If you are starting a blog strategy or you're an experienced blogger, you know your biggest challenge is finding new and original content to feed your blog page regularly. In this article, we go through a step-by-step guide that will help you create blog posts that will stand out.
Benefits of blogging
Blogging is a great way to educate, inform or entertain your audiences and let them know more about your organisation, its products and services and why they should choose you instead of your competitors.
According to a recent survey, blog posts continue to be the most popular content format among content marketers, with more than nine out of every ten of them producing blog posts to help achieve their overall marketing goals (SEMrush, 2021).
These are the main blogging digital marketing benefits:
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It can drive traffic to your website;
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It can improve your search engine optimisation (SEO) benefits;
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It provides content to post on social media;
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Blogs can be repurposed into infographics, podcasts, videos and other formats;
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It supports your sales pipeline using an inbound marketing methodology.
Image: Unsplash.
Creating a great blog: step-by-step guide
Understand your audience
For maximum benefit, blogs must be exciting and valuable to your audience. Before writing a blog, understand your audience and ask yourself:
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Who are my audiences? What motivates them?
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What are their challenges or problems? What information could help improve their lives?
Once you have a list of possible blog topics, find out what blogs exist online (similar or related to your topics) and identify areas or gaps where you can write unique blogs that others have not written about.
Conduct further research:
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Speak with your audiences and customers to give you ideas for your blogs.
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Speak with work colleagues (in contact with prospects and customers) and learn more about the audiences.
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Speak with your website analytics team – try to understand what blog and web pages receive the most traffic as this can give you blog topic ideas.
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Create a list of possible blog topics that audiences will be interested in.
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Pick a topic and a title
From your list created in the previous step, pick one blog topic to write about. Now, expand the idea - write a list of possible headings or sections for the blog.
Create several versions of titles for the blog – ensure they are compelling for audiences. And don't forget to include the keywords in the title. For example, if you are writing a blog about gluten-free baking, have the words gluten-free baking in the title.
Ensure that the title helps the audience to solve a problem. Rather than calling your blog "An overview of gluten-free recipes", you could call it "Top 5 recipes for quick and tasty gluten-free baking" or "How to bake tasty gluten-free dishes at home".
Improve the blog by asking yourself these questions:
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Is the title interesting enough to get people to click on it from a newsletter or post on social media?
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Does the title communicate the benefit or value of the blog to the audience?
Image: Pexels.
Write an interesting introduction
It is essential to grab the audience's attention early in the blog. If you don't, they are unlikely to read the blog. There are several tips to creating a captivating introduction (use the ones appropriate to your website or product/service):
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Ask the audience a question to pique their curiosity.
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Identify a problem that the audience experiences and state that this blog can help.
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Describe a situation and state that this blog can help or open with a compelling statistic or quote.
Next, explain what the blog will cover or discuss and how it will help the audience (i.e. the benefit of reading the blog).
Organise your content
Blogs can contain a lot of information, so organise the blog into different sections, including several paragraphs. Don't make a section or paragraph too long, as this can frustrate the audience, and they may stop reading before reaching the end of the blog.
Improve the blog by asking yourself these questions:
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Can I create more related blogs on this topic?
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Is the flow of the blog sections understandable and easy for the audience to follow? Can the format be improved using lists, bullets, summaries and other formatting methods?
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Will the section headings give the audience a good idea of what is covered before they read the blog in full? Are the headers consistently formatted (e.g. H2, H3 vs. H4)?
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Is the topic covered in sufficient detail? Is essential information, statistics and quotes eye-catching for the audience?
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Are appropriate images and videos easy to read? You don't want pixelated photos that the audience can't read.
Image: Unsplash.
Writing the blog
You have already laid out the main headings within the blog, now write the words in each section. Write about what you know and perform additional research to make your blog even better. Cite your sources to let audiences know where you got external information from.
Use language appropriate to your audience. If the audience is new to a topic or inexperienced, then avoid using complicated sentences or words.
If using acronyms, then state the whole meaning first. For example, let the audience know that you write about Search Engine Optimisation before referring to it as SEO. If using industry terms, briefly explain them to audiences that may be unfamiliar with their meaning.
The word count of blogs can vary widely, but experts recommend writing blog posts that have between 1,500 and 2,000 words (Databox, 2020). Include quotes, lists or statistics. Make them visually attractive by adding them in bold, italics or a different colour.
Make the blog engaging by adding images, podcasts or videos. Rather than hyperlinking out to podcasts or videos, embed them on the web page. This allows the audience to consume the content without navigating away from your blog.
Provide examples to illustrate key points and include links to other relevant blogs on your website. Include a CTA at the blog's end to encourage readers to take a desired action, such as sign up to a newsletter, download a brochure, register for an event, or visit a product page.
Image: Pexels.
Optimise the blog for search engines
To help audiences find the blog and improve its traffic, ensure that the blog is search engine optimised.
Identify appropriate keywords using tools such as Google's Keyword Planner, Google Trends, Moz Keyword Explorer and Ubersuggest. Avoid adding too many keywords (keyword stuffing) as this can negatively impact the blog's SEO.
Include relevant keywords in the blog's meta description, page title and headers on your website. Keep the headlines to around 50 characters so that search engines don't cut off part of them on screen.
When linking to other web pages, link to good quality websites and add the hyperlink to the correct words related to the web page being linked to.
Ensure that your website is optimised for mobile - it can be easily viewed on a mobile device such as a smartphone or a tablet. Load time is a ranking factor, so ensure that the website loads fast. Avoid copy and pasting the blog to several websites as search engines don't like duplicate content.
Review the blog
Do not forget to proofread the blog to ensure it reads well and correct the grammar and spelling. As it can be difficult to review your work, get a colleague to review the document after your first review.
Improve the blog by asking yourself these questions:
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Is the blog valuable and helpful for the audience?
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Do the blog sections flow well?
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Has a spelling and grammar check been completed?
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Does the introduction give a good overview of the blog, its benefits (to the audience) and the main sections covered?
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Do the tone and language used to match the audience's knowledge and understanding?
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Have external sources of information (statistics, quotes, images, etc.) been cited correctly and are the links still working?
Image: Pexels.
Distribute your content blog
Once you have followed these steps, the blog is ready to be distributed online. You may distribute it via a newsletter, social media and other relevant locations to drive traffic to the blog.
Today, 97% of all bloggers promote their blog content via social media, whereas two-thirds use email marketing (Statista, 2020).
Consider using online advertising to help the blog reach a larger audience. Consider repurposing the blog by using it as a script to create a podcast or video.
Essential tips to remember:
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Create blogs that the audience want to read.
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Include a compelling title and introduction.
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Format the blog with headings, lists and bullets.
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Include relevant statistics, quotes, images, videos, external links and an appropriate call to action.
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Ensure that the blog is optimised for search engines.
Image: iStock.
Read more about blogging and how to include this content into your digital marketing strategy.
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