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.
They are making a number of great annotation regarding SEO Blog Post in general in this great article underneath.
There are three methods to compose an article. In this short article I will certainly look at the 3 techniques as well as offer you the source list for each and every approach.
Free: The complimentary techniques include a great deal of trial and error. If you recognize what you are doing after that this can be the means to go. As an example, if you want to get website traffic to your website then this is a choice.
Once you have written your short article and published it on your site there is no charge to you. There are some drawbacks to this though. One is that you may not constantly get the very best results with cost-free techniques.
Something you should seek is whether or not people are taking your details as well as providing it away. This is something you can look into by looking for some cost-free samples. These will typically offer details as well as if they offer it away then you recognize that the info you are offering isn't important.
Paid: If you have a publication or eBook after that you can enroll in the services of the composing solution. You can see what jobs best for you and also do the writing yourself. This offers you all the control. You can additionally decide on which methods you want to utilize when you do the writing.
Then there is the Paid Overview Method. This overview will certainly offer you detailed directions for producing your very own post for your site. This can be rather a practical tool to have when it pertains to composing a post.
The excellent feature of these overviews is that they will aid you to discover as well as not overwhelm you with info. When it concerns discovering exactly how to compose an article, you need to maintain it basic. These guides will certainly keep it in this way.
A good idea he said for getting started is to check out among these overviews initially. This will certainly enable you to discover what the guide is talking about and whether you like it. This additionally enables you to examine drive the information without spending a cent.
One more pointer is to discover an overview that is offered totally free. There are a lot of guides that are totally free that can be discovered on the internet. These overviews can supply info that you can utilize to compose a post that will obtain you some traffic.
After you have actually determined to create a post for your website you need to choose a title. The title should be something that stands apart and gets your interest. You need to be able to develop a title in under 10 secs.
One more thing you need to do is include a phone call to activity in your blog post. This is something that will certainly grab people's interest as well as tell them that there is something you want them to do. Normally this is with a link to a touchdown web page or website.
Keep in mind that when you compose a post that it is essential to make it short. If you take as well long to do this then it is challenging to learn just how to compose a post and you won't learn anything. Make sure you comply with the three approaches listed above as well as your blog site will certainly succeed in no time at all.
Hopefully you enjoyed reading our section about SEO Blog Post. Thanks a ton for taking the time to browse our article. Sharing is nice. Helping people is fun. Thanks for your time invested reading it.