Starting a blog provides a platform to share your thoughts and opinions on topics that interest you, demonstrate your expertise and build a community of individuals who share your interests. Whether you are looking to create a blog from the ground up or integrate blogging into your business plan, publishing content on the internet is an effective means of showcasing your knowledge and ideas to a global audience.
Writing a successful entry requires practice. That is, the more you write, the better you become at it.
However, with the right strategy in mind, you can never go wrong. Therefore, we have prepared an extensive guide to help you plan a content strategy for your blog.
We will cover everything from picking suitable blog topics and determining the appropriate writing style for your articles to incorporating captivating graphics that stimulate interest and interaction.
After reading this, you’ll have a strong understanding of how to create blog entries that clearly express your ideas and differentiate you from your rivals.
Are you ready? Let’s begin!
Table of Contents
1. Understand Your Target Audience
Before writing your blog post it is very important for you to know whom you are writing it for. That is, your target audience.
Your target audience is the particular demographic of customers most likely to be interested in your product or services. The target audience may be determined by a variety of characteristics including age, gender, income, location, hobbies, and various other factors.
You can determine your target audience by analyzing your customer base, that is people who are already interacting with your content or buying your products or services.
Secondly, you can conduct market research in your industry to see what people are looking for or even get an idea about gaps that you can fill.
Thirdly, you can carry out a competitor’s analysis and see what are they writing about and who are they targeting.
Lastly, you must create buyer personas to know and serve your audience better.
2. Determine Your Blog Topics
In order to write a blog post, keyword research is necessary. This essential SEO technique is utilized as a benchmark to determine which search terms you might be able to rank highly for.
You can find a list of keywords on various keyword tools available online. if you are new to this try working with free tools.
Additionally, you can research on various online platforms like Quora or Reddit and see what your target audience is looking for.
Using Google Analytics is also an effective way to gather data about your website. You can find key information like what are your trending blogs, where is the audience coming from, etc.
Pro Tip: Your comprehension of your target audience will become more refined as you gather additional information and interact with customers. With this understanding, it is crucial to regularly update and improve your personas to achieve optimal results.
There are different kinds of topics that you might want to use. Some of these include:
- How-To’s: A how-to article that outlines guides for readers to follow in order, such as “How to start a blog from Scratch.”
- Listicles: A carefully prepared list including a selection of suggestions for your readers, such as, “The Top 20 Fashion Blogs To Follow”.
- Tips and Tricks: A post with suggestions and recommendations that offers resources and professional counsel, such as, “Tips for creating irresistible blog content”.
- Evergreen Articles: These are based on the list of subjects that are timeless. That is, no matter what you see, these articles do not go out of trend. These generally include the basics, such as ” Basics of copy-writing”.
- Trending Articles: These are based on subjects that are in high demand for a specific period of time, such as the latest news piece.
Pro Tip: To get great results, we recommend you mix different kinds of content pieces together to form an all-in-one website.
3. Analyze Your Competitors
What is better than analyzing your competitors to get insights about the market?
Popular blogs with a lot of positive feedback are worth looking at because their execution and strategy are what helped them gain a reputation.
See what strategies are these bloggers adopting, their writing style, promotional strategies, monetization efforts, and various other factors to know the reason behind their success.
Do not copy them, however, draw some inspiration and see how can you deliver the same in your own unique style.
When conducting a competitive analysis, you should consider a number of factors:
- Visuals: Consider the logo, brand aesthetics, color scheme, and subjects of the blog.
- Tone: Examine the competition’s writing tone and style to determine what readers enjoy.
- Blog Subjects: Determine the subjects that their readers are most interested in along with those which did not do well.
4. Draft A Blog Outline
The secret to writing a blog post successfully is performing extensive research and preparing its outline before writing the actual piece.
It is essential to create an outline since it guarantees that your article will have a solid foundation upon which you can build gradually.
Subheaders are the foundation of a structured outline, so start by making them. These modest yet effective bits of writing assist you in segmenting your essay into manageable chunks, making it easier for you to write and for your audience to consume.
Another important factor is knowing the key takeaways of your blog posts. These are just all the things you want your readers to know after reading your post.
Additionally, figure out your perspective or angle. Anyone may copy anything they’ve discovered on Google, but not everyone can bring a unique perspective to the content. That’s where a blog post angle comes into play.
5. Write Irresistible Content
Now that you have figured out your blog outline, you can begin writing your blog content.
Every blog post normally consists of three primary parts: an introduction, the body of the content, and a conclusion.
Start with the introduction. As attention spans are reducing with time, you should capture the interest of your readers in the opening paragraph of your blogs.
Start with a pertinent quotation or statistic, anecdote, or some fascinating fact to hook readers. After this, provide a succinct synopsis of what you’ll discuss in the body content. This encourages your readers to read more.
The next step is to fill in the body text. Your blog post’s main body should be concise and interesting. Focus on adding value to your readers and make the information as interesting as possible. Adding videos, photos, info-graphics can do this for you.
Lastly, always add concluding sections to your blog posts. This can be helpful when conveying a story or winding up an especially long article. You can summarize your main ideas in a brief list of bullet points or by providing some short paragraphs. In any case, you should leave the reader interested.
6. SEO Savvy Blog Content
After you have written your blogs make your content Google Savvy by adopting various SEO on-page and off-page techniques.
This calls for a solid SEO strategy for content optimization both during and after the blog writing process. This involves conducting keyword research prior to the outline stage as well as employing those keywords to enhance your final blog piece.
Sprinkle relevant keywords here and there throughout your articles. Add it to your metadata, headlines, blog URL, a few subheads, or even blog body.
