Blogging can be daunting at first, but it doesn’t have to be, with the right guidance. Whether you are running a business or looking to create a blog as a way of making an income blogging, I will teach you how you can write the perfect blog post.
Why do you need a blog in the first place?
Blogging helps create brand awareness for your business; writing can also make you a thought leader and an expert in your field. Writing perfect blog posts will also help you attract leads that convert for your business.
If you are still stuck on the technical bit of creating a blog, read my step-by-step guide on how to create a blog. If you already have one that is up and running, let’s go directly into how you can write perfect posts.
What Makes for a Perfect Blog Post?
I have heard many times that if you want to know whether you got fake dollar bills, the easiest way is to know the legit ones. If you learn what is acceptable and what makes for a blog post, you can tell when you write perfect ones. So what makes for a perfect blog post?
Value addition.
There is a lot of stuff on the internet, and how you make a difference as a blogger is by adding value to your readers. People search for something on the internet with a set intention. If your blog post comes up when someone searches for something, does it comprehensively answer their questions?
Another way to describe value addition is to say that your blog posts should be educational and informative. Formulate the question that your blog posts help to answer for your readers.
Also, perfect blog posts should be engaging. How do you keep your readers going from one sentence to another? Create a thought-provoking post, stoke the readers’ curiosity, and make sure that every line promises them that they will get their problem solved or their question answered by the time they finish reading the post.
Well-researched blog post.
As a blogger, you probably won’t know everything like everyone else. That, however, doesn’t mean you cannot write. Also, it does not mean you are fake; it only means you are human. One of the skills that you will need as a blogger is research skills. The ability to dig into the available piles and piles of information to present factual and verifiable information to readers.
I like looking at my pieces of writing as a living, breathing collection of words. The effort I put in to write, I like it to show. I like my blog posts to speak for themselves. That is how you establish authority in your area.
If you write rushed, poorly researched blog posts, you will barely have people staying on your page for long, let alone coming back.
Skimmable blog post.
People, most of the time, skim through content before reading it. Make sure your readers can skim through your blog post content.
One way you can do this is by having a table of contents. You do not have to manually insert a table of contents in all your blog posts. There is a plugin to help you with that.
Also, writing short sentences and short paragraphs also helps readers skim through your content. Make use of H2 and H3 to break down your content into small digestible bits for your readers.
Have a lot of white space in your content. People have a short concentration span, and one of the ways you can retain readers for a long time on your blog is by creating a lot of white space in writing.
Have you tried voice messaging on apps like WhatsApp? I like to joke with my friends that any voice note that exceeds one and a half minutes is a podcast. I don’t know about you, but I would rather listen to ten one-minute voice notes than listen to one ten-minute long voice note.
This works the same for blogs; most people prefer short paragraphs with white space between them compared to one long paragraph that looks like some terms and conditions of an online service.
Add images to your blog post.
Images are the fun of the game. Avoid writing plain boring blog posts. Those will kick people out of your blog quicker than you thought. Images help give an overview of what you will be talking about in the blog post and keep your readers engaged. As we will learn later, adding images and graphics is also an essential part of SEO best practices.
Writing the Perfect Blog Post in 6 Steps.
Now that you know what makes a perfect blog post, it is easier to learn how to write one. As I have mentioned in all of my blogging posts, nothing will prepare you enough for your blogging journey more than starting.
I know the pressure to read one more blog post or take one more online blogging course can be real. But putting down your fingers on your computer is one of the best courses you will get better as you progress. So do not wait for so long to start your blogging journey.
Follow the following steps to write your first or 30th perfect blog post.
Generate Ideas for your blog post.
Generating ideas for your blog posts is the first step to writing. What is your blog about? What problem are you trying to solve? What questions are you trying to answer?
There are various ways to generate blog post ideas. Some of the ways that I use include; using keyword research tools. While that may sound like a lot of work for new bloggers, it is pretty straightforward. I use the google ads keyword tool. With that tool, I can search for what people are searching for and know the search volume of that keyword.
As a blogger, unless you are writing a private blog, you do not want to write about something that no one is looking for. Therefore, using a keyword research tool is one of the ways to come up with the best blog posts idea people are searching for. Another way to generate blog post ideas is to brainstorm. This is especially practical if you are running the blog as a team. Your other team members will prove to be very resourceful in generating ideas.
Also, looking at what other people are doing within your niche might help you develop great blog post ideas. I mean benchmarking, not copying what other people are doing.
As a blogger, one of the things that I have found helpful is to stay reading. Keep updating yourself with new information. What are the trends within your niche? Is there anything new that your readers should know from you as an authority in that niche? If yes, then you get more blog post ideas that way.
Having a notebook on you all the time, whether a hard copy or an online one, will help you generate ideas whenever and wherever and note them before forgetting.
Also, make use of planners. I use my iPhone notes to write any blog post idea that comes up when I am away from my computer, and I use the free google calendar to plan my content.
As you will learn, generating ideas as a blogger is not the end of the road. The real deal is to actualize the ideas in the form of writing blog posts and making them available to the readers.
How will you ensure that your ideas materialise? By having a plan. I will tell you that working in the creative space; whether writing blogs or creating youtube videos, your emotions won’t be the best partners.
Most of the time, you will feel like you do not want to do it, and in those moments, having a plan and sticking to it will get you out of the giving up limbo and have you actualize the ideas.
Create an Outline.
