How to Write a Blog Post: 22 Actionable Tips
How hard could it be to write a blog post? If a teenager can do it, you can too, right?
Well, writing a blog post isn�t hard at all, but writing a great blog post is very difficult. Below are 22 actionable tips on how to write a blog post that will help make your content stand out from the crowd.
Blog On Your Passion
Blogging can be a chore, unless you are passionate about the topic. So, first and foremost, pick a topic you are passionate about.
Don�t just pick a topic that you �think� you are passionate about. Pick one that you definitely know you�ll love. It has to be a topic that you love so much that you want to constantly learn more about it.
Break With Your Old Ways
Do you remember writing term papers in high school or college? If you don�t, lucky you! If you do, writing blog posts is going to be a difficult task for you. You have to ignore all the things your professors taught you about writing.
You aren�t here to write a term paper�you are here to create a conversation!
If my blog posts sounded as if I was talking at you instead of to you, wouldn�t you get bored and irritated with me? Make sure you do the same: talk to your readers�not at them.
Know What You Want To Write About
Before you start writing the first word, you have to know what the last word is going to be. I don�t mean this in a literal sense, but you have to know how you are going to start off your blog post, the points you are going to convey, and how you are going to wrap everything up.
If you are one of those people who like to be spontaneous, that�s great. As one of those people, I have realized it doesn�t work well with blogging. It will only cause you to spend more time writing than you need to.
Plus, I am pretty sure you are already strapped for time. Right? So why waste more of it?
Find Popular Topics To Blog About
Find a topic that you are passionate about and create a list of all the popular blogs in that space. You can easily do this by searching Google. If there are not many popular blogs in your space, list all the blogs that are somewhat in your space and are popular.
Now that you have a list of all the popular blogs, make sure you browse them once a week. When browsing them, look for social buttons on each post that shows how many people either tweeted or liked� the post. The higher the number, the better.
Take the posts that have over 50 or 100 social shares and list them in a spreadsheet as new ideas for future use. This can be your go to list for when you need a new topic to write about.
Create An Awesome Title
Until you can come up with an awesome title, you shouldn�t start writing your blog post. You could have the greatest content, but if your title sucks, most people won�t read it.
Let�s say that we were targeting the keyword, cake baking tips. Now, from an SEO standpoint you obviously want this keyword to appear in the title and somewhere early on in the title and from a blogging perspective. You need to make sure that the words surrounding your keyword are enticing enough for people to click through. I found that numbers tend to work really well for blog posts.
Instead of just saying cake baking tips, you�d want to put something like, 25 incredible cake baking tips. Okay? So, that�s something that�ll entice people to click through because they�re curious about the specific number of 25 and the word incredible also makes them a little more curious. That is what I would call an awesome title that should get some clicks!
Hook Your Readers
You have only a few seconds to grab people�s attention. If you can�t grab someone�s attention within the first few sentences you write, you have lost them.
Also, from a search engine optimization standpoint, you want your keyword to appear high up in the content preferably in the first or second or third sentence of your post.
Here is an example of how I might write a couple of sentences within a blog post intro that would hook most readers into reading more:
How hard could it be to write a blog post? If a teenager can do it, you can too, right? Well, writing a blog post isn�t hard at all, but writing a great blog post is very difficult.
If you look at the paragraph above, you�ll notice I have done a few things:
I created a conversation with you.
I showed you anyone could write a blog post, which makes you feel you can do it too (which you can).
I enticed you to read further by alluding to the fact that not everyone writes great blog posts.
In the second paragraph, I use social proof to demonstrate I am not just an average Joe who is giving advice. If you are new to this blog, you might need that proof.
Over the past few years, I have started two blogs. Although my first blog was a Technorati 100 blog, the content was crap. Readers didn�t care to read the content or engage in the conversation (comment on the blog).
Seeing I was a top 100 blogger helps you take my advice a bit more seriously. At the same time, telling you I screwed up shows you I am not perfect and that you can always improve.
Everyone has different writing styles, so I don�t expect your introductory paragraphs to be like mine, and that�s fine. As long as you use some of the elements I used, your readers will be engaged.
