How To Write An Effective Blog Post

Blogging is not as simple as opening a blank document and starting to write. The best posts answer specific questions for a targeted audience in a way that’s easy to skim, understand, and remember. 

As you might imagine, that’s no easy task. It’s also far from impossible. Analyse successful blog posts, and you begin to see how they accomplish their goals. Distilled down to a formula, these 10 steps can help you write an effective blog post designed to attract, convince, and convert your readers.

1) Know Your Audience

The right blog post starts where every good marketing initiative begins: your target audience. No matter how great the content is, you will not succeed if you don’t write specifically to the wants, needs, and pain points of your audience.

That’s no easy task. Pure demographics probably won’t help you accomplish it. Instead, you have to dig deeper:

• Perform industry research to find out the types of content your audience tends to read and share.
• Conduct audience surveys (or tap into third-party research) to learn about pain points.
• Develop buyer personas that help you understand your readers on a deeper level, leading to better guesses on what you might want to write about.

Think about it from your audience’s perspective: what type of content would you actually want to read? What adds value in a way that’s significant enough to draw them in, and keep engaging them throughout the length of the post?

You can’t afford to guess the answers. Only thorough audience research can help you build the right type of post.

2) Perform Keyword Research

Heads up: this is the first of two sections in which at least basic knowledge of Search Engine Optimisation practices becomes absolutely valuable. Once you have a good idea of your audience and the types of posts they want to read, start connecting that to actual searches.

You likely already know about the concept of keyword research, which helps you find out what exact terms and phrases Google users in your industry actually look for. It’s an invaluable part of blog writing.

Your blog post, above all, is an optimisation opportunity. Yes, you can push to the page using social media and other tactics (more on that in step 10). But ultimately, a large percentage of your readers should come as a result of a Google search on the topic.

That means finding the terms and phrases that your audience looks for when they seek answers to their questions and solutions to their pain points. Don’t be afraid to learn from your competitors, either. A number of competitive keyword research tools help you find the phrases they rank for.

As Google moves more towards natural language, semantic search and user intent in their algorithm, remember to make this a key consideration in your keyword research process.

3) Find Your Topic And Post Type

You know your audience, and you have at least an idea on what topics you should focus on based on relevant keywords. That means it’s time to get specific.

First, select a specific topic to write on. That should consist of an intersection between audience need, relevant high-volume keywords, and your own expertise. If you can find the middle of that triangle, you’re in good shape.

Next, determine what post type best addresses the topic at hand. You technically have countless options, but most of them can be boiled down to a few simple archetypes:

• The how-to tutorial
• The list of snackable content
• The curated post from other content
• The visual presentation
• The newsjacking post of a current trend or event
• The behind-the-scenes post about your company
• The cheat sheet or checklist

Which of these makes sense for the post in question depends on a number of things. First, it has to match the topic at hand. Second, you have to keep content varied; the fifth tutorial in a row probably won’t be as successful as the first you posted. Finally, general audience preferences matter. For instance, lists posts have been proven to drive more traffic than most other content types.

4) Create a Content Outline

With your post type in hand, it’s temptingly easy to create a content outline. Be careful here; instead of restricting yourself to a simple broad overview, start digging down on the research and subheadings that can take your post to the next level.

It starts with a basic outline. Create a working headline, a rough introduction/synopsis of what the post will be about, and a few subheaders that cover the different sections you want to cover within the topic you’ve chosen.

Then, dig in. While all content should be working copy only, it’s time to get specific so that the final writing job just flows out of your brain and onto the page. In that vein, a detailed content outline might look something like the below:

Completing an outline with this kind of detail is daunting, but well worth the effort. It sets the stage for everything that’s about to come, first and foremost the writing.

5) Write the Blog Post

We’re halfway through the article, and the writing hasn’t even started yet. That changes now. At this point, you should have a great idea of exactly what you need to focus on, and how to find your way there. Now, it’s time to finally put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, or voice to dictation).

Pay special attention to the introduction. Here, you have to grab your reader’s attention, establish your authority, and explain just what the post will aim to accomplish. Here are some great introduction examples to get you started.

As you begin to write, it pays to keep a few other considerations in mind as well:

• Keep your sentences simple and don’t use too many fancy words. The ideal reading level for a blog post is about 8th grade, which you can easily check in Word, or if you use SEMrush, their SEO Writing Assistant add-on.
• Keep your individual paragraphs short. Beyond three sentences per paragraph, audiences tend to tune out because they can’t easily skim the content any more.
• Perform at least one proofreading, ideally by someone other than you. It’s easy to overlook typos, and these can effect your credibility over time.
• Follow, but question your content outline where needed. If a piece of research or support point no longer fits, don’t be afraid to leave it out.
• Find the right length. There is no exact science for this. Some studies suggest that the ideal blog post ranges between 2,000 and 2,400 words. But really, it should be long enough to successfully and clearly convey its purpose to your audience.

