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Content Marketing

How do I write a blog post step by step?

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Let’s Build Something

Following this formula will help you create a killer blog post template

Blogging is easy. It’s simply a case of following a step-by-step process and developing a blog writing format.

You are not writing a great novel, you are saving your readers time by presenting the best information in the most easily digestible format. Human Beings have been hunted by predators since we started to walk on the Earth, we developed a brain that quickly scans the horizon for danger and potential food.

Thus, when we hunt for information we use that same brain which wants to do the job quickly and efficiently.
This article gives you a blog post template and is a great outline of how to write for beginners.

How to write a blog post

1. Identify Your Target Audience and Purpose:

  • Determine who your target audience is and what the purpose of your blog post is. Consider their demographics, interests, and pain points to ensure your content resonates with them.
  • You should already know the audience of the blog as you have steeped yourself within the subject, but go one further and find that subset who would get excited about this specific blog post.

2. Choose a Topic:

  • Select a topic that is relevant to your audience and aligns with your blog’s niche. Brainstorm ideas, conduct keyword research, and consider trending or popular topics to find a suitable subject.

3. Conduct Research:

  • Gather information and conduct research on your chosen topic. Read books, articles, and reputable online sources to deepen your understanding and collect valuable insights.
  • Deep research enables you to find that juicy morsel which your competitors have missed, allowing you to be the source with the most viable information.
Researching writing a blog post

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Research is your superpower

Photo by Eliott Reyna on Unsplash

4. Outline Your Blog Post:

  • Create a clear and logical structure for your blog post. Start with an introduction to grab attention, followed by several main points or sections, and a conclusion that summarizes key takeaways or provides a call to action.

5. Write an Engaging Introduction

  • Craft a compelling introduction that hooks readers and establishes the purpose of your blog post. Use an intriguing opening statement, pose a question, or share a relevant anecdote to draw readers in.

6. Develop Your Main Points

  • Expand on the main points or sections outlined in your blog post’s structure. Each section should have a clear focus and provide valuable information, insights, or solutions. Use headings and subheadings to make your content scannable and easy to navigate.

7. Write High-Quality Content:

  • Write your blog post using clear, concise, and engaging language. Ensure your content is well-organized, free of grammatical errors, and easy to understand. Use examples, statistics, or case studies to support your points and make your content more credible.

8. Add Visuals and Multimedia:

  • Enhance your blog post with relevant visuals such as images, infographics, or videos. Visuals not only make your content more appealing but also help to explain complex concepts or break up text.

9. Optimize for SEO:

  • Incorporate relevant keywords naturally throughout your blog post. Optimize the title, headings, meta description, and URL. Consider internal and external linking to improve the SEO value of your post.

10. Craft a Compelling Conclusion:

  • Summarize the key points discussed in your blog post and provide a strong conclusion. Encourage readers to take action, share their thoughts in the comments, or explore related content on your website.

11. Proofread and Edit:

  • Carefully proofread your blog post for any spelling or grammatical errors. Edit for clarity, coherence, and flow. Ensure that your ideas are presented logically and that the overall structure of the blog post is sound.

12. Format and Publish:

  • Format your blog post by using appropriate headings, bullet points, and paragraphs to make it visually appealing and easy to read. Add relevant tags, categories, and meta information. Preview your post to ensure everything appears as intended, then publish it on your blog.

13. Promote Your Blog Post

  • Share your blog post across various channels to increase its visibility. Promote it on social media platforms, through email newsletters, and engage in relevant online communities or forums. Encourage readers to share and engage with

In conclusion

Follow the above steps closely if you are starting out blogging for the first time. After a while as you get more experienced, you will become aware of which aspects to spend more time on and possibly even mix up the order of things. It’s essential to follow a process which fits your own workflow as speed of execution is very important.

Hope this process helps your blogging quality and productivity.

Awesome content is not enough

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Awesome content is the baseline, it’s where you start.

But what is “awesome content”?

I was emailed to ask if I wanted to see an “awesome infographic” from a content provider. They looked to be a high-quality outfit and the email was nice and polite if a little dull and with no real benefit to me. So I wrote them a reply and thought I would share it with you.
I get these emails all the time and they are frighteningly similar. The thing is, it wouldn’t take much more effort to get a better response. I am sure their infographic was truly fab, although I tend to reserve awesome for things like the Grand Canyon or Rowes Cornish pasty.

Hi [name redacted].

Appreciate the opportunity to see your “awesome infographic”.

To be honest, I am swamped with requests to see “awesome” infographics all day long.
In fact, I think we are all drowning right now in awesome content.

Thing is, “awesome” is no longer enough, and what I mean by that is that how awesome your content is not relevant.

I need more than awesome.

You may already be familiar with the term, content shock.

What is needed is to add “relationship” to content marketing.

You and I currently have a relationship based on one email.
You see where I am going with this?

I am not aware that you have done anything for me and so feel no need to reciprocate. You have probably read Persuasion by Cialdini and his thesis on reciprocity.

I realise that the email you sent me is probably a cookie cutter email sent to a list of maybe thousands. And that is done because it does return something, but it’s not the best way to do things. And also, the fact that the email says, “we are about to enter 2018”, makes me think either your email responder is slow or you haven’t had the time or inclination to change the copy. It is after all the little things which make the difference.

Forming relationships with people, getting them to like and respect you is a longterm play and I realise that most agencies and most in-house outreach people do not go for the long term. But these types of relationships bring the most rewards.

