Organizing and writing content for a blog is the hardest and most crucial part of blogging. One part that most bloggers struggle with is how to capture the reader with a catchy intro paragraph, then trying to keep the reader's focus on the blog without them closing out! Here are a few tips on introduction writing, outlining, and blogging!
Start with a catchy introduction that grabs your reader's attention. Create a layout for your blog that is concise and highlights the important topics. Some content management systems offer blog templates to help you start your post. After writing, make sure to edit your post and pick a memorable title. Last, celebrate your work!
Don’t start by jumping into listing out the five tips in the post. Start by creating a story around how these tips will help to handle those last minute cancellations. You want to connect honestly with your reader. You know what their challenges and pain points are, so go ahead and poke at them. After you capture their interest with your introduction, describe how your post will address the challenges as mentioned earlier. This will give the reader a reason to stick around and read the blog.
The layout of your content is vital to the success of your post. You want to make sure that you don’t intimidate or scare off your reader with 25 paragraphs of plain text. Organize your content, so the flow works well and everything is laid out in a friendly, easy to read format. Create sections, lists, tips, bold sub headers, and add images.
We recommend starting with a post outline. An outline will do two things: create sections for your content and give you an excellent framework to begin your writing.
Use your outline to help guide you on your journey as you write your post and expand on each point listed in the template. Start by writing about what you know on the topic, how you can help. If needed, turn to Google and do a bit of research on the topic to help support your writing. Don’t be afraid to link to any relevant posts that strongly support your topic. When researching for post content, it may be easy to get distracted and go off topic. Try your best to stay the course and stick to the main topic.
Writing the post might be the hardest part of the whole process. Now that you’ve got that done let’s shift our focus to editing the doc. We recommend sharing the post with a colleague as a second set of eyes are more likely to catch typos and grammar errors. If you are looking for a tool that works well, we recommend using Grammarly. They have a free version of their proofing tool, and it is a fantastic piece of software.
The last piece of the pie is making sure you have a solid title. Let’s take the working title from step 2 and spruce it up. Before we work on the title, we want to mention some valuable advice when creating the title. First, keep it short; people may get overwhelmed when reading a very long title. It is best practice to keep a title within the 65 character limit. This is also the length of a title Google displays in search results. The last thing you want is your creative, catchy title getting cut off in the search.
OK, let’s start! Make sure the title is clear, and provides an accurate description of the post. If you haven’t included a keyword, now is the time, but you want to make sure the keyword fits in the title naturally. Lastly, and most importantly, let’s make sure the title is engaging and inviting.
Now, you have a clear understanding of your Buyer Persona, created topic ideas, and wrote your blog. You’re ready for the next step: Formatting and Visual Optimization! If you want the full Ultimate Blogging Guide be sure to click below and download it today for free! As one of the leads in San Diego SEO and Web Design, we are here to help!