Creating a compelling blog engages your audience! However, it’s not an easy feat and requires persuasiveness, creativity, diligence, clarity and research.
Great writers agree to be imperfect, from the start. Otherwise your blog posts will hang out on your hard drive or in your mind’s eye waiting for a time when they become perfect. Being imperfect allows the blog to be born — and the good news is that you can keep perfecting your blog posts. You don’t have to set it and forget it, althougy you can.
You might have great ideas that might be original, but it’s also good to integrate content strategy and keyword research into the back end of your blogging.
Then again you might have the perfect plan in mind but lack effective content that is meaningful and adds value to the readers’ lives.
Did you know that blog posts were some of the most credible selling assets that attract more people to your page, thus generating more leads for your business in the process?
This article seeks to inspire you to write an imperfectly perfect blog.
Before writing any blog, you need to be aware of the technique of persuasion. A reader comes to a blog post in hopes of learning something new.
Your blog post has to be persuasive so that your ideas and products seem genuine to the reader.
That is why you will see all the top-ranking content on the internet has some of the most exceptional content out there. Blog writing requires time, brainstorming, and planning to ensure the end product is excellent.
A blog post that is written with the following content strategies is sure to get your post the engagement it deserves.
Select a Captivating Topic
Before you start thinking up ideas for your blog, ask yourself what might be something that your audience would be interested in reading. When you write, keep your readers in the center. What kind of content will add value to the life of your readers? Keep brainstorming until you can come up with a reasonable answer to these questions.
Ensure the topic you pick is compelling and aligns with your blog’s purpose.
You can engage with your audience to learn more about what they expect from you. This way, your blog post will be able to garner a substantial amount of traffic after it’s published.
Research Is Key
It’s a common misconception that blog writers must always come up with something that’s never been said or done before. This approach can cause many roadblocks between you and a great blog post. What truly matters in blog writing is to say something valuable in a way that can get through to the readers. If you’re still in business after all these years, you’ll indeed have something different to offer to the people. Ask yourself, what is something that makes you different from the rest? It can be anything.
However, don’t ignore what you want to convey to your audience. Combine what you want to say with what your readers want to hear.
After that, identify the questions or topics that have already been answered and have become repetitive with time. You may proceed if you have something unique to say about said topics. Otherwise, it might not be a great idea.
Once you have chosen a topic, type the title of your potential blog post in the search engine and look at all the options on the front page. This way, you better understand what competitors you’ll be going against.
You can also use this opportunity to gauge what’s best for you and what points have room for improvement. It’s alright if you think your blog post will never be as good as theirs. A good blog doesn’t have to be filled with top-quality content always. However, your blog needs some promising research to bring value to the readers.
You can also research and make the content even more relevant by getting insight into the common pain points of your audience.
This research can include Quora, Twitter research, niche forums, blog comments and reviews, Facebook groups, and your website. Do this often before you brainstorm for a blog post, so you know what the popular demand of your target audience is.
Create an Outline
While you research, make a mental map of all the points you want to include in your blog post. Have a space dedicated to writing down all the crucial points that come up during research, so you can add them to your outline and organize your blog accordingly.
Have a notebook or a note-taking app near you so you don’t procrastinate or lose track of the vital point.
It would help if you had some mental picture in your mind that allows you to carve out the trajectory of your blog. A clear understanding of the organization will allow you to create a better outline.
Don’t forget to keep your primary audience in mind while creating an outline and ask yourself what kind of organization would better help the reader. Would your content look more comprehensive as a step-by-step tutorial or perform better if the organization is more casual?
You can’t just have words in your blog post if you expect it to have maximum reach and generate leads. Images add a creative and lighthearted touch to your post. It’s even better if you use images of your business to connect with your audience. Visual storytelling also allows the reader a refreshing break from the uniformity of words. Simple graphics can be created on tools like Canva completely free!
Ensure that the images you choose for your blog post are solid and captivating in their appearance. The feature images need to be without words to allow the readers to break from reading and look at something pleasant for a while.
You can also go for a stock image from Im Free, Unsplash, Picography, and Magdeleine, among others.
If you want to use someone else’s picture, make sure that picture is approved for commercial use. It becomes your responsibility to give credit where it is due.
Your visual storytelling process needs to be a coherent one. Add a variety of visual media to your blog post that does the talking for your content. You can attach quotes, screenshots, stock photos, and suitable images to add value to your visual story.
Including an image after writing every 300 words is a great technique. Your image needs to have the appropriate alt text attached to it to bring traffic to your blog. Save the image with the primary keyword or a phrase that consists of it. Readers generally don’t wait that long to decide whether they want to continue on your website or not.
