Whether you run your business blog, a personal blog or a lifestyle blog, one thing is for sure – you need readers. The blogosphere is competitive these days so to set yourself apart from the crowd you have to find your unique voice and learn how to write better blog posts.
Since the social media platforms world is on the rise, you might be tempted to believe that blogging is dead. However, what most people do when they want to find information? They google it! So if your blog posts appear in Google searches, your blog will have readers. It’s as simple as that.
For business, blogs are the most reliable sources of website traffic. And the most successful content marketing tool, especially for B2Bs. Moreover, blogging is a cost-effective way to reach your audience, a great way to generate leads and an even better way to establish yourself as an authority figure in your industry.
The era of clickbait titles, short articles, and bad content is long gone. The ever-evolving Google algorithm is pro high-quality content these days so we figured some tips for how to write better blog posts wouldn’t hurt you. In fact, these blog writing tips can change your blog and turn it into a place where people go to find useful information, ideas, and tips or read your story.
How to Come Up With Blog Ideas
When you started your blog, you probably had tons of ideas, however, as time passed, you felt less and less inspired. It feels like you wrote everything you wanted to write when you started and there’s nothing you can cover anymore. Blog topics are never-ending though, you just have to find your inspiration again. There are also a few tricks you can try when you’re running out of ideas.
Know Your Audience
If you know your audience, it is easy to come up with blog topics. You should know the readers’ struggles, problems, questions. You should also be able to offer them solutions and answer through your blog posts. As long as those match the overall topic of your blog, of course.
Take Regular Polls
When you’re not exactly sure what your readers want, ask them. Social media can help you with this task. You can do a poll on Facebook, Instagram story or on Twitter. You can use polls periodically to determine what to write. And there are several ways to do polls – you can either come up with a few topics and ask the audience to vote if you’re not sure about your ideas or you can ask them directly what they want to read on your blog.
Analyze Your Own Blog
Another great way to find ideas for your blog posts is to check your blog’s comments and see what people want to read next. In most cases, there are a few comments you can rely on. You can also check your blog’s analytics, see which topics you covered were the most popular, and try to write a similar type of article with a different topic. Is the most popular article on your blog a review? Write more reviews! Is it a list of dos and don’ts? Write that type of article then!
Share Your Experience Reviews
And speaking of reviews – any time you’re struggling to come up with article ideas, think about a product or service that is useful for your target audience and write a review. Make sure it’s a real review, not an article that just lists the characteristics of a product. Talk about your experience, give your readers tips & tricks, and don’t be afraid to share the negatives too. Honest reviews are always appreciated.
Keyword Research
This is an obvious one but we gotta mention it – do keyword research to find blog post ideas. You can use Google’s Keyword Planner or another tool you use. Think of a general topic, write it down in the keyword research tool and get inspired by the results.
Trends and Other Online Resources
Set up trend alerts for your industry and related industries. You’ll receive new ideas daily this way. You can also use Quora or Reddit for inspiration.
Life Experiences
Let yourself be inspired by the world around you. Anything goes here – art, music, books, games, videos, museums, etc. But less inspiring resources can also bring you amazing ideas; we all know the best ideas come to us while showering.
How to Outline Your Post
Now that you settled on a topic, it is time to work on the article’s outline. Not many bloggers do this but it is an essential step. It helps you to stay focused while writing, it makes the writing process easier, and it is a great way to check if you covered all the things you want to cover in an article.
Identify Your Main Points
First thing you have to do – identify the main points of the article. Basically, you’ll create a skeleton for the article. If you did keyword research, you already have a few headline ideas in mind. If not, now it is time to do the research and see what people want to know about the topic you decided to cover.
Dig Deeper
When you have the skeleton, do more in-depth research to find resources that can help you with the actual writing. If you don’t know where to start, do what journalists do when writing a news article and ask the five questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how. You don’t have to answer all these questions. After all, you’re writing a blog article not a press release or news article but these questions are a great starting point for your blog post.
Make It Personal
Don’t forget you’re writing a blog post so your opinion or input matters the most. Detail your own experience, give insights, and share your perspective. Add humor and other personality elements that make your writing style different from the one of other bloggers. People come for the information but they stay for the style and personal input so make sure you offer value and personality at the same time.
How to write compelling headlines
At this point, you have the headline ideas but you don’t have the actual headlines. Headlines are important because they capture the reader’s attention. You don’t want boring headlines, you want the headlines to stand out. You don’t want headlines that are not clear either, you want them to convey the information. Short and engaging headlines with a sense of urgency are the best. It is also recommended to include keywords in your headlines. It’s good for SEO but it’s also good to keep the reader’s attention.
Use Odd Numbers
Once upon a time, people used even numbers in titles and headlines but it seems that the viral content of today uses odd numbers. So why write 10 ideas for something when you can write 13? You don’t have to include numbers in all headlines or all article titles but when you have to, opt for odd numbers.
Use Strong Adjectives
Strong adjectives are the new and improved clickbait titles. Except they are not clickbait, they just have the same effect. You don’t want to lie in your headlines, you just want to make sure people will read your articles paragraph by paragraph.
Convey a Benefit to the Reader
Another great way to keep the reader’s attention is to tell them what they get if they read your article or article sections. Knowledge is the general answer, but what else? If you write for a food blog, you can include quick dinner in the headline if that’s the topic. Or a healthy dessert. Or a low-calorie meal.
Ask Questions
Asking questions it is a great way to gain and maintain readers’ attention. Usually, “yes” questions are the best. But “no” questions can be just as effective depending on what you’re writing about.
You can also ask a question that you plan to answer immediately. It grabs the reader’s attention and it makes them believe they are somehow involved in a dialogue.
Make Your Topic Relevant
Look at your articles from a reader’s point of view. Are they easy to read? Do they offer enough details? Are they useful? If the answer to all these questions is yes, you’re on the right path but there are still a few things you can do to write better blog posts.
Optimize Your Post’s Format
The formatting of your articles is just as important as the quality of the writing. Most people read on the go from their mobile phones or they are in a hurry to find the answers or solutions to their problems. If they cannot find them fast, they’ll leave the blog. Writing short, useless articles is not the solution. Formatting the text and using catchy headlines is. No one wants to read a wall of text. It’s hard to read and hard to follow. Images are also important. We won’t bother you with clichés about the importance of images because you heard them already, however, we will tell you to avoid publishing posts without compelling images that illustrate the main points of the article.
Close With a Call to Action (CTA)
It is good to always wrap up your post with a call to action. Whether that’s encouraging people to share their opinion in the comments section, tell them to follow you on social media, to subscribe to your email list or to buy your products, closing CTSs are a good reminder that you’re the expert and you have a lot to say, not just the ideas you presented them in the article they just finished reading.
To avoid an abrupt ending, start with a short summary of the
article and then write the CTA.
