- The How-To Post
- The List-Based Post
- The Curated Collection Post
- The SlideShare Presentation Post
- The Newsjacking Post
With all this blogging how-to, literally anyone
can blog as long as they truly know the subject matter they're writing about.
And since you're an expert in your industry, there's no longer any reason you
can't sit down every day and hammer out an excellent blog post.
Step 1:- Understand your audience
Before you start to write, have a clear
understanding of your target audience. What do they want to know about? What
will resonate with them? This is where creating your buyer
personas comes in handy. Consider what you know about your buyer personas
and their interests while you're coming up with a topic for your blog post.
For instance, if your readers are millennials
looking to start their own business, you probably don't need to provide them
with information about getting started in social media -- most of them already
have that down. You might, however, want to give them information about how to
adjust their approach to social media from a more casual, personal one to a
more business-savvy, networking-focused approach. That kind of tweak is what
separates you from blogging about generic stuff to the stuff your
audience really wants (and needs) to hear.
Step 2:- Start with a topic and working title
Before you even write anything, you need to
pick a topic for your blog post. The topic can be pretty general to start with.
For example, if you're a plumber, you might start out thinking you want to
write about leaky faucets. Then you might come up with a few different working
titles -- in other words, iterations or different ways of approaching that
topic to help you focus your writing. For example, you might decide to narrow
your topic to "Tools for Fixing Leaky Faucets" or "Common Causes
of Leaky Faucets." A working title is specific and will guide your post so
you can start writing.
Let's take a real post as an example: "How
to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post." Appropriate, right? The
topic, in this case, was probably simply "blogging." Then the working
title may have been something like, "The Process for Selecting a Blog Post
Topic." And the final title ended up being "How to Choose a Solid
Topic for Your Next Blog Post."
See that evolution from topic, to working
title, to final title? Even though the working title may not end up being the
final title (more on that in a moment), it still provides enough information so
you can focus your blog post on something more specific than a generic,
overwhelming topic.
If you're having trouble coming up with
ideas, check out this blog postfrom my colleague Ginny Soskey. In this
post, Soskey walks through a helpful process for turning one idea into many.
Similar to the "leaky faucet" example above, she suggests that you
"iterate off old topics to come up with unique and compelling new
topics." This can be done by:
- Changing the topic scope
- Adjusting the time frame
- Choosing a new audience
- Taking a positive/negative approach
- Introducing a new format
Step 3:- Write an intro and make it captivating
We've written more specifically about writing
captivating introductions in the post, "How to Write an
Introduction," but let's review, shall we?
First, grab the reader's attention. If you lose
the reader in the first few paragraphs -- or even sentences -- of the
introduction, they will stop reading even before they've given your post a fair
shake. You can do this in a number of ways: tell a story or a joke, be
empathetic, or grip the reader with an interesting fact or statistic.
Step 4:- Organize your content
Sometimes, blog posts can have an overwhelming
amount of information -- for the reader and the writer. The
trick is to organize the info so readers are not intimidated by the length or
amount of content. The organization can take multiple forms -- sections, lists,
tips, whatever's most appropriate. But it must be organized!
Let's take a look at the post, "How to Use
Snapchat: A Detailed Look Into HubSpot’s Snapchat Strategy."There is a lot
of content in this post, so we broke it into a few different sections using the
following headers: How to Setup Your Snapchat Account, Snaps vs. Stories:
What's the Difference?, and How to Use Snapchat for Business. These sections
are then separated into sub-sections that to go into more detail and also make
the content easier to read.
Step 5:- Write!
The next step -- but not the last -- is
actually writing the content. We couldn't forget about that, of course.
Now that you have your outline/template, you're
ready to fill in the blanks. Use your outline as a guide and be sure to expand
on all of your points as needed. Write about what you already know, and if
necessary, do additional research to gather more information, examples, and
data to back up your points, providing proper attribution when
incorporating external sources. Need help finding accurate and compelling data
to use in your post? Check out this roundup of sources -- from Pew
Research to Google Trends.
Step 6:- Edit/proofread your post, and fix your formatting
Step 7:- Optimize for on-page SEO
After you finish writing, go back and optimize
your post for search.
Don't obsess over how many keywords to include.
If there are opportunities to incorporate keywords you're targeting, and it
won't impact reader experience, do it. If you can make your URL shorter and
more keyword-friendly, go for it. But don't cram keywords or shoot for some
arbitrary keyword density -- Google's smarter than that!
Step 8:- Pick a catchy title
Last but not least, it's time to spruce up that
working title of yours. Luckily, we have a simple formula for writing
catchy titles that will grab the attention of your reader. Here's what to
consider:
1. Start with your working title.
2. As
you start to edit your title, keep in mind that it's important to keep the
title accurate and clear.
3. Then,
work on making your title sexy -- whether it's through strong language,
alliteration, or another literary tactic.
4. If
you can, optimize for SEO by sneaking some keywords in there (only if it's
natural, though!).
5. Finally,
see if you can shorten it at all. No one likes a long, overwhelming title --
and remember, Google prefers 65 characters or fewer before it truncates it on
its search engine results pages.
If you've mastered the steps above, learn about some way to take your blog posts to the next level in this post. What other steps do you take to refine your blog posts.