You have all the blog post ideas that you generated; well done! Now let’s get into creating an outline for your blog post. I would say the content outline is your recipe in a cooking scenario.
In step one, you have already established that you want to make meatballs, for example. Creating an outline determines what you will need, in what quantities, and the order of adding the ingredients.
There is no one size fits all plan for your blog post outline, but when designing one, you have to ensure that each stage of your content motivates the reader to go to the next one and then the next one.
Create a catchy and informative blog post headline. When people hear about catchy headlines, they misinterpret that as clickbait. While clickbait will bring people to your blog, people will leave as soon as they click.
Readers can tell when a blogger is bullshitting about a topic. Therefore, make your title catchy but also let it reflect what your blog post is about. Ensure that your readers can get a fair idea of what your blog post is about by reading the title. Ensure the title is optimized for search engines, allowing your work to appear on search results.
Never go soft on the introduction. Make your introduction as captivating as possible. That is the first impression of your blog post. If your introduction is strong, it will keep the reader going. Good introductions can take many forms. For example, you can start with a short, relatable story to draw readers in. alternatively, you can rehash the reader’s problem and promise a solution.
For example, something like, “are you tired of getting no traffic to your blog? I know how that feels and it sucks! I was blogging for over four months before I hit my first one thousand pageviews per month. Lately, I get over five thousand pageviews per day. In this article, I will teach you how to grow your blog traffic, step by step.”
The above introduction brings out the desperation of a blogger trying to grow their traffic. It reminds them how bad it sucks to write and have no one reading your hard work. However, it quickly promises a solution, which will keep the reader wanting to know what happened for the writer to experience a shift in the blog traffic.
After formulating a strong introduction, arrange your points. This could be in hierarchical order in the case of a step-by-step tutorial. In other cases, arrange them from the strongest point to the weaker one.
Formulate a strong conclusion, and do not forget to make a call to action. What do you want your readers to do in the end? Is it subscribing to your newsletter? Or leaving a comment? State it expressly and do not imply it. In my content marketing journey, I have seen that implied calls to action are ineffective.
Start Writing.
For everybody that ever asked me what to do to become a blogger, I simply said,” start writing.” This doesn’t mean that I despise preparation, no. I value preparation, but I know from personal experience that over preparing can lead to inaction.
There is no amount of theory lessons that will prepare you for blogging more than the actual writing will. Just like any other career you choose, there is a lot that you will learn on the job when it comes to blogging.
Give yourself a chance and put your fingers on the keyboard. The more you do it, the better you become at it, and ultimately, the easier the whole process will be for you.
Look for a quiet undistracted space to do your writing. You can write your blog posts in a single sitting or break down parts into different days and times. Whichever works for you.
Also, ensure you have a writing schedule and a deadline, as this will keep you from slacking off. Google rewards consistency, so the more you write, the more likely your content will rank on the search engine results.
Edit Your Blog Posts.
No matter how good of a writer you are, you will always have to edit your work. The last thing you want is to come off as a don’t care writer. This happens when you leave obvious grammatical errors unedited.
I like to use Grammarly. I have used it for over seven years now. They have a free version and a premium version. I love the premium version because it has more features, but you can start off with the free one if you are on a budget.
However, scoring a perfect 100 % on Grammarly is not all there is to editing. I love to proofread my work. Human proofreading can never be replaced by software.
When you write, you know the intention of a piece of writing and the context too. The editing software lacks that human recognition; therefore, some things will be correct according to the software, but they won’t make sense to a human reader.
I advise bloggers to proofread and correct their work after passing it through Grammarly.
Add Graphics.
I use Canva to design graphics for my blog posts. Having graphics is one of the SEO best practices. Ensure you optimize the images for search engines by using keywords on the image title, description, and Alt text.
Having graphics on your blog posts will also keep the readers engaged, and it helps give them an idea of what the blog is about. Plain text without images might not work well for your blogging career.
Recently, I also love having pinnable graphics on my blog posts to allow my readers to share them on Pinterest, which is another way of driving traffic to my blog.
Optimize Your Blog Posts for Search Engine.
The search engine is a sure way to get your blog traffic. Writing perfect blog posts will be useless if the intended readers cannot find them. Optimizing your blog posts for search engines is one of the ways to get the readers to find them. While learning search engines for a beginner blogger can be daunting, it is one of the best investments you will make in your blogging career.
There are a lot of useful free and paid online courses for SEO and a dozen YouTube videos and blog posts about the topic. I made it a personal goal to learn something about SEO every week.
However, you can use the different SEO plugins available to check how well you optimized your blog posts. Once you establish that you have optimized your content, you are now ready to publish your blog post! Congratulations!
However, that is not all. You probably have heard that running a business without marketing is like winking at a girl at night. The same goes for your blog. Let people know that you have a blog and what it is about. I encourage people to share their blog posts on social media.
At first, you can try all the available platforms, but as you grow, you will learn which platform best suits your business and pay attention to that one. After sharing your blog posts, now take a break, refresh and repeat! You are on your way to becoming a professional blogger.
Main Takeaways.
We are done with the six simple steps of writing the perfect blog. If you forget everything else, remember.
- Starting writing is the only way you get better.
- To learn SEO.
- Have a content planning calendar and a notebook to note random blog post ideas.
- Share your blog posts on social media.
- Create beautiful graphics for your blog posts.
I hope this post was helpful; as always, let me know if you have any questions or concerns in the comment section below.