How to write a blog

2011-04-25T02:47:00.000-07:00

Finally you have discovered the web most precious secrets to blog writing performance. Here I am going to show you simple methods that works for many that are earn exorbitantly from their blogs.

Do you remember writing term papers in high school or college? If you do, then writing blog posts is going to be a difficult task for you. You have to ignore all of the things that your professors taught you about writing.
You aren’t here to write a term paper, you are here to create a conversation!

If my blog posts sounded as if I was talking at you instead of to you, wouldn’t you get bored and irritated with me? Make sure you do the same and talk to your readers and not at them.

Know what you want to write about

Before you start writing the first word, you have to know what the last word is going to be. I don’t mean this in a literal fashion, but you have to know how you are going to start off your blog post, the points you are going to convey, and how you are going to wrap everything up.

If you are one of those people that likes to wing things and be spontaneous, that’s great. As one of those people, I have realized that it doesn’t work too well with blogging. All it will cause is you to spend more time writing than you need to.

Plus, I can understand that you are pretty strapped for time. Right? So why waste more of it.

Get into the details

For a moment, take a quick break and go to some of your favorite blogs. The chances are these blogs are pretty popular. What you’ll notice when reading these popular blogs is that most of them contain very detailed content.

They don’t just cover the basics; they actually get down into all of the little details. Sometimes they go into it so much, that it seems like they are holding your hand and walking you through whatever they are talking about, step by step.

When I first started Quick Sprout I was writing decent blog posts, but for some reason the blog wasn’t growing in traffic. I couldn’t figure out why, but one day I wrote a very detailed blog post (unintentionally) and my traffic started to grow. Ever since then, I have been writing detailed blog posts and traffic has been going up.

I hope you’ll learn from my experience and not waste your time writing mediocre blog posts.

Wrap it up

Remember in school how your professors told you to summarize what you wrote in your conclusion? That works great for an essay, but it doesn’t work well in a blog post.
I take a 3-prong approach with my conclusions:

Keep it simple stupid – good conclusions aren’t long, they are short and to the point.
Add your final thoughts – don’t just regurgitate what you talked about within the blog post, but say something new and meaningful.
Leave things open – if you want to get more comments on your blog, you have to leave your conclusion open. The easiest way to do this is by asking your readers a question.

Create an awesome title

So are you ready to start writing now? Wrong! Until you can come up with an awesome title, you shouldn’t start writing your blog post. You could have the greatest content, but if your title sucks, most people won’t end up reading it.

The approach I use when browsing these 3 blogs is to not only look what titles they have used, but also how many comments each blog post recieved. What I am doing here is correlating how readers feel about a particular title because blog posts with good titles usually get read more, which means more people comment on them.

Hook your readers

You only have a few seconds to grab people’s attention. If you can’t grab someone’s attention within the first few sentences you write, you have lost them.
The way I hooked you into reading this far was through:
How hard could it be to write a blog post? If a teenager can do it, you can too… right? Well writing a blog post isn’t hard at all, but writing a great blog post is very difficult.
If you look at the paragraph above, you’ll notice that I have done a few things:

I created a conversation with you.
I showed you that anyone could write a blog post, which makes you feel that you can do it to (which you can).
I enticed you to read further by alluding to the fact that not everyone writes great blog posts.

In the second paragraph I use social proof, so that if you are new to Quick Sprout, you don’t think I am just an Average Joe who is giving advice.

Now everyone has different writing styles, so I don’t expect your introductory paragraphs to be like mine… and that’s fine. As long as you use some of the elements I used, your readers will be engaged.

Now that you’ve understood you can write a blog post more easily than before. Before I conclude I will love to summarize everything in a very short way.

The blueprint

1. Choosing a Topic – take a little extra time defining your topic and the post will flow better and you’ll develop something that matters to readers.

2. Crafting Your Post’s Title – perhaps the most crucial part of actually getting readers to start reading your post when they see it in an RSS reader or search engine results page.

3. The Opening Line – first impressions matter. Once you’ve got someone past your post’s title your opening line draws them deeper into your post.

4. Your ‘point/s’ (making your posts matter) - a post needs to have a point. If it’s just an intriguing title and opening you’ll get people to read – but if the post doesn’t ‘matter’ to them it’ll never get traction.

5. Call to Action – driving readers to do something cements a post in their mind and helps them to apply it and helps you to make a deeper connection with them.

6. Adding Depth – before publishing your post – ask yourself how you could add depth to it and make it even more useful and memorable to readers?

7. Quality Control and Polishing of Posts – small mistakes can be barriers to engagement for some readers. Spending time fixing errors and making a post ‘look’ good can take it to the next level.

8. Timing of Publishing Your Post – timing can be everything – strategic timing of posts can ensure the right people see it at the right time.

9. Post Promotion – having hit publish – don’t just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Giving it a few strategic ‘nudges’ can increase the exposure it gets exponentially.

10. Conversation – often the real action happens once your post is published and being interacted with by readers and other bloggers. Taking time to dialogue can be very fruitful.

Taking extra time at each of these 10 points looks different for me in every post that I do – but I believe that every extra moment spent of these tasks pays off.

Some times the pause I take in one step will be momentary while in others it could take hours or even days to get it just right. Sometimes the above process happens quite automatically and other times I need to force myself to stop and ponder something like a title or the timing of a post.

Each of the 10 points above have much more that could be said about them so over the weeks I’ll be tackling each in turn in the hope that we can have some good discussion and sharing of ideas around them. I’ll link to each of them from within the list above as I release the posts.

For each point I hope to give some insight into how I tackle them and will share a few practical tips and examples of what I’ve done that has worked (and not worked). Don’t expect posts each day on this series – like all good things – this will take us some time!

Adding the final touches

Don’t you feel relieved that you are now done writing your blog post? I hate to break it to you, but you still aren’t done yet. You have to check for spelling, grammar, and most importantly flow issues.
We all make mistakes so not only should you check and double check for these issues, but you should have someone else read through your blog posts before you post it.

And after you do all of that, you have to find a cool picture to add within your blog post. Reading content off of a computer screen can be hard on the eyes, but if you add a picture within your blog post, it will make it a bit easier on your readers’ eyes.

Conclusion

The way I write my blog posts, may not fit your writing style. This doesn’t mean that you have to adjust your writing style, but you should take the elements I described within this blog post and incorporate them into your writing style.

And lastly, you’ll never perfect your blog writing skills. But don’t worry, no one else will either. There is always more room for improvement! So in that spirit, do you have any recommendations on how to write a great blog post?

If any, post any comment below.

2011-04-23T05:37:00.000-07:00

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