Create A Conversation
Have you noticed that I use the words �you� and �I� a lot within my blog posts? I do this because I am trying to create a conversation with you. The last thing I want you to feel is that you are reading an essay because that would be boring. I know that because it would be boring for me.
I�ve been writing blog posts � trying to make them as personable and relatable as possible � for years, which is why I get so many comments on each of my blog posts.
I�ve never A/B-tested essay-style vs conversation-style posts because I would never want to publish a blog post that was written like an essay.
Even without the test, there is one thing I�m confident about when it comes to using a conversational style in blog posts: it helps with readability.
Evidently, you prefer this as well because I get emails like this one every week:
I just wanted to say thanks for all of the blog posts you have written. They are insightful and have helped me learn online marketing. Your blog is really easy to read and digest the information.
No need for a response.
Cheers!
By creating a conversation, you will see that your blog posts are read more and people are more likely to comment.
Just think of it this way: if you read a blog post that you loved and the author of the post asked you a question at the end� what would you do?
There is a good chance you would respond with a comment, right? I know I would.
By asking your readers a question, you will encourage more of them to leave comments. This will cause people to stay on your blog longer as it takes more than a few seconds to leave a comment. Plus, it gives you an opportunity to respond to the comments and get your readers to come back to your blog.
This is why I respond to every single comment on Quick Sprout. It�s the main reason why repeat visitors make up 40% of my traffic.
Open Up
When you read a blog, how much do you really know about the person behind the blog? Very little, right?
If you are lucky, the blogger may have a bio and a photo of herself in the sidebar� but that�s pretty much it.
You can�t expect your audience to connect with you if you don�t open up. You can accomplish this through an About page. Not one that is about your blog or your company, but about you� the person behind the blog.
If you have a corporate blog, you can create an About page for each author on your blog.
We've come across this post relating to Blog Posting below on the net and thought it made good sense to discuss it with you over here.
There are three ways to create a blog post. In this short article I will certainly look at the 3 methods and also give you the resource checklist for each method.
Free: The totally free approaches involve a lot of experimentation. If you know what you are doing after that this could be the way to go. For instance, if you want to obtain web traffic to your site then this is a choice.
When you have created your article and also released it on your website there is no cost to you. There are some negative aspects to this though. One is that you might not constantly get the best results with complimentary approaches.
Something you ought to look for is whether people are taking your details and providing it away. This is something you can check out by looking for some complimentary examples. These will normally provide details and if they provide it away then you know that the details you are giving isn't useful.
Paid: If you have a book or digital book after that you can sign up for the solutions of the writing service. You can see what works best for you and do the composing on your own. This gives you all the control. You can additionally pick which methods you intend to use when you do the writing.
After that there is the Paid Guide Technique. This overview will offer you step by step directions for creating your really own article for your website. This can be fairly a practical device to have when it comes to creating an article.
The wonderful feature of these guides is that they will certainly aid you to discover and not overwhelm you with details. When it pertains to finding out just how to compose an article, you need to keep it straightforward. These guides will keep it by doing this.
An excellent suggestion for starting is to review among these guides first. This will permit you to learn what the overview is discussing as well as whether you like it. This likewise enables you to evaluate drive the details without spending a dime.
An additional pointer is to locate a guide that is provided absolutely free. There are a great deal of overviews that are free that can be found online. These overviews can use information that you can make use of to compose an article that will certainly obtain you some website traffic.
After you have actually chosen to compose a post for your website you need to choose a click over here now title. The title should be something that attracts attention as well as orders your focus. You must be able to develop a title in under 10 secs.
One more thing you need to do is consist of a contact us to action in your blog post. This is something that will get individuals's attention and tell them that there is something you desire them to do. Generally this is with a web link to a touchdown page or website.
Bear in mind that when you compose a like this post that it is necessary to make it brief. If you take as well long to do this after that it is challenging to discover how to write a post and also you will not discover anything. Make certain you comply with the 3 methods noted above and also your blog will certainly succeed quickly.
I hope you liked our topic on Blog Posting. Thanks so much for spending some time to browse our short article. Do you know about somebody else who is serious about the subject? Do not hesitate to promote it. We treasure your readership.