able to see a little bit of data.
Step #2: Start mapping out your next content gaps
What I mean by that is take a look at the 10 posts that you’ve created and ask yourself, what are the next sequential questions that somebody would have around the topic that I’m writing or creating my blog after. The reason why is because in the case where things are starting to look good, in terms of the initial few weeks of flooding the data settle, what’s going to happen is you’re going to want to start spinning up the next phase of your content production.
That naturally means that if, for example, you started with all the beginner tips and tricks around the niche that you’re writing about, you’re now starting to think about what are the intermediate tips and tricks, or what are the advance tips and tricks, or if you even have some sort of overall high level topic that you started talking about, what are the three to five subheaders that you had in that header post that you can essentially break out into more dedicated long form posts.
By identifying your content gaps early, you’re going to make it really easy for you to have a better understanding of exactly where you can pick things up later. And the other benefit of doing this is that you’re going to know exactly where you’re going to be able to interlink between your posts in the future. So not only is this sort of planning useful in terms of where you’re going next, but it’s also useful for actually reinforcing the first 10 blog posts that you created.
By taking this sort of stacked approach, you’re not going too far in terms of broadness of your overall category, and instead you’re staying really focused in terms of the sorts of topics that you’re covering. A good example is actually, if you look at this YouTube channel, when I first started out, I did an overview of SEMRush however, over time, I’ve created specific videos that target on specific features within SEMRush. Things like the keyword research tool, the domain overview tool, the backlinks tool.
You’ll want to take a similar approach when it comes to when you’re looking at blog posts, 11 through 50 or 50 to a hundred, start with that sort of overarching topic, and then from there, start breaking down into those subtopics. And if you want to see more on that, be sure to check out my recent article where I dug into how to cluster your ideas for free.
Step #3: Document your process
Step number three is to document what you did for your first 10 posts. At this point, you should have some sort of basic writing process in place. Maybe you just started doing things on Google Docs, or maybe you’re using Word documents coupled with Dropbox.
What have you did for your system the first time post? You’re going to want to start to take a step back and ask yourself, how are you going to scale the system up. How could you potentially introduce collaboration if you haven’t already collaborated with other writers? Maybe this is working in Dropbox, maybe this is working in Trello or Notion.
Or you can even check out my recent article where I talked about how you can build all of this in Taskade, but pretty much what you can do is you can start thinking about how can you start hiring out this work so that you are not the only one writing all of this content. It’s totally fine, and it’s actually sometimes beneficial to be the first content writer for your site. But after you’ve done 10 or so blog posts, you should start to be getting to the point where you are really thinking about how to scale this up faster. Because oftentimes, in those early days, especially on new websites, you’re going to need content quality combined with content quantity. If you don’t have the quantity behind it, you can’t really start building authority or expertise around the particular space.
So it’s really important at this point in time to start documenting exactly what steps are you taking, what sort of files are you creating, how are you uploading things into WordPress or Webflow, whatever the CMS is that you’re using. Take stock of everything. You can use different tools out there like Loom to record quick videos, or you can even use more modern extensions like Tango in order to record your screen as you do certain things.
Step #4: Post RFPs for writers
Naturally, you have all the documentation in place at this point, you have a general idea of exactly what steps it’s going to take for you to get a post from just drafting to getting it out on your blog.
Now it’s all about staffing content writers. There’s a lot that goes behind staffing a content writer. If you guys want to see exactly what it takes in terms of creating a content writing process, I’ve gone over that in a previous video on my channel. I share with you exactly how I’ve hired content writers within 48 hours or less. But what you’re going to want to do here is you’re going to want to go on major freelance websites like Upwork, or you can even check out some writer forums, or even some Reddit sometimes in order to find some writers.
And what you’re going to do from there is you’re going to be looking for expertise. People that can write on the niche that you are interested in. The purpose of this at this point is for you to be able to find just one or two additional writers to introduce to your team. I don’t recommend you hire too many writers at once, but I do recommend that if you can hire your writers in pairs. The reason why is because that way you can compare one writer to the other writer and see which one is better for you. Or in the case where both work out really well for you. Well then you have two content writers that are then going to be able to start scaling your site really quickly.
But what’s really important here is that in your RFP, you’re making it really clear the five Ws and how, who, what, where, when, why, and how. It’s really important that you outline for them what’s the budget, what’s the topic you’re writing about, what are some of the requirements that you’re going to have in terms of SEO in process, and then from there, start working through the different qualified candidates to see who can write quality content.
Quality content is honestly pretty subjective. There’s tons of tools out there, like Clearscope as well as Grammarly to grade your writing and whatnot. But what’s really important is that you think that the job that they’re doing as well is really good. The reason why is because ultimately, you’re the one paying the bill, and so it’s really important that you make sure that that’s the case, especially since it’s your website as well.
Step #5: Scaling your first 50 posts
The fifth and final step, when it comes to starting to scale your site after you’ve written the first 10 posts, this is where it’s all about scaling up to your first 50 posts next. So at this point, you’ve made it to post number 11, and you’re really looking to look down further down the road in terms of what your site’s going to be all about.
So this is where you need to have all the sort of pieces in place that we mentioned in steps one through four in order to start thinking about how you’re going to get to post number 50. That is the next major milestone for you, because by the time you hit post number 50, you’re now going to have pretty much a small to medium-sized site that is going to start ranking for something.
It might not be exactly what you set out to rank for, but it is going to be for something. And so at this point, it’s all about thinking about how many writers is it going to take for me to reach post number 50? How many do I have to write myself? How much budget do I have to just go ahead and hire other people to write this? And what is my timeline in terms of releasing this sort of content?
When you start to ask yourself these sorts of questions, you can start to set realistic expectations for yourself in terms of what your set is going to be like in one month, three months, six months, and even a year from now. Without setting these sorts of goals in mind, you’re going to find it really difficult to stay motivated, especially when you’re in those early days when you’re not getting all that much signal or feedback back from Google or whatever search engine you’re looking to rank for.
The reason why I think it’s so important to think about what you’re doing for post number 11 is because that’s the perfect time when you have enough of your feet under you to have the foundation in place to start building your website, but it’s not too far along in your journey in which you have really settled in on your processes and that they are set in stone and you can’t change them later.
This is a perfect time to really assess what’s going to work for you and your own systems, and then from there, start scaling your team. The nice thing about this is that if you do this right and you follow these five steps carefully, what’s going to happen is you’re going to be able to apply this from post number 51 to 501.
It’s honestly all, not all that much different. There are some nuances in terms of what you need to watch out for and things like that that come with scaling a team, but honestly, the fundamentals are largely the same.
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