Writing a blog post is some thing that every business person needs to do but just does not have the time to devote to it on a regular basis. I have had business people make promises to write blog posts every month or week and then give up after the first attempt, because it is not part of their business to write blog posts.
Blogging is an activity that takes time to do, from planning and writing to publishing and getting found by your intended audience. For a post of approximately 800 words you should give yourself at least 2 hours to complete the planning and writing part of the process.
As you go through the planning you should consider how your post will be found, how it should look, who is looking for it, what question are you answering for them, links to authority information and incoming links to your post and, finally what you ant people to do having read your post.
Planning
You can do this at any time by noting down any ideas that come to you. When you have a strong idea of what you are going to write about then it is a good idea to start making detailed notes and plan the flow of your post. You should be noting key elements that may form the headings and sub-headings of your post to give it structure. Importantly you are noting down keywords or phrases that you think people will use to look for your post.
How long should a blog post be?
About 800 words is a good target to aim for. Any longer and you risk losing your audience and any shorter may not get your story told.
Keyword research
This is probably not top of your mind when you are writing a blog post, but it should be very near the top or what is the point of writing a post if nobody will find it and read it. Keywords are the starting point for all content because that is how people find content on search engines, by typing the keywords into the search bar on search engine websites. Search engines are not only Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo, they are also the social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Tone
How your post is seen by others will determine whether or not they will read it. If you expect them to be in a business frame of mind then write for business and if you expect them to be in a relaxed mood then write in a less formal style. Using humour can be tricky, specially if you are writing for business – your joke may fall flat or even offend people. Humour is not bad, you just need to be aware of the effect that it may have on your audience.
Personas
You need to imagine who is going to be reading your posts. Are they at work, at home, or in a café? What do they do at work? Are they male or female, or something else. How tall are they? How do they dress? All of this may be relevant to your blog posts as it will influence how you write and what words you choose to get your meaning across.
Problem that you are solving
You could just ramble on about nothing in particular but your audience will get bored or get lost, either way they will not do what you want them to. Ask yourself questions about your post blog post. What problem am I trying to solve for my readers? In this case, help in writing a blog post. What question am I trying to answer? In this case, what you need to consider when writing a blog post.
Links
Links to other content are important, as are incoming links from other websites. Search engines love links because their bots can go off and find new content to index and rate. Links also help your readers to find information that you refer to in your blog post or enable them to take the actions that you want them to. At the very least, you should have a link to your contact page or your newsletter sign up form.
When it comes to publishing you should share on social networks at the very least to provide you with incoming links that search engines will follow. This is also the start of your post going viral 😊
Call to Action
Finally, you should encourage your readers to take some form of action after reading your blog post. After all you want them to become your customers in the long run. It may be that you are promoting an event, in which case you want them to register (and pay) for attending it. You could just be trying to grow your email list and so you want them to sign up for it. Talking of which , please either get in touch to find out how I can help you with your blogging and sign up for our newsletter (no more than once per week).