How to Crush Writing Blog Articles

Publishing articles regularly on your website is still one of the most important ways to market your business online. Without a blog, you’re missing out on valuable boosts to your SEO ranking, you miss the opportunity of having sharable content on your social media that drives traffic to your website, and you have less space to put call-to-actions that attract leads and sell your business.  Content on your blog is still very essential in today’s digital world, and yet there are still far too many businesses that hesitate to even start a blog. We’ve heard every different variety of reasons. But the most common reason of all is that people simply don’t know how to write one!

Don’t worry, we get it. It is challenging to write blog articles if you’ve never done it before. Thinking about the right keywords and putting them all together in a way that makes them  interesting to read is a challenging task. You might even think that it takes a lot of time to write one. However, it’s simple when you know what to talk about. For example, we can anchor on the fact that you are already an expert in your field! The mere fact that you have started your own business means you are very knowledgeable about your field (we hope!). That is one big step further towards writing a lot of great blog articles that your audience and customers will benefit from!

In this post, we’ll be running you through the process of understanding your audience, creating a content plan and obviously how to write a blog article.  Last but not least, we’ve also thrown in a few tips on how to create an exceptionally easy and fun writing experience for yourself You have to enjoy the process, so make it your own!

1. Know your target audience
2. Research
3. Create a plan
4. Start writing
5. Review your draft
6. Optimize SEO

1. Know Your Target Audience

All marketing efforts start with identifying your audience. Having a thorough understanding of your audience means you will have a better chance of writing blog articles and content that interests them. Hubspot suggests starting out by developing your buyer personas. Who are your customers? What are their interests? Developing a clear picture of who your audience is will help you create blog articles that resonates with them. For example, if your audience are millennials who want to start their own business, you don’t write about the basics of how to use social media because they likely already know it. Instead, write about 5 ways you can utilize social media for your business. Did you see the difference? The latter is what most likely your audience wants to hear.

2. Research

It’s definitely hard to write when you don’t have any idea what to write in the first place. This is where the importance of doing your research comes in. Your blog topics have to be well thought out and backed up by research. To do this, you should always start with keyword research.  What are keywords? These are the searches related to your business, your products and your services. How do you know what keywords people are searching to find you? There are plenty of tools out there that you could use. One tool we use is Ubersuggest. Just key in your website’s domain, the name of your product or a very relevant keyword to your business, and it will generate suggested keywords, keyword search volume in your country and even blog title Ideas section. By studying these keywords, you have unlocked a data driven method to see what your audience are searching for.  This is going to ensure you’re always writing content that is relevant to what the people are wanting!!  

3. Create a Plan

Now that you have a rough idea of what your audience is searching for, you can now easily think of blog topics that you can write about. Your keywords will show a certain pattern of behavior of your users. For example, your users might be searching for the keywords “bags for travel”. From this you can write about “5 Handbags You Must Have When YouTravel”.  Try a “Mindmap” tactic where you group your keywords together and summarise them. Or, list down possible blog topics you can write for the next couple of months. Don’t get too caught up in the details, it’s better to act than to suffer from analysis paralysis! You’ll learn as you go and pick up new topics and keywords. This is normal and recommended in an ever changing digital world.  Review your plan quarterly and update it!

4. Start Writing

Once your plan has been set, find a schedule that suits you so you can easily write content and blog articles regularly.  Some people find 30 minutes daily their best personal flow for writing. Others prefer to set a day to block themselves from the world and batch work by writing all content they can in a session.  Generally, we do this for our monthly content and write timely articles and content when the muse beckons. Choose a blog topic you want to write about and follow these steps:

