To write that blog post today, you need a little guidance. Think about it as training wheels. Once you get the hang of it, you can remove them and go as slow or as fast as you wish. Whether you’re writing for a personal or work project, you can benefit from anticipating the job you’re about to do.
After a while, the process becomes a habit, and you get to enjoy it even more. Writing a blog post has its particular ways of doing things. For example, you may need some online tools to find information on search engines for research, maybe grammar advisor software, etc. The result will undoubtedly be an engaging blog post that provides value to your audience and becomes a tool to achieve your goals.
Planning
Planning is the first step. You can plan each time you write a blog post, or you can have a plan for all the blog posts you write. The planning phase begins when you save your files on your PC. You don’t want to spend valuable minutes searching for your notes and another minute searching for the file where you’ll be writing, do you?
What tools are you going to use? To write this blog post, I used a keyword research tool, a general SEO tool that suggested me article outline options, Google and Microsoft Word, and a grammar checker tool. I use each tool following the phase of the writing process.
Gather sources & start researching
Resources are essential to understand a topic, even if you’re an expert. However, having a beginner’s mind implies you may forget critical parts when writing, which is why websites, books, or eBooks can guide you through the right path.
You may need a dictionary, a thesaurus, and your web browser open with a search engine ready to answer your many questions. You may want to take notes about the most critical ideas brought to you by your research material. Each idea can be a paragraph or a headline. But don’t worry; we’ll get to that point later. What you want right now is to soak in the information presented to you.
Refine your topic with keyword research
Keyword research is the process of seeking popular terms that appear as results on search engines, considering how easy or hard it is to rank for them. KW research also looks at other vital metrics, such as the pay-per-click value of the keywords you’re investigating.
You may use a paid or free tool. Paid tools can be overwhelming if you’re starting, so I recommend taking a shot at free or freemium tools before you make the leap and buy a subscription. Now that you know the keywords you choose based on your criteria, you need a great headline.
Check your facts
Now that you know what you’ll write about, the next step is checking your facts. You may think that because you read a statistic on one website, then it’s true. But unfortunately, there have been many occasions when a quote about an untrue piece of information has become viral.
You don’t want to be part of a misinformation campaign. That’s one of the many reasons why you should check your facts twice. Fact-checking allows you to create value for your audience by being a truthful source of news and quality data.
Writing a great headline
The next step is crafting a great headline. On many occasions, it doesn’t matter that your content is top-notch. However, if your headline doesn’t catch the attention of your audience, then you’ll have a hard time making them read your blog post.
It’s just like a book. I hope you don’t judge a book by its cover, but let’s face it, an excellent cover can do wonders to make your readers go to the next step. So find a middle ground between clickbait – which exaggerates facts – and simple descriptive headlines, which gather little or no attention.
Flesh out your outline in record time
You begin outlining your blog post with your resources, research, and a suitable title. Having an outline ready is of the utmost importance because it makes writing so much easier. Furthermore, the method can be fleshed out in order of importance, taking the reader from the general to the specific.
Before you start writing, you’ll have a clear view of the points of your draft, which will give you a solid structure. One benefit of having an outline is that you can sequentially order your ideas. Having an order for ideas sets the ground for the following step.
The writing part
At this point, you’ve done most of the hard work. You can begin writing the number of paragraphs you deem necessary below your outline. What should you write? It would be best if you looked at your outline to get inspiration.
Writing is a craft where you constantly improve, which is why you first create a rough draft without being mindful of editing. This part comes after you finish the process of writing. First, read aloud your text and correct the parts that don’t sound natural.
Finally, it would help if you didn’t forget to use a professional tool to help you catch grammar mistakes and the excessive use of passive voice, among others.
Pack your post with value
You can misunderstand the term value, as You can define it as a vague term. Value is in the eye of the reader. So what creates value in your blog post? First, answer the questions your reader has. Also, you share your experiences. Otherwise, a Wikipedia article can explain the facts more thoroughly.
Sharing your experiences adds value to your blog post because it allows your audience to investigate your reality. How did you solve a problem? By exposing the solution and your thought process, you differentiate yourself from other bloggers through better content. Your opinions and commentaries are critical ways to add value to your writing.
Write a solid close and CTA (5 minutes)
Once you’ve finished writing, you want to create an optimal close or conclusion. In final words, you can recap. When you wrap up your blog post or article, you leave your reader with closure. This closure creates engagement, better user experience, more subscribers, and better conversions.
A CTA, or Call to Action, is the feature inside your blog post where you ask your readers to follow the next step. You can find this step as a subscribe button, donate, read more, buy now, etc.
Can I write a blog post in less than 60 minutes?
The answer is: It depends. For example, are you writing a concise answer to a question? Then it’s possible to write an article in less than 60 minutes. However, some factors reduce the time you take to write, such as domain knowledge and how fast you can type.
Another essential factor that shortens your writing time is having your outline ready. However, if you’ve already done your research, you can write a blog post relatively fast.
Conclusion
By now, you’re aware of a process that allows you to write that blog post today. As you can see, writing itself is just a part of it – albeit an important one – Equipped with this knowledge, you can provide value for your audience while you get the benefits of doing so. The more you follow these guidelines, the easier they will seem.
Maybe you wish to be read by a large number of people. Perhaps you want to create an email list, sell your products, promote affiliate products, or sell ads through your blog or website. This content feeds search engines. High-quality content creation is here to stay.
