Do I need to be a great writer to write a Blog Post?

Do I need to be an expert on my topic to have a successful Blog?

These kinds of questions must be bouncing around your head if you want to start a Blog.

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” Stephen King gives this advice about the craft of writing.

But trust me!

Anyone can write a great Blog Post. You just need to follow a process and work hard and smart.

Then what’s the no.1 requirement to write a good Blog Post and become a Successful Blogger?

It’s PASSION.

You heard it right.

Just choose the topic you’re passionate about. It will make the process to follow much easier. You’ll be able to consistently post valuable and engaging content.

Blogs tend to be casual and conversational.

You don’t need to be formal at all.

Just write the way you speak.

It will help you in establishing a friendly relationship with your readers.

In this digital age Blogging is the best way to educate your audiences and build trust with them.

A blog lets you express your thoughts, help your readers solve the problems they’re facing, and establish yourself as an expert.

And the best part,

You can use some tools to monetize your blog and earn some money.

 

What is a blog, anyway?

 

According to Wikipedia,

A blog (a truncation of the expression “weblog”) is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page.

The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog”, was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.

Blogging is the best way to connect to the world in this internet era. It allows you to communicate any information, companies can keep their clients up to date, and readers can comment and interact with you.

Why is Blogging So Important?

 

The blog is one of the most valuable marketing tools. It’s important for so many reasons. Some of them are:

• It helps you to generate leads and build brand awareness, and brand loyalty. You can also use a blog post to increase the credibility and reputation of your business.

• It allows you to interact with your readers. People start commenting on your blog. You can educate your readers through the comments section and at the same time, you can also learn many things from your readers.

• It’s the blog you use in your SEO and Social Media promotion.

• Through Blogging, you can also earn some passive income by spending just a few hours a week. It will continue to make you money long after the Blog Post is written. Top Bloggers are earning millions every single month.

There are many popular sites like Huffington Post, Perez Hilton, and Engadget which started as blogs.

So, How To Write A Great Blog Post?

 

The following steps will help you learn to write compelling and engaging posts that convert:

• Know Your Audience
• Hook Your Audience With The First Sentence
• Write An Outline
• Write Compelling Headlines
• Add Sub-headings, Use Bullet Points, and Add Bolded Words
• Add Images and Videos
• Use Internal and External Links
• Include Call-To-Actions (CTAs)
• Optimize Your Post for Search Engines

 

Step #1: Know Your Audience

 

Before creating your Blog Post, you have to understand who your audience is, what they’d like to read, and why they’d like to read it.

For this, you can take regular polls on Social Media like Facebook, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn. In the polls, you can give the options of 3-4 topics that you’re considering writing about and ask people to vote on one they like the best.

Tools like Survey Monkey and Polldaddy are also some easy-to-use tools for running polls or online surveys.

After creating a free account with Survey Monkey or Polldaddy, write your specific questions. You should avoid open-ended questions. Then promote your survey in Social Media and Email Newsletters by including a link.

Industry research and competitor analysis are also great ways to know your audience. For this, there are some tools you can use.

• Twitter Advanced Search: You just need to enter the keyword and select the filter “questions”. You’ll get all the questions related to that keyword people are asking.

• Quora: A free and great tool to find what questions are being asked by the people in your industry.

• SEMRush: It’s a very powerful All-In-one competitor analysis tool. It allows you to know your competitors and their strategies.

• Google Trends: Just enter the topic you’re considering to write about. It will display a graph showing interest over time around your topic.

• Google Keyword Research Tool: Just enter a keyword or topic and it will give you a complete list of ideas and monthly search volumes. You can pick one broad idea from this list.

By using the tools and following the processes properly, you’ll have a good idea about who your audience is. You can also understand what your readers want.

Step #2: Hook Your Audience With The First Sentence

 

You have to actively engage your audience right from the start.

Make your audience part of the show.

How to hook your audience to reel them in?

You can use any of the following approaches:

• Ask The Audience A Question: You can pose some interesting, intelligent, or thought-provoking questions to the audience.

For instance,

“What will you do if your blog starts making $5 million a month?”

• Quote Famous People: Quoting some famous people like Steve Jobs or Ernest Hemingway can be a great way to hook your audience. People tend to believe every single word these people say.

For example,

“Any achievement in business is never accomplished by a single person; a team of skilled members from diversified fields is always needed.” — Steve Jobs

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” — Ernest Hemingway

• Tell A Story: Storytelling could be the key ingredient in making your post more engaging. It’s one of the most effective ways to make your audience pay attention.

Stories make your audience more relatable which allows you to deliver your message clearly and persuasively.

A study by Ethos3 says that storytelling increases audience retention by up to 26%.

• Quote A Foreign Proverb: You can hook your audience by using some foreign proverbs.

For example,

“Not the cry, but the flight of the wild duck leads the flock to fly and follow.”      —- A Chinese proverb

“However long the night, the dawn will break.”      —- African Proverb

“One good turn deserves another.”       —- English proverb

“Gold doesn’t rust on the ground, and rocks don’t get soaked in the rain.”        —- Turkish proverb

Step #3: Write An Outline

 

By creating an outline you can ensure that your post covers all the important points in a logical order. This also helps to keep you focused on the overall structure of your blog.