1. Think of a title and use numbers – Your title can be the hardest part, but it’s the premise of your article and is obviously the most important part.  Your title must be interesting enough for the reader to click when they see it and understand the key message and length of your blog post. A good title captures attention, communicates the key points and resonates with the audience. For example, you want to write about marketing on social media. Instead of just writing “The Importance of Social Media Marketing”, you may change it to “5 Reasons Why You Must be Marketing on Social Media”. The latter one is more conversational (because of the words “Why You”) and explains clearly the content of the blog post (5 Reasons, so it’s not too long).  Having numbers in your title also gives your readers a clear indication of how long the article is. Your readers will know that 100 Reasons is going to be a lot longer than 5 Reasons! Numbers work very well and we always recommend adding these to your blog titles.
2. Create an introduction – The first sentences of your blog is crucial. If it’s not hooking enough, you’ll lose the chance that the reader will finish it. Catch the reader’s attention in this part. You can start off with a question, a fact, or a story. In the introduction, you also explain the purpose of the post and how it answers or solves the reader’s problem. This will keep your reader continuing reading the blog article because the reader is expecting something.
3. Outline your content – Having an outline helps you organize your thoughts. First, outline your main points, and determine in what order you will explain them. Also, it is recommended to divide them into sections. For example, if you’re writing about “All About the Immune System”,  you can divide it into three sections: (1)What is the immune system, (2)How does the immune system work (3)Foods to boost your immune system. Creating sections does not only help you write your blog post; it also makes your blog post readable.
4. Add a Call-to-Action – Take advantage of the reader’s attention by adding a call-to-action in the end. What do you want your reader to do after reading the entire blog post? Do you want them to answer a form? Do you want them to purchase a product? How about downloading an e-book? Although a call-to-action is beneficial for the marketer, it also offers value to the reader by directing them to additional related content.  
5. Kyle’s Writing Lifehack – we use Google Docs for everything in our business.  There is a speech to text function that allows you to verbally dictate your content.  This is great for a few reasons. Firstly, Google loves content that is written in a spoken manner.  It’s great for long-tail keywords and it just flows far more naturally. Secondly, you can talk way faster than you can type.  Ask anyone, if you’re taking notes during a meeting there’s NO way you’re going to be able to capture it all! My typing speed is around 70 – 80 words per minute (humble brag) but my spoken words per minute is 150 – 200 words per minute.  Yes, I can talk! Obviously, this is a great way to produce content faster and save you time and effort during your content writing sessions.  

5. Review Your Draft

You are almost done with your blog post! Just a few finishing touches is needed. Proofreading your blog post is essential. Having misspelled words or grammatical errors sends an impression to your readers.  Have someone else check your draft. If you’re a small business owner, get your partner or a friend to read them. Or even a customer that you have a good relationship with! Also, make sure you did not plagiarize anything! Search engines penalize websites that copy and paste sentences from another source. You can use a tool like Small SEO Tools to have your blog post checked for possible plagiarism.

6. Optimize SEO

Last but not the least, optimize your blog articles for search engines. You want to make sure that your blogpost is searchable so that you won’t waste your effort in writing one. This also helps drive in traffic to your website. 

Start off by looking for a featured image. Your image should show clearly the content of your website. Make sure you follow copyright rules! You can search for copyright-free images on Pixabay, PXhere and Unsplash. 

Then, choose a keyphrase. A keyphrase is the two to four most important words in your blog post. For example, if you’re writing about “Five Reasons Why You Need to Should be Marketing on Social Media”, your keyphrase could be “social media” or “social media marketing. Keep in mind that it should appear at least three times in your blog.

Next, incorporate your SEO keywords to your blog post if possible, Go back to your list of keywords and try your best to add it in your blog post. If you can include it in your title, then much better, but make sure not to force it.

Also, SEO-friendly blogs are those with links in it. You can link certain words to other content on your website or to other websites for reference.

Lastly, make sure your blog post is readable on mobile. It’s not new to us that the majority of internet users are on mobile. Make sure your blog section is mobile-responsive, and the length of your blog post is enough for a mobile reader.

Still Need Help?

If you really have no time to write or you think blog writing is not really for you, then our agency can help you with that. Book in a FREE 30-MINUTE Consultation and we’d be happy to assist you!