Having attention-grabbing images on your blog post is a great way to drive more engagement in the form of shares, likes, and clicks.
Look at what your competitors are doing. The point is not to imitate your competitors but to identify a common theme in the content. Study the recurring headings and subheadings and try to see how your content can make use of those.
After that, pick a relevant topic and research popular keywords for the content you’ll be putting out. Use these tips and prepare the first draft for your potential blog post.
In addition to these points, you can note down specific ideas you would like to discuss in your blog post. Make use of all the suitable keywords but use them intelligently.
Check out Erica Glessing’s podcast episode on the same topic!
https://seorankitup.podbean.com/e/seo-rank-it-up-podcast-127-how-to-write-an-imperfectly-perfect-blog-post/
Write a Catchy Opening
Your opening line is priceless and needs to be a compelling one. A good opening line encourages the reader to want to continue reading. If your introduction is dull and sounds dragged, the readers will find it boring and quit reading any further. Many authors prefer to write the body of the post before the introduction as it’s easier.
You can write a good hook by introducing a question in the beginning. It’s best if the question you introduce is relevant to the reader’s pain points. Proceed by adding that your content in the post will be helpful to them in solving their problem. Doing this will grab your readers’ attention and compel them to read the entire thing.
There are some guidelines about writing openings, but some of it is debatable. Some writers stress on specificity, while others encourage fellow writers to use a more abstract approach.
You can select a headline and structure the content of your blog post according to it. This approach gives you a direction to structure the outline of your blog. On the other hand, you can write your first draft and then come up with the headline. The choice is yours to make.
Don’t Forget to Search Engine Optimize Your Blog
SEO is what gets traffic to your website. Your content might be of the highest quality, but if it doesn’t make use of SEO, then it won’t be able to perform that well.
If you want your blog post to have maximum engagement and perform well, you need to level up your SEO. Study the popular SEO practices in your particular niche these days and use focus keywords superiorly.
Add relevant keywords in your title and subheadings, and don’t forget about SEO titles and meta descriptions.
Your blog post cannot be less than 300 words for excellent reach. Most blog writers suggest publishing a post with at least 1000 words.
SEO is not just about focus keywords. Make the most of the images in your blog post and use them appropriately for visual SEO. Optimize your images and ensure they have proper
descriptive names and aren’t the wrong size. In addition to this, the images need to have proper alt tags and categories for successful SEO.
- Keywords
Keywords allow your focus audience to find you on the search engine. Avoid including all your keywords in one line. Instead, use them intelligently. Your goal should be to use keywords that will allow your post to rank higher on the Search Engine Results Page. Don’t force the keywords in your phrases. Aim for a more natural flow in your texts.
- Tags
Whenever you use SEO for blogging, don’t forget to include helpful SEO tags that allow search engines to categorize your content. With SEO, it’s recommended to be as specific as you can. Important SEO tags can include title, meta description, image alt, and header tags.
- Links
Links are pretty crucial for SEO. Ensure you don’t forget to add internal and external links to your blog. The role of internal links is to inform search engines about the nature of your blog. Contrary to this, external links help improve your reliability in SERP ranking.
Write a Compelling Call to Action
Once your target audience has reached your blog, you don’t want them to leave without taking action on the site. You have to persuade the reader to have some engagement with the post. You can convince the audience to subscribe to your email newsletter, share your post with their friends, or tell you their thoughts about the blog by leaving a comment.
It is recommended to include only one CTA to avoid any distractions for the audience. Keep asking yourself what benefits your readers get from taking action on your blog website.
Proofreading and Publishing
Bloggers need to understand that editing their posts side by side wastes time and drains their creative energy. It’s best to leave the editing and proofreading till the end.
The optimal time to start proofreading is after you’re done writing the complete copy. After finishing the first copy, leave it for a few hours or a day. Come back to it later when you’ve acquired a newer and fresher perspective on your writing.
Ensure that your grammar and spelling are top class if you want to be taken seriously. Avoid too much repetition and aim to offer readers something new each time.
It’s also advised to keep your sentences and paragraphs short, so your readers won’t feel overwhelmed by the overabundance of text on the screen. Strive for a minimal look with your words.
Just in case you’d like to listen to this compelling topic, Erica Glessing riffs about it on her recent podcast episode of the same title! https://seorankitup.podbean.com/e/seo-rank-it-up-podcast-127-how-to-write-an-imperfectly-perfect-blog-post/
