Writing a blog post can be a daunting task. How do you start? And how do you write a text that people will enjoy reading? What are common mistakes to avoid? In this blog post, I’ll walk you through a simple 6-step plan for writing a blog post.
Write unique content
You can do the writing yourself or use an AI tool to do the writing for you. I am not necessarily against using AI as long as you ensure that your text is something people will want to read. You want to be original; you want your readers to benefit from valuable information. Use your examples, anecdotes, and experiences to add that personal touch. Not sure how to get started? Find out how you can create unique content yourself.
Time to get practical! Here’s a 6-step plan for writing a blog post.
Step 1: Preparation
Before you start writing, take some time to think about what you would like to write. What is your topic, and what do you want people to remember after reading your post? Try to formulate a question that your text should answer. This is the central question in a text. Make sure the central question is clear, and come up with an answer in one or two sentences. That answer is the main message of your post.
Take some time to think about your audience as well. Who are you writing your article for? Make sure you adapt your text to your audience and adjust the difficulty level of the information in your article. Also, think about your style. Will you write very formally, or will your tone of voice be friendly and spontaneous?
Step 2: Information and structure
Do you need to collect information to write your blog post? Or is all the information you need already in your head? Sometimes, it’ll help to search for some research results or background information to make your article more compelling.
After you’ve gathered all the information you need for your article, you should develop your post’s structure. Think about structure as the skeleton of your text. What topics are you going to address, and in what order? You could start by creating a list of topics you want to address. Could you bundle topics together? After that, look at the topics and put them logically.
Step 3: Write, write, write
Put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Start writing! Don’t think too much about spelling or grammar just yet. Try to get into the flow and write down what you’ve thought of, or search for information and gather topics.
Try to stick to the structure you’ve developed in the previous step. You don’t have to start writing the introduction if that is a hard paragraph. You are welcome to write different paragraphs in the order you like.
Step 4: Correcting and editing
Done writing your blog post? It’s time to be very critical of your writing. Check whether the paragraphs are, in fact, in a logical order. Look at your text very closely and asses whether sentences are running smoothly. Correct grammar and spelling mistakes.
In this last phase, you’ll rewrite much of your initial text. That’s part of the deal. The correcting phase often takes just as much time (or even more) than the writing phase.
Step 5: Publish
You should hit that publish button once you’re done correcting and editing your blog post. But before you do that, add a nice image to optimize your text for the search engines (using Yoast SEO, for example) and add the blog post to a category or tag.
After you’ve published your post, share it on your social media or send out a newsletter in which you’ll embed (part) of your post. Make sure to give your blog post the attention it deserves.
Step 6: Review and update
Your blog post and website are never done. Make sure to check your posts regularly to see whether your information is still up-to-date. You should also keep a keen eye on your Google Analytics to make sure that your post is performing well. If not, perhaps you can do some extra optimization.
Get started with your blog post!
It can be challenging to start writing your blog posts. Especially if you’ve never blogged before. Every beginning is hard. Be easy on yourself. Start with a short blog post and choose a topic you’re very familiar with. It could be a good idea to write something practical. A list of tips on how to solve a problem or a simple life hack that helped you. Once you’ve taken that first step into writing, it will become easier for sure. Good luck!