Start A Blog: Many new bloggers may feel that they do not need to know how to write a blog post, after all, it is not just writing how hard it is?
Well, there is a lot more that goes into blog post writing than you originally thought, 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 published article. let’s get started.
How to Research for a Blog Post?
Before writing a single word, you should spend time properly researching the topic or subject you want to cover. Now a lot depends on what your post might be about, but whether you are writing about yourself or your personal experiences, research can be done.
The first thing you should look closely at is which keyword or keyphrase you want to target. This is something that a lot of bloggers forget about, yet I cannot stress enough how important it is.
For people to find your post online, you need to understand what people are typing into the search engine, what they are looking for.
The best place to start is the Google Keyword Planner tool that lets you research keywords and key phrases that you can use for your articles.
Spend some time looking at existing posts on the topic you want to cover yourself. This does not mean copying what other people have written (you do not want to do that!), Instead, you are looking for what all these posts are saying.
There may already be a million posts that cover the same topic you want to write about, but if you can do something different or approach it from a different angle, you can get out of the crowd Can help yourself.
Plan the Structure of Your Blog Post
Once you finish researching your article, it is time to plan the structure of your post. Just as you plan a beginning, middle, and end when writing a story, you need to plan the way your article flows.
Everyone does it differently, but I always try to come to terms with my subjectivity. This way I can turn my posts into easy-to-use sections without repeating myself.
I think it also helps when writing has divided my posts in such a way that instead of trying to write about everything at once.
Write it Down
It should be easy, so I don’t need to say much about it here. If you have done your research and planned to structure your post before, this should make the whole writing process even easier.
Add a Title, Introduction, and Call to Action
Probably the most important step is next because you need a decent title, introduction, and call to action. Many of you may do this during the writing or planning phase of your article, but I think it does not help so far.
This stage is so important because most people will see these first and decide on the rest of your article based on them.
To find people and even think about clicking your post, you will need a good title. It needs to be interesting, enticing, contains keywords/keyphrases that you are targeting, and immediately explain 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 be similar to your title, only you have more words to play. You have a pair (at most) of paragraphs to learn about your posts without taking away the entire game and encourage them to continue reading.
If your introduction is up to scratch, people will simply click back and navigate elsewhere. Think of your introduction as a synopsis on the back of a book that you read before you buy it.
Your call to action has to be added at the end of your post. Its purpose is to encourage viewers who have read that to stay on your site and/or promote it. You can do this in many ways;
- Encourage them to leave a comment
- Point them in the direction of other relevant posts on your site
- Tell them about the offer/competition/service/product on your site
- Ask them to subscribe to your email newsletter
- Get them to share your posts with your friends via social media
Your call to action requires all of the above to be done, this is just an incentive for them to take further action after your post. The last thing you want is someone to navigate a way through the entire post and forget about your site never returning.
Add Picture/Video
I always like to see this next step as adding window dressing to your article. No matter how good your overall post is, you need to have some appealing appeal in it to attract the attention of the audience.
Adding pictures is the simplest way to do this. This helps to break up your post and make it more interesting rather than a large mass of text.
Videos are equally good at doing this, especially when they are informative and relevant to what you are writing about.
Edit
When you feel you have finished your post then remember to spend time editing and going on what you have written. This is a good time to add things like inbound and outbound links, or even affiliate links. Is where appropriate.
Publish
Only when you are 100% happy and read and re-read your post thoroughly to check for any errors or mistakes, you can press 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 them.
Your Turn
So that’s what I think, what about you?
How do you go about writing your blog post? Do you do anything differently?
I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment below.