Divide your post into three sections:

— Introduction

— Body

— Conclusion

The body may consist of headings, sub-headings, and notes including images and links. For List Post, you can write bullet points of the items on your list.

For the Introduction and Conclusion, you can note what you have to say.

Step #4: Write Compelling Headlines

 

A headline is the most important part of your Blog Post.

A compelling headline will be good for Search Engines as well as your readers.

As per Copyblogger’s study,

Only about 20% of your readers will actually read the full content of your post, and 80% will read only the headlines.

According to David Ogilvy,

On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

So, creating a catchy, descriptive, and compelling headline is not only important but crucial to a successful blog.

A few tips for writing great headlines:

• Use attractive adjectives

Use attractive and compelling adjectives to stir interest and make an impact on your reader.

Here are some examples of strong adjectives you can include in your headline:

Essential	Appealing
Powerful	Absolute
Amazing	Simple
Efficient	Winning
Valuable	Successful
Trendy	Recommended
Fascinating	Fantastic
Proven	Mind-blowing
Critical	Outrageous
Effortless	Stunning
Free	Useful
Smart	Incredible
Awesome	Huge

• Use Numbers

Using numbers helps you in organizing your post. And at the same time, use digits instead of writing them in words.

• Include Keywords phrase

Including keywords in headlines would be good for your SEO. Search Engines like Google, Bing, and others use the keyword phrase to rank your post in their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

• Use Rationales

Rationale means an underlying reason or the reasons or intentions that cause a particular set of beliefs or actions.

Your post must contain a strong enough reason for your readers to go on reading the full content of your article.

You can consider the following rationales to include in your headline:

Tips

Tricks

Lessons

Facts

Principles

Reasons

Ideas

Strategies

Secrets

Ways

• Use multiple headlines

Make a list of all the headline ideas you have and choose the best one from that list.

Or, you can share 3-5 best headlines with your team or your employees and ask them to vote.

This way you will be able to find the one that’s most clickable and shareable.

Step #5: Add Sub-headings, Use Bullet Points And Bolded Words

 

Break your article with sub-headings rather than making it a giant paragraph.

Most of the readers first scan the content and only after that, they decide to read it.

Splitting your content into multiple parts will make your readers scan the content more easily.

Use bolder or bigger fonts for your sub-headings to draw the readers’ attention.

To highlight important information is also important.

For this, you can bold the important sentences and also use bullet points.

Bolded words and bullet points also help your readers skim through easily.

Step #6: Add Images and Videos

 

Add Images and Videos to your post to make it more engaging and entertaining.

Using images and videos will be helpful for SEO as well. Search Engines like Google and Bing prefer media-rich content. They may display your site in relevant results.

Make sure to include descriptive Alt Tags for the images of your post. This will be helpful for your SEO. With the help of images, your readers will be able to understand more complex topics quite easily.

For instance, Diagrams, Charts, Infographics, or Tables can help your readers grasp the points you’re trying to make through your blog.

Step #7: Use Internal and External Links

 

Linking your post internally, i.e., linking to other related posts on your blog will be very helpful for both the Search Engines and readers.

Internal Links will send the readers to other posts on your blog and they will end up spending more time on your blog.

It’s also good for the SEO viewpoint because Search Engine bots will create relationships between the pages in your blog. This will help boost the rank of the page you’re linking to.

Linking your post externally, i.e., linking to other high-quality related sites will also improve the ranking of your site in SERPs.

External links will help your readers find additional information related to your post.

Step #8: Include Call-To-Actions (CTAs)

 

Adding a clear call to action is very important to connect with the readers.

You can ask your readers to leave a comment, share your post, follow on social media, purchase a product, subscribe to your blog post, or sign up for the email newsletter.

Here are some examples of CTAs:

• Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts.
• Download my free guide.
• Buy my book to learn the most effective ways to write great blog posts.

Step #9: Optimize Your Post for Search Engines

 

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of affecting the online visibility of your website or your post in SERPs. It helps your pages rank higher in SERPs, thus sending more and more traffic to your site.

Following are some of the basic SEO rules:

• Add Page Title.
• Add proper Meta Description. It’s important because it is what gives your readers a brief idea about your post.
• Use a variety of related keywords.
• Use proper URL structure and keep it short. Just include your target keyword.
• Maintain the quality of the content. This will give your readers a reason to read and share your post.
• Add well-written Alt Tags for your images.
• Use internal and external links.

 

Related: 

• What is SEO and What are its Different Types?
• How To Write SEO-Friendly Content?
• On-Page SEO: Top 12 On-Page SEO Techniques

Conclusion:

 

You don’t need to be a great writer or an expert on your topic to become successful as a Blogger.

Just choose a topic that interests you and get started.

And never go for perfection.

Perfection is nothing.

Your blog post will never be perfect.

And you got to accept it.

Even the best blog posts of yours could always be better.

Just try to make it as good as it can be.

So, choose the blogging platform (Recommended: WordPress.org), use the tools available, and follow the process.

And share your thoughts, your ideas, and your experiences with the world.

 

Happy Blogging!