Writing a blog post may seem to be one of the easiest tasks available on the Internet, however, it is tricky as well. Coming up with a great, successful idea of title, headlines, and topic overall can be the hardest part, but even if you get through this, there are still a lot of factors to be taken into consideration. In our article today, we will show you a few ways of creating content that converts and looks pretty, as well as meets all SEO requirements and can be compliant with your overall strategy. Even if you don’t know how to make it work yet, and you already realized that it is not the easiest nut to track, our article will hopefully be a bit of help for you.
Before you start…
Find out more about your audience
Well, one of the very first things you need to be aware of is that you don’t create content for yourself, but for your audience. Not defining who your audience is, it can quickly become clear that you are writing for no one of only for yourself. To be successful in this area, you need to get to know your target group: not only who they are, but how they behave, what they like and dislike, where they are active – and it all will lead you to another question: what kind of content do they get familiar with? Once you figured it out, you are good to go to the next steps. Where to look for this kind of information? Let us provide you with a few sources that we found very valuable when it comes to getting more details about your target group’s behavior.
First of all, you should use most of the data you already have. If you lead a Facebook Page, get into its insights. If you have your Google Analytics stats set up correctly, you can identify a few details looking at reports. You can also use some external tools (for example Sotrender) to see where your target groups are active. It is a good idea to look through some reports available publicly to get more information you will need to create great content. Sites like AnswerThePublic.com can point out what kind of key phrases and questions are often searched in Google. This is often used not only for getting an overall idea of your article but to adjust some headlines and parts of the article as well. Helps with ideas, but also with SEO positioning that is extremely important for blog posts.
You can also use social media monitoring tools to see what kind of mentions are left on the Internet about a specific problem, particular idea or selected solution. There are quite a few tools in the market and one of them is SentiOne. They all offer a free trial period so if you are not sure it could be something for you, just give it a try and see if it is worth paying for in a long-term period. Observe your target groups and try to be active where they are active – some people get the best ideas for blog posts by joining some Facebook groups and being active there. Doesn’t it sound fascinating that you are actually surrounded by a lot of great content indicators?
Is your target group already found? Let’s proceed!
Create a content strategy
Ok, you can ask here – “Well, wait, wasn’t it about writing just a blog post?”. Of course, it was! You need to realize, though, that a blog post shouldn’t be a single activity, but a part of a larger strategy that includes your goals, requirements, and expectations. One blog post simply won’t make do – you need to work harder on your content to be visible in long-term and achieve better results not only concerning that one blog post but your blog in general.
Creating a content strategy can be also a great motivational factor for you if you know that consistency is not your asset. Preparing a strategy with a schedule of posts keeps you motivated and hard-working on your content to be released on your blog on time. You need to understand this process before you start working on your first or even next post. Having a strategy gives all your blog posts a so-called umbrella where all those posts can hide under. Of course, the most detailed the strategy is, the better – the more, the merrier! However, even a set of simple tactics completed by a tight schedule can be a great way to start.
How to create a content strategy? First, you should work on your target group and personas (and, also, get into a current state of your blog and identify its advantages and disadvantages – without it, it will be hard to make any changes), and then identify some topics you want to cover (for private, SEO and content purposes). Your plan should be based on hard data, not your private predictions and preferences.
Let’s work on a blog post!
After initial research, it is required to make a more detailed one. You can again use sites like AnswerThePublic.com, Google Trends, Google Alerts and one of the best tools for getting blog posts ideas – Buzzsumo. This is where you can verify how successful some areas are and where you can find some niches to cover. Obviously, it is only some indication for you and you shouldn’t take your results for granted – however, this is a great place to start, get some insights and inspiration for writing and creating an overall content strategy. Buzzsumo offers some free features so you should definitely make the most of it not only if you are a newbie in the business.
Divide your blog post into a few parts and give them specific, appropriate headlines. Treat headlines as indications of your writing flow – each segment should answer your reader’s needs, not fulfill your preferences. Remember about driving value.
Obviously, consistency is a key, but you should remember about keeping your article or post very transparent, clear and readable. Otherwise, your audience may even be reached by your blog and they may click through, but as they would be put off by the text itself, they may leave the website and never come back. Building an engaged and loyal community around your content takes a lot of time, efforts, nerves, and even disappointment – and this situation may be just one of them.
Don’t worry if you can’t come up with an idea of a great blog post title yet – this may come in time, while you are working on actual insights in the article. The same thing happens about the intro or ending of your article – there are a lot of good practices connected with those activities. Some people prefer writing those few first sentences in the very end, and they prepare intros as the last thing in the whole process of content creation. Then, they have full information about what they included in the article, so they can make a good and appealing intro, but first of all – it will be spot-on and concise.
An ending should play the role of a summary – this is where you should include some highlights, takeaways, a few sentences that perfectly sum up everything that was mentioned before in the article. This is also a good spot for leaving some contact info if someone would like to discuss this particular matter privately.
There is a lot of discussion going on around the length of blog posts – and here we are sorry to disappoint you, as we won’t come with an universal idea and answer. No matter how long your blog post is, remember about including some keywords. You can generate some simple lists of keywords using, for example, Uber suggests Free Keyword Tool available online – that list of keywords can be another great indicator of what to cover in your blog post. Some people say that the blog post should consist of, at least, 1000 words. We like the idea of keeping it even shorter but more valuable if you feel like it! Value comes first, quality over quantity – this you should always keep in mind.
Remember about keeping your blog post appealing and attractive – no one likes the huge block of text without any interactive elements. You can add links to your resources (or other blog posts, this can be warmly welcomed and appreciated by authors of those blogs and they can recommend your blog further! try it out and see if someone shared your blog post), add some photos (you don’t have to be only a fashion blogger of beauty blogger to sparkle with some photos added to a blog post) or videos. Try to combine some photo/video content with valuable text. Once you find your golden mean, you are always there.
While writing, think about monetization aspects. Is there any place you could put some adverts? Can you recommend some products in your blog post (and of course, can you get paid for doing this?)? Is there anything you can do with this blog post in the future to monetize your efforts? This shouldn’t be a key factor, but if you take blogging seriously, you should consider this as well.
Redistribution is very essential if you really want to reach as many people as possible with the content you created. Remember about using social media channels (not only Pages, but also groups, events or other blog authors’ courtesy – you can offer them a roundup blog post where they could give some insights to your blog post and get published with a backlink) – this is easy yet tricky cause requires a lot of work to do on a regular basis. It is possible to drive traffic to your old posts if your social media redistribution strategy works well!
If you use WordPress, use a special plugin called Yoast SEO which checks if your content is easy to read and SEO-compliant. It also gives you a few hints on what you can do to improve your blog post performance, and some of them are really easy to manage and apply in real time.
As you can see, writing a blog post should be regarded as a process of preparing the best content for the audience you care about. Think about factors we mention and start working on your awesome article right here and right now! And remember – practice makes perfect. Even if your first or second blog post wouldn’t sparkle with a huge reach, don’t give up and work even harder to make your content stand out of the competition and be able to get monetized soon. To do so, you simply need to follow our pieces of advice and personalize them for your blog. Research can be real fun! Good luck!