6) Ensure Post “Skimmability”

As you write your content, pay special attention to the audience’s ability to skim through it.

According to one study, the average reader will spend 15 seconds or less on your blog post. To make them count, you have to make sure they can get at least the basic premise and content even within that short time frame.

Some of the techniques mentioned above, especially the simple sentences and short paragraphs, help. Don’t be afraid to go beyond them:

• Include plenty of subheaders throughout the content, descriptive enough to convey the gist of what that section covers, and to break up chunks of text for better readability.
• Feature bullet and numbered lists where possible to highlight related concepts. You’re looking at one of those right now!
• Keep the style simple by avoiding a switch of fonts or too many font sizes within a single post.
• Bold and underline words if you think they’re absolutely crucial to getting the main points across.
• Use relevant images where they help to illustrate your point.

7) Write the Headline

The last part of the writing exercise is the headline. This might just be the most important part of the entire blog post. Within 60 characters or less, it has to grab attention, convey basic information, and hook the reader. 

The best-performing headlines tend to include power words that convey a specific emotion. One study actually found that negative superlative headlines outperform all other types in click-through rates. A few other headline tips include:

• Using action verbs where possible to convey motion.
• Pique your audience’s interest with hints at something they don’t know about.
• Ask a question or find other ways to engage your audience personally.
• Include numbers in your headline, especially for a list post.
• Connect your headline to your content to avoid false promises and cognitive dissonance (avoid click-baitey titles).

Don’t be afraid to test your headlines, either. Run a few options past select audience members or even your own employees for feedback. More advanced systems offer A/B testing that accomplish the same feat in real time.

8) Optimise the “Look and Feel”

Other than your metadata and the promotional strategy surrounding the blog post, the writing is done. Time to pay attention to the visuals that will make the content pop where needed.

We’re inherently visual beings, and the vast majority of information our brains process on a minute-to-minute basis is visual. Your blog post needs to reflect that focus, ideally through images and graphics that enhance the content.

Use images and infographics to enhance and visualise key points you’re trying to make in the writing. Break up the text where needed. Blog posts with relevant images receive, on average, 94% more views than those without visuals. Pick a feature image, as well as several secondary visuals to live alongside the written portions.

We don’t believe that there is a single “best way” to format a blog post. Too much depends on the content, type, and visuals. That said, this template tends to work well as a general guideline. It helps you organise just where writing, images, and the final call to action should live. Also, don’t forget a proper heading structure. The H1, H2’s etc are important in conveying importance, focus and page hierarchy. 

9) Add Relevant Metadata

With the writing and images in place, it’s time to talk about Search Engine Optimisation again. The final touches on the blog post consist of the metadata you need to add for accessibility, to tempt users in, and for search engine crawlers who rank your site based on relevance.

Metadata is a complex topic that deserves significant attention in its own right. That said, a few factors are crucial to keep in mind as you build out and finalise the post:

• Image alt tags to optimise your visuals for search and ensure accessibility for vision-impaired readers.
• A meta description that summarises your post in 155-160 characters or less, ideally with your main keyword included.
• A title tag that should be a concise and accurate description of a page’s content.
• A simple URL that includes the keyword, is easily readable and not too long. You can leave out words like ‘a’ ‘and’ ‘of’ ‘but’ ‘or’.

At this point, it also makes sense to rethink and potentially improve your headline. Make sure that the main keyword of focus is integrated naturally, and the headline fits both the page title and the meta description.

10) Create a Post-Launch Strategy

Finally, it’s time to get the word out. You’ve spent significant time, likely hours, crafting the perfect blog post. What good is that if nobody knows about it?

You cannot simply publish the blog post and hope for the best. Instead, there is a general rule of thumb that suggests using three times as much time promoting the content as you did writing it. That means even a few social media posts about it won’t be enough. You need to dig deeper:

• Tease your blog subscribers and the leads in your database as soon as you publish the blog.
• Link to the blog from your homepage and other pages relevant to the topic.
• Build a social media campaign that continually publishes snippets, images, and other elements from the post.
• Leverage paid opportunities like social media ads to get your posts in front of new audiences.
• Tap into your industry network to prompt contacts to share the post and potentially even link to it from their own blogs.

This comprehensive promotional campaign is the best way to make sure that your blog gets seen by the right people, as well as a critical mass of your target audience. Each post becomes a valuable promotional and value-add tool, designed to help you gain both credibility and customers.

Writing an effective blog post is not easy. In fact, it requires much more than just the writing component. But if you get it right, the results can be immense. You begin to generate leads, convert customers, and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. And isn’t that worth all the effort you put into creating all that content in the first place?