Writing blog content is a core facet of any business’s marketing strategy, and 1.9 billion websites regularly post it worldwide.
Blogs are a great way to share value with an audience, while also offering a unique opportunity to capitalise on SEO and generate organic traffic. However, simply wanting to share content doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to write a good blog that potential clients will actually respond to.
In this guide, we’ll break down how to write and post a blog to ensure that readers actually get something out of it, encouraging engagement and ideally resulting in inquiries.
Note: This blog is focused on the practice of blogging for promotional reasons – personal blogs can be as expressive as you like!
Knowing how to present a blog is one of the primary pillars of effective copywriting. People rarely go to blogs to read university dissertations, even if the content covers complex technical grounds. There are some simple presentation tricks that most blogs can employ to make the content easier to digest for readers.
What does a blog look like when written properly? Below are some essential principles of readability:
Avoiding long paragraphs or massive uninterrupted passages of text
Using subheadings to denote secondary topics within the content
Don’t use superfluous language or excessively wordy sentences (keep it concise!)
Use infographics, images, charts and tables when possible
Include bullet points (much like these!)
Regardless of the blog topics you cover, the content has to be easy and enjoyable for readers.
A quality blog will be backed up with credible information. This means you can’t just make claims of fact, even in promotional content, without backing it up with credible facts and figures. Include external links to your sources for this information so your readers can continue reading up if they want to. Sites like Statista and Forbes are packed with pages that can often support the claims you make in your blogs.
Note: This doesn’t mean that blogs have to be devoid of opinion, it just depends on the context.
Knowing how to write a blog won’t necessarily do much for your business if you don’t cover topics that readers really care about. It’s important to do competitor topic and SEO research to see what your target audience is seeking out online – this will be your guide in selecting your own blog topics.
Topics Alone Aren’t Enough
Once you’ve determined some topics based on your research, it’s important to use your blogs to offer genuinely valuable information about them. The topic is likely to be something that you’re already knowledgeable on, so flex that knowledge, keeping readability in mind.
This should go without saying but the quality of the written word goes a long way in blogs. As a writer, you must always pay mind to:
Grammar
Punctuation
Sentence structure
Capitalization
Word choice
These are the basics, however, not every business owner is particularly adept in this area, so it does require some practice!
If this feels too much for you or you simply can’t fit blogging into your busy schedule, never fear. Finding the right digital marketing agency to help with your content strategy is only a few clicks away, allowing you to focus on the bigger picture without sacrificing blogging consistency.