You should also optimize your photos and know what blog length will help you rank your posts better.
7. Choose the blog design
Another very important thing is designing your blogs to attract visitors. Nobody is going to spend time reading your blogs if the design is not up to the mark.
We understand that you are a copywriter and not a graphic designer still designing your blog should be your priority.
For people to connect with your blogs, they must have a strong visual appeal. There are several paid and free themes available online for you to check. However, we would recommend you go with the paid ones since they look more professional, come with a wider range of customization libraries, offer a variety of plugins, and are also monetized easily.
All of these blog layouts are made by qualified designers and are completely customizable to suit all kinds of design needs.
While deciding your blog theme be very careful about the color scheme you pick. As different colors trigger different user emotions, it is very important for you to go with the right colors.
8. Pick the right name for your blogs
Choosing the ideal blog name might be difficult. There are various blog name generators available online to help you with this. Additionally, you can draw some inspiration from your competitors.
It would be nice if you could come up with a clever phrase that perfectly describes what your site would be about. However, you don’t want to choose anything that won’t perform well in search results or be very restrictive.
A good blog name should be memorable, distinctive, simple, and related to your blog niche.
Making the wrong choice of name can end up costing you money. If you later decide to change it, you forfeit the branding prospects you might have been developing up to that time.
You will also need to spend money on a new logo and re-engage your audience with the new brand.
9. Pick Relevant Media
Adding visuals to your blogs is equally (or more) important than writing content. Nobody wants to read long walls of black-and-white texts, it’s boring!
To break this monotony you need to add interesting graphics. remember to not just use your pictures for decorative purposes but also to add value to your content.
On top of this, you must pay close attention to your featured image because it will be the main “visual hero” of your blog. It will show on your website’s homepage when users browse your posts.
You can also hire a graphic designer if this is not your cup of tea. trust us, this is going to be really rewarding in the long run. Some people might share your images more than your textual content boosting your site’s engagement. In addition, there are chances that people might buy images from you if they are really impressed with your design aesthetics.
In fact, adding specific images can be your USP. Think of adding hand-drawn images or HD illustrations. It can actually be one of your unique selling points because not many blogs are doing it.
10. Figure Out Your USPs
There are millions of blogs out there, so why should people read your blogs? what is it that separates you from the rest?
Ask yourself a few questions to uncover your USPs:
- What are the highlights of your products or services? Which of those holds up well in comparison to the opposition?
- What issues do your consumers have the most trouble with? And how do you address these issues?
- Do you come with any extras by default? For instance, a free website SEO analysis or a complementary guide on course completion.
- Is there any market gap that you are trying to fill up? If yes, what is it?
Once you are done with answering these, you must figure out your strengths and jot them down. Are you faster than your rivals? Do you have special courses that set you apart? Or is it something else?
Lastly, you can exploit your competitor’s weaknesses, to help you find your winning qualities.
11. CTAS Are Must
What do you want readers to do after finishing your posts or while they are still reading them? Do you want people to share your information on social media, join up for one of your relevant courses, sign up for your email list, or do something else?
For this, you must add Call To Action or CTAs in each and every blog post.
A CTA or call-to-action is shown as an embedded link or button that enticingly expresses your goal. “Subscribe,” “Download our e-book,” or “Sign up” are a few of the most typical examples.
Pro Tip: A strong call to action (CTA) should not reflect your personal gain; rather, it should appear as if you are doing everything to assist your reader.
Your website traffic can be converted into interaction and, eventually, revenue by using CTAs.
While the increasing readership is your immediate objective, you may decide to monetize your blog in the future.
12. Recheck Before You Hit Publish
We are humans and not machines, and it is very common to make errors. You must carefully review your piece for grammatical problems, redundancy, and any other unprofessional content because there can be so many blogging mistakes that can happen.
You can even ask your friends or members of your team to do a content audit before making your post live . Ask them to check for any contradictions or ambiguities. In order to maintain your readers’ interest,
Make sure your ideas are consistent throughout each part of your blog posts since this will convey to your readers a clear and focused message.
In order to maintain your readers’ interest, it’s also crucial to place an emphasis on quality rather than quantity. When you’re finished and satisfied with your writing, it’s time to push publish.
13. Promote
After you have published your blogs, you should start promoting them right away!
A strong promoting plan gives your audience more options to find your blog content across various online platforms.
There are various ways to promote your blog posts, out of which social media marketing and email marketing are immensely rewarding.
Email continues to be one of the most dependable tools for marketing since it provides a direct line of communication with your audience. While social media is one of the popular online channels to keep up with the latest news and fads.
Regardless of the platforms you select, be sure to regularly communicate with your audience. This will not only help you know your audience better to generate worthy content but also encourage them to share your blog posts.
14. Track Your Growth
Once your post has been made public, it is important to monitor its progress over time to determine whether your method for writing blog posts is meeting your objectives or not.
New visitors to your blog entries will result in fresh information or statistics that need to be reviewed.
You can use a variety of website traffic analysis tools to learn more about how your audience interacts with your blog content.
Conclusion
By blogging, you can increase conversion rates, acquire quality prospects, establish yourself as an industry thought leader, promote your products or services, and increase brand recognition.
Let us know what is your reason to start a blog?
To start publishing and improving your blog right now, follow out Top 14 Tips and Tricks provided above and you will be happy to know the results.
Did you like our post? If yes, feel free to share it with your friends and help them grow along with you. Share with us some topics for your next reads and we will be happy to serve you. Stay tuned till we notify you about your new blog. See you!
