How To Write An Effective Blog Post For Your Audience And Customers
The relationship between blogging and the success of your marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) efforts is clear as day.
If you are reading this blog, you probably already know the importance of learning how to start, write, and manage a blog to support your brand or business is vital to surviving in the digital marketing sphere.
No blog means you will have to face having low-quality SEO, fewer leads and conversions, fewer pages that use calls-to-action (CTAs), lack of opportunities to use on-page and off-page SEO strategies, among other problems.
Unless you enjoy writing, keeping and maintaining your blog may seem a task as entertaining and fulfilling as watching mud. You can hire skilled copywriters or a digital marketing agency to do it for you.
However, you must know how to write an effective blog post to understand what you are writing or ask someone to write for you.
So let’s start with the basics.
What does writing a good blog post entail?
Why should a reader read your entire blog post? What makes recurrent readers come back to read more?
A good blog post is exciting and offers value to your readers. It should answer inquiries they have and present potential solutions to problems or pains they’re experiencing. A good blog post should also present actions to take while being engaging and entertaining.
So how do you go about this? Let’s take a look at the key steps you can take to write a great blog post.
A step-by-step guide to writing a blog post
Here are 8 steps you can follow to writing a good blog post:
- Know your audience
- Pick a topic
- Come up with a great headline
- Write an intro that hooks the reader
- Organize your content
- Edit and proofread your blog
- Ensure your blog has at least one CTA
- Optimize your blog for on-page SEO
Let’s quickly go over each one of them.
Know your audience
It would be best if you had a clear understanding of who your readers are. What interests them? What resonates with them? What problems do they have that I can solve with my content?
For example, suppose your readers are millennial entrepreneurs. In that case, you probably don’t have to make a step-by-step guide to creating a rich social media profile for their business since most already dominate that.
However, you could offer a comprehensive blog detailing how Facebook and YouTube ad campaigns work! It’s still within that same social media scope but addresses an inquiry your readers may have, even if they understand social media in general.
You should also take into consideration the approach you’re going to take. Does your audience respond better to a casual personal approach? Or do they prefer a more business-focused approach?
This helps your audience skim through your content and resonate with it easier.
Pick a topic
You can start general with this one. If your company sells UI design services, your post might be about the importance of the hierarchy and simplicity of an app’s UI components.
You want to show others you know your stuff, especially when you don’t have much credibility yet. You don’t want to start teaching others how to do the good stuff right away.
If you have difficulties coming up with topics, you can get inspiration from other blogs that revolve around what you want to write about.
Disclaimer: This is meant for inspiration purposes only. You should never plagiarize other people’s work. Find out what your audience likes to read and build your topic brainstorming session around that.
Come up with a great headline
To put it simply, most people will read your headline and decide whether or not to read your content based on it. This means that if your headline isn’t catchy, inviting, alluring, or attractive, it doesn’t matter if your content is the best thing ever written.
You don’t need to have your final headline just yet, especially if you’re struggling to come up with a good one. To focus your writing, you can use a working title, which is an approach to the topic you want to write about.
For example, my working title iteration was “guide to writing a good blog” for this post. The result was completely different. It is still basically the same topic, but the headline and wording matter.
If you feel stuck when turning your working title into a catchy headline, you can check out these 7 headline formulas that help you get that brain running.
Write an intro that hooks the reader
This is not as complicated as many people think. First, grab the reader’s attention. Hook them and make sure to not lose them within the first few paragraphs or sentences. Be authentic, be empathetic, tell a story, or hook them with an interesting question, fact, or problem to be solved.
Do you have them under your spell? Good. Now make the purpose of your blog post known to them and explain how it will address a situation, problem, concern, pain, or inquiry your reader may have. You can also mention how the post will help them overcome the problem.
This works incredibly well if you can offer an “easy” solution to their problem. Who doesn’t love shortcuts?
Organize your content
Blog posts are often extensive. Organize your information in a way that isn’t intimidating to read (or write).
The length of your blog shouldn’t factor in your reader’s intent to read it if you organize it correctly. Use this blog as an example.
I’ve clearly outlined each section and subsection. My paragraphs are no longer than four lines, making the blog look easier to read, especially when done from a smartphone, where the content gets squeezed together.
Depending on your content, you can outline it in different ways. You can do this while planning out your key points and paragraphs, and it’ll even make writing out your ideas more manageable.
Edit and proofread your blog
So you’re done writing your content piece. Great work!
Now all that’s left is editing bits and pieces to make it perfect.
A trick I like to employ is reading my blogs out loud. Sometimes, reading without speaking (especially when I wrote the content) makes me miss some grammar inconsistencies and sentences that are too long. It might feel awkward at first, but your readers will thank you for it.
Next, have someone destroy your dreams and expectations about you being a writer:
By that, I mean have a co-worker that’s good at grammar proofread your post and tell you how bad it is. It might bruise the ego, but believe me when I tell you that it is necessary.
You can also use a free grammar checker like Hemingway Editor or Grammarly to help clean up bits and pieces you don’t notice. Do take the software’s suggestions with a grain of salt, though, since grammar checkers aren’t perfect yet. Review each suggestion and edit your blog accordingly.
Ensure your blog has at least one CTA
Calls to action are critical in SEO. At the end of every blog post, insert a CTA that helps the reader decide what to do next. The decision can be to subscribe to your newsletter, register for an online course, read an article that complements the information they just received, or contact you if they are curious about your services.
Make sure your CTA offers a valuable resource when clicking it. Whether it’s more information, a discount, or something else they might be interested in, there must be something of value when they click.
Optimize your blog for on-page SEO
Optimize on-page elements of your post. These can be keywords you’re targeting, shorten your URL, craft your meta descriptions (the description below the post’s title on Google’s search page), page title, headers, anchor text, etc.
Don’t obsess too much over keywords you “have to include.” Make sure you incorporate them in a way that does not hinder the reader’s experience.
Still unsure how to start? Let us help you!
Blogging is key to brand awareness and an essential part of content marketing. However, starting might still feel like a bit of a challenge, even if you follow this step-by-step guide correctly.
Why? Because blogging takes time.
If you are an entrepreneur or are just starting your digital marketing journey, time is a valuable resource.
Fortunately, you can hire skilled copywriters to do the job for you. Your brand will post high-quality content, and you’ll save time and effort, which means more time to dedicate to growing your business.
If you are interested, contact us to learn more about our copywriting services.
Mrkt360 is a marketing and SEO agency located in Toronto, Canada. We specialize in SEO services and digital marketing solutions. If you are looking to grow your brand’s online presence, be sure to schedule a free consultation with one of our specialists today!
