Create a blog that entices your target audience
Blog or slog? If words don’t come naturally to you it can feel like the latter. But luckily there’s a strategic approach you can take to help create a blog that everyone wants to read.
You should by now realise how important it is for your website to have regular blog content for digital marketing purposes. Not only will a regular blog vastly improve your site’s SEO, but it will also give you regular content to share on your social media plus more pages on which to share your calls to action.
Here we break down the eight steps you’ll need to go through before hitting that publish button.
- Know your audience
A no brainer, right? Yet so many people begin writing without thinking who they’re writing for. For example, the style and tone you’d use to write for lawyers will be completely different than if your target audience was gardeners.
In the same vein, it’s worth considering what that audience wants and needs to know about. Consider whether your blog is adding value to your website, or whether you’re just writing rubbish for the sake of it. Always remember: is it useful, is it adding value and is it engaging.
2. Set your topic
This will determine the content for your entire blog, and should be guided by those three questions you’ve just answered above.
Write about something that really cements you as an authority in your chosen industry. For example, if you’re a make-up artist your blog could be based on the seven best cruelty-free brands to try in 2020. Or if you’re a gamer you could review the latest FIFA release and break it down into pros and cons.
3. Outline the different sections of your blog
When you create a blog, setting it out into several sections will not only make it more readable for your audience and for Google, but it will also help you write it in the first place.
Hopefully these sections come easily to you but, if not, think about taking your reader on a journey. Depending on what you’re writing perhaps you could put your information in chronological order or use some kind of listicle to help guide your copy.
Having headers or bullet points also breaks the article up into easy-to-read chunks so your audience isn’t faced with reams of text to contend with.
4. Write a short, snappy intro
Grab your reader within the first line and make them want to read on! We recommend keeping your intro to between 25 and 30 words long.
Try using humour or a hard-hitting stat. If you’re stuck why not pick up a newspaper or go on a news site and have a look at the tactics they use. Papers and news sites rely on words to sell themselves.
5. Write the rest of the blog!
Sounds easy enough? It should be now you’ve got your outline. Work methodically and pad out each header as you go.
Write as much as you can using your own knowledge but remember, the internet is there to help! If you get stuck do some research to create a blog with informative content. You can add in statistics from latest research around your topic but be sure to credit your sources with a simple backlink.
6. Proofread
Never assume your writing is perfect just because it doesn’t have a squiggly red line underneath it. Often spell checkers miss some absolute howlers, so go through your copy with a fine-tooth comb to check for typos.
Similarly, don’t use all of Word’s grammar suggestions – make sure you know the difference between there, their and they’re and when to use them!
7. Insert images and a CTA
Create a blog that looks beautiful with some cracking photography where appropriate. If you’ve got your own images, even better but, if not, head to sites such as Unsplash for stunning, copyright-free imagery.
Don’t forget to add a call to action button at the end of your blog too. This can be as simple as ‘Get in Touch’ or ‘Subscribe’. You can also link to other useful content you think your readers may want to know about.
8. Think SEO
We’ve left possibly one of the most important parts of blog writing until the end with the hope that, if you’ve made it this far, then you’re serious about writing a damn good post and won’t miss this vital step out!
Once your blog’s finished, go back through it and optimise it for search engines. This may sound too technical if you’ve never thought about SEO before, but the essence of good SEO is actually quite simple.
Here are the key things to remember:
- Include a Meta description: this is the snippet of text which appears underneath the page title in a Google search. Keep it short and snappy.
- Page title: if you can include a keyword here great, but don’t try cramming it in for the sake of it. Don’t make it too long either.
- Headers: use H2 tags to break up your blog. Think of them like chapters of a book, or signposts to guide readers through the article.
- Inbound and outbound links: remember to include links to other pages on your own site, as well as one or two links to external websites which contain more useful info for your reader. Think about the anchor text you’re using to link to these pages, and carefully consider which keywords you’re using too.
- Keywords: we’ve mentioned these a few times above and, while they are of course important for your website ranking, don’t obsess about them or try over-stuffing your blog with keywords. It’s not quite as easy as that! Go with the flow and your keywords will naturally occur throughout your blog.
Phew! Hopefully you stuck with us and, if you did, creating your next beautiful blog post will be a breeze.
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