Beginners Guide on How To Write A Blog Post

Many new bloggers may feel that they do not need to know how to write a blog post, after all it is simply writing isn’t it, how hard is that?

Well, in reality there is a lot more that goes into blog post writing than you may originally think, especially if you want to get traffic.

In this post we will look at the important aspects that you need to do when crafting your articles before you hit the publish button.  Let’s get started.

Research Your Blog Post

Before you write a single word you should spend time properly researching the topic or subject that you want to cover.  Now a lot depends on what your post may be about, but even if you were writing about yourself or your own personal experiences, research can be done.

The first thing you should look closely at is what keywords or keyphrases you want to aim for.  This is something that many bloggers seem to forget about, yet I can’t stress enough how important this is.

In order for people to find your posts online you need to understand what people are typing in to the search engines to find what they are looking for.

The best place to start is the Google Keyword Planner tool that lets you research keywords and keyphrases that you can use for your articles.

Spend some time looking through existing posts on the subject that you want to cover yourself.  The point of this isn’t to just copy what other people have written (you don’t want to do that!), instead you are looking to find what all these posts aren’t saying.

There may be a million posts already online that cover the same subject that you want to write about, but if you can do something different or approach it from a different angle, then you can help yourself to stand out from the crowd.

Plan Out The Structure Of Your Blog Post

Once you have finished researching your article it is time to plan out the structure of your post.  Just as you would plan out a beginning, middle and end when writing a story, you need to plan out the way you want your article to flow.

Everyone does this differently but I always try to come up with my subheadings first.  That way I can structure out my post into easy to follow sections without repeating myself.

I find that it also helps when writing to have split up my post like this into sections instead of trying to write about everything in one go.

Get Writing

This should be the easy bit, so I don’t really need to say much about this here.  If you have done your research and planned out the structure of your post previously, then this should make the whole writing process even easier.

Add A Title, Introduction & Call To Action

Arguably THE most important step is next as you need to come up with a decent title, introduction and call to action.  Many of you may do this during the writing or planning stage of your article, but I find leaving it until now helps.

This stage is so important as the vast majority of people will see these first and make a judgement about the rest of your article based on them.

In order for people to find and even think about clicking on your post you will need a good title.  It needs to be interesting, enticing, include keywords/keyphrases that you are aiming for and instantly convey what your post is about.

Coming up with a good title is by no means easy, but always remember this: a bad post with a good title will always get more clicks than a good post with a bad title.

Your introduction needs to do the same as your title, only you have more words to play with.  You have a couple of paragraphs (at the most) to sum up what your post is about without giving the whole game away and encourage them to continue reading.

If your introduction isn’t up to scratch then people will simply click back and navigate somewhere else.  Think of your introduction as a synopsis on the back of a book that you read before you buy it.

Your call to action is to be added at the end of your post.  The aim of this is to encourage viewers who have read that far to stay on your site and/or promote it.  You can do this in a number of ways;

1. Encourage them to leave a comment,
2. Point them in the direction to other relevant posts on your site,
3. Tell them about an offer/competition/service/product on your site,
4. Ask them to subscribe to your email newsletter.
5. Get them to share your post via social media with their friends.

Your call to action doesn’t need to do all of the above, it is simply an encouragement for them to take further action after your post.  The last thing you want is someone that has read through an entire post to navigate away and forget about your site never to return.

Add Images/Video

I always like to view this next step as adding window dressing to your article.  No matter how good your overall post is, you need something visually appealing adding to it to attract viewer attention.

Adding images is the simplest way of doing this.  This helps to break up your post and make it look more interesting rather than just a big mass of text.

Videos are equally as good at doing this especially when they are informative and relevant to what you are writing about.

Edit, Edit, Edit!

When you think you have finished your post remember to spend time editing and going over what you have written.  This is a great time to add things like inbound and outbound links, or even affiliate links where appropriate.

Publish

Only when you are 100% happy and have thoroughly read and re-read your post to check for any errors or mistakes can you hit the publish button.

Always be aware of the fact that your blog posts are a reflection of you and your website, you need to make sure that they are up to your high standards before you upload it.

Your Turn:

So that is what I think, what about you? 

How do you go about writing your blog posts?  Do you do anything differently? 

I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment below.