Most likely, you already know the importance of blogging as this is a vital key to marketing products and services in today’s world. However, writing outstanding blog posts doesn’t just happen, magically, without careful, deliberate planning and practice. If you’re unsure about how to create exceptional blog posts, here are some powerful better blogging tips.
Target and Understand Your Audience
The first step to writing better blog posts is to decide on a target audience. Don’t just write for everyone, but determine a specific group of readers. For example, are you addressing young mothers or senior citizens?
Once you’re decided on your target audience, determine the questions that are most on their minds, as well as what will relate to them. Let’s say your audience is made up of seniors. Unlike most Millennials, many older people aren’t as internet savvy, so you’ll probably need to explain how they can benefit from social media.
Give a Promise of What Your Blog is About Upfront and Then Deliver on It
Because internet viewers are busy people, they want to know what a blog is about in the first paragraph. That’s why you need to state the purpose of your content at the beginning of your blog.
Also, be sure to provide a definite takeaway. This means that you fulfill the promise of whatever you say your blog is about. Readers can feel cheated or unfulfilled when a blog doesn’t provide enough information that it promises to give.
Keep Sentences Short and Only Use Necessary Words
Most internet readers are good at multi-tasking and don’t want to read long blocks of text. Your readers can easily be viewing your blog while sending text messages to friends. Furthermore, consider that it can be harder to read text on computer screens than on a printed page.
That’s why it’s important to write sentences that are short and uncluttered. Every word should count, while not at the cost of failing to give sufficient information.
After you’ve written your first draft, go back and weed out all unnecessary words, making your sentences short, crisp and declarative. You want your readers to be able to understand what you’re saying as quickly as possible.
Create Compelling Headlines That Are Rich in Keywords
Write headlines that grab the attention of your readers, immediately so that they’ll want to read your blog post. Besides being compelling, your headlines should contain the best keywords that are pertinent to your subject. A good way to determine the most effective keywords to use is to pretend that you’re the reader. Thus, think of words you would use to search for data to solve a problem.
Make Your Content Digestible and Scannable
Your blog needs to be as user-friendly as possible, so readers can easily remember your main points. This is done by using:
- Bullets
- Numbered lists
- Bold fonts
- Subheads
Conclude With a Call-to-action
At the end of your blog post, include a CTA or call-to-action. By doing so, you can show readers what they need to do next, such as buying a product or registering for an event or webinar. A call-to-action can also be an excellent way to have readers subscribe to your blog.
Considerations and Warnings
- Be balanced in creating white space—While it’s important to provide space between text, having excess white space can look somewhat choppy so that it gives the appearance of lacking substance.
- Avoid using all caps—In addition to being hard to read, text written in all caps is also considered to be rude and looks as if you’re shouting.
- Limit the amount of exclamation points you use as this also looks amateurish and seem like you’re screaming at your readers.
- Don’t be long-winded. Only use about half as many words as you would in conventional writing.
- Make your blog conversational, writing the same way you talk but even better. This can mean having to ignore what you learned in your high school English classes. In other words, don’t be afraid to write incomplete sentences.
- Use meaningful hyperlinks.
- Include interesting images. This can help in capturing your readers’ attention, dividing up various parts of your text and giving balance to specific elements.
To learn more about how you can write better blog posts, please contact us,
