How to Navigate, Write and Publish Your First Blog Post in Blogger.

So, here you are and you have created your first ever website or blog and this excites you very very much. But the most interesting thing and fun part of it is that you are now planning to write your first ever blog post and publish it online for your target audience to access and read it. Now, if you agree with me there are so many beginner-bloggers out there who will tell you that they have experienced that anxious moment of what to do next immediately after they just created their first website i.e. on how to navigate, generate and publish their first ever web content in form of a blog post. If not then I want to challenge you to do your research and find out if its not true then let me know your take on it too.

Well I have also experienced the same feeling. Although I know you are on your initial stages, you don't have to worry about it or anything else at all, because it does happen to everyone i.e. who is a starter (newbie) out there.

So, accessing your blogger dashboard, navigating around to your post-editor and eventually start writing your first ever blog post then publish it should not be a hard task for you. Infact it should be the most easy and fun part of your writing stages in your blogging journey. And since you are here this guide will show you how you are going to go about it easily as you would normally write any story. Although this should be topic based because you want to provide your readers with the greatest UX (user experience) ever that will make them want to come back to your blog for more fresh post as you begin.

So I know you already have a topic in mind that you are going to base your writing on. But for this simple guide it is only going to lead you up on what steps to follow through to your navigation and publishing of your first blog post.

Are you ready..?! Now let's begin.

Step 1: Login to your blogger.com.

Once you have logged in to your blogger account i.e, (after creating your first website/blog if you don't have one already). Then on the left side of the blogger dashboard you simply navigate that menu, find and click on the Post option. Then later Click on New post which is an orange button (See image below)

Then when you click on New post button that action will open the following post-editor screen (as you can see on the image below).

Step 2: Write Your First Post.

Now that you have clicked on the Post option and New Post as in (Step 1) above, it will display the above window where you simply click inside it. Click right inside the Post-editor and there you can start writing your first article or post; like you can see I have written a short demonstration post on the screen below (as a sample post) to guide you up.

  

NB: You need to write a post that is well structured i.e., a post with headings, subheadings, minor headings and its conclusion. 

A post has got (H1- H6). H1 normally being the post Title and its automatic when you write up there on the Post title box above in blogger. The others i.e, (H2-H6) are used to indicate the other titles in the post. So to title up a post you simply put a cursor on the words you want to title-up, then click on the drop down arrow and select the following headings. But the arrow pointing up in the image below is for selecting the heading type. The other arrow arrow pointing left indicates the selected writing to be titled. (As you can see the image below).

You can also add images to your post to make it more user friendly, attractive, informative and self-explanatory. So the image below shows you two arrows, one arrow pointing the rectangle where to add the image and another arrow pointing the image icon. (See image below).

If you click on that image icon it will display a window from where you will select images to upload 

You can add images from the file, from the blog itself, from Google Album archives etc., and once you have selected the image you prefer it will be added up to the selected image screen. You will then scroll down and click on Add selection to add that image (as you can on the image below).

Now as you can see on the screenshot image below, we have selected and added the following image of our choice to your first blog post.

Once you have added the image(s) then you can give that image a title and Alt text. So just click on the image that you have just added below and that action will display the image property settings as you can see below. 

NB: When you add the image title and the Alt text it will increase the chances of that image to be crawled and indexed by search engine bots (computer crawling software). 

Step 3: Add the Post Title.

Once you are through with writing your first blog post, added all the relevant/necessary images here and there within the entire post, and you have ensured that everything is perfect, and the post is well targeted for your audience - with great user experience (UX), then you can add the Post title.

So to add the Title to your post, if you look above you will see the box indicated Post title, just point with your mouse and click inside that post title box. (See image below with arrow pointing the post title box).

If you point and click there it will place the typing cursor inside that box and simply type your post title in it. (See image below).

NB: Normally the blog Post titles add up to between 60-70 characters including spaces. Reason being that Google search limits the post titles to between 60-70 characters and the rest past that mark will be cut off and replaced with ellipses, (...) the three dots. So ensure that your post title is not that longer but it has a reasonable length and it is catchy.

Step 4: Add the Post Settings.

Once you are through with writing your post based on the topic that you selected and did research on, then you can go ahead to the right side of the dashboard or post-editor and click on the post settings drop down arrow to open the settings tab, (as you can see on the image below).

Click to open and add all the necessary settings from the options there i.e. Tags (select the page category(s) you want your post to be tagged or grouped), add your post URL, the date format and the post comments. Click done to each setting once you are through to save the settings.

So start by adding labels then click Done. (See image below).

Then add date schedules and follow by adding the post links.

Add Permalink.

But note that the permalinks are two types, the Auto permalink and the Custom permalinks. So you can choose whichever you prefer and when you are through then click Done to save the settings. (See image below).

NB: For the Auto permalink you can decide to leave it that way to let the blogspot set the post title URL for you, or you can go to the custom permalink to set the post title for yourself, then click Done. (See images below).

Next as you can see on the next image below, just type and click search to find your current location, or if you know it just add it. This will add the post location i.e, it will display to the viewers from where the post was published and by help of google maps it will display the exact location you published the post from. (see image with pointer below).

Then you can also add the post search description like in the image below. This will help your post to be well crawled, searched and indexed by google bots.

Then finally on the following image, you can add to your post all the other preferences of your post like comments etc as you can see in the box pointed below and then click Done to save the settings.

Step 5: Publish Your First Blog Post.

After adding all the post settings and you have ensured that everything is correct, then now you can publish your first blog post. What you do now is to click on the Publish button and that's it. (see image below).

Your post is now live online once you have clicked publish as in the above image. 

But apart from publishing it on your website or blog then you can also publish it on social media platforms e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium etc to reach as many audiences as possible via such social channels.

Conclusion.

Navigating, writing and publishing your first blog post should not be that tricky for you, in-fact it is one of the most simple steps in your blogging journey that you need to do in a very short span of time for every single post that you create interlink and publish. Provided you know what topic you are going to write about and you have fully done your research on that blog post topic to meet the needs of your audience. Not just writing for the sack of it without consideration of what your readers need.

Let your friends and colleagues know about this by sharing it out using the share buttons below.

Thank you.