It is interesting when most requests come in that there is not even a tweet or a retweet of my work, and yet that would be a free and easy way to get my attention, to give me something. At the very least this would help grease the wheels for your email, to enable it to have a more receptive consideration.

I think most are under the impression that creating great content and letting people know about it is enough, it’s not. They get by with the ease of brute force communication signalling, hitting as many contacts as possible.

Thing is, you probably only needed to persuade one person of high influence and let their tribe do the rest.

Hope you appreciate my comments.

3 Essential Elements of a Successful Blog Post

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A successful blog post is one that achieves the task it was created for.

It could be to attract the attention and change the mind of just one person or it could be to excite millions of people to come together and perform one act of kindness.

Whatever the goal, I have identified three elements for success every blog post has.

  • One tree in a forest of trees
  • Social glue within the tribe
  • Delights the brain of a minimum, viable amount of readers

One tree in a forest of trees

First blog post in a brand new blog of a non-famous person will fail.

It is the first tree in what will be a forest of trees. Your tree will not be judged alone, it will be judged within the context of other trees. A person with a horde of fans and followers already has the forest built. When that first tree is planted, it is not alone.

This means a blogger must be willing to put the hours into growing her blog before that one blog post will become a blog post.

A blogger does not have a successful blog post in isolation, it is supported by the body of work which has gone before.

Each tree you plant, nurture and grow makes your forest bigger.

Social glue within the tribe

Human beings desire to connect, communicate and cooperate.

We are many tribes belonging to the one tribe of humanity. We go forward together. A blog must belong to a tribe of many. It cannot be successful if it is a tribe of one.

A blog is a communication tool, it communicates and to others in the tribe and hopefully persuades.

It is a transportation device for taking a thought from the blogger to the reader. The tribe the blog wants to be a part of is the recipient of these thoughts.

A blog post gives ideas, creativity, inspiration, and guidance to the tribe. It becomes the glue that helps hold the tribe together, to enable the tribe to achieve its goals.

A successful blog post adds to the library of the tribe, it is another notch on the communal totem.

Delights the brain of a minimum viable amount of readers

A change in the state of mind must occur in the reader, to allow the reader to know the blog post was worthy of her time.

The number of readers a successful blog post needs could be 1 or it could be 1,000,000. It depends on the specific objective of that blog post.

If you need to persuade one person to change their mind and perform a specific task for you and your blog post only existed for that purpose, then if that occurs the blog post is a success.

If your intention is to get 10,000 people to download an app that will change the world, and you do that, then your blog post is a success.

When you are starting out fresh, you have no readers. But you will. You write for those who seek to know you and desire to dig in deep.

It may be a future post attracts but the past blog posts change them from a reader to a fan.

Your forest of blog posts will enable you to create fans, not the one successful post.

Learn what delights, understand the number of people you need to attract. Focus on those who the blog post is for.

Are there other things which make a blog post successful?

Possibly.

But, I can’t think of any that belong to all successful blog posts.

it helps to be mindful of these three elements when creating your blog posts. We do tend to over complicate things, forgetting that simple truths are often what makes something work.

You could argue that “being useful”, is an essential element. But I would say it belongs to the element of “Social glue within the tribe”. Being useful helps the tribe, it improves your standing with the tribe.

There is much detail within these three elements worth exploring.

It is worth remembering though.

You grow your forest one tree at a time.

An infographic to help your content strategy

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Content marketing is not simply about building content. It’s about employing a specific strategy to employ content and social media marketing to improve the emotional response when people come into contact with your brand.

By using a mix of effective, proven content marketing techniques you can increase the way people feel about your brand, enabling positive reactions as they come into contact. Increasing the chances of building links and creating social media shares and mentions.


Content strategy

Source

Citations
Emily Jarvis Christoph Sisson Jay Bear Douglas Holt Peter Noel Murray Joe Pulizzi

What is the future of Content Marketing

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Content marketing is war

 

Content marketing is street fighting, no holds barred, open warfare.

Content used to be cool.

But that time is gone

it’s no longer art, it’s no longer elegant. Yes the good stuff still exists but it gets drowned out. No one seems prepared to sift through the bytes of shite that are vomited daily.

It’s a myth that good, “quality content” rises to the top. You don’t do content marketing if you love content. You do it if you love the sound of the screams of your competitor make as you rip their eyeballs out.

One of the problems that people have when talking about this subject is they use the past to try and determine what we should do now. Myself included.

What is going to happen in the next 10 years is going to be completely different to what has happened in the past 10 years.

I don’t know what will happen, but I know it will be different.

Therefore, focus on fundamentals.

  1. Help people.
  2. Care about people, and make bloody sure they know you care.
  3. Know your stuff, stay sharp and frosty.

Do those three things and everything else will fall into place.

Update:

Someone pointed out that they were confused about this post and that is mentions war and then “caring about people”. The war is of course metaphorical and directed at the other content your content is fighting against. I realise that using such aggressive terms whilst advising to use empathy may seem contradictory. I do not.

Indeed, when people go to war they care very much for the people they are fighting for. When you create a piece of content it helps to care about the people you are writing for and not such for the content you are compete against.

I think the idea that you are going to war against the competition is a valid one, perhaps I should have made this more clear. It is important to be able to use criticism as fuel to move forward.

I hope this makes things clearer.

What are the foundations of content marketing?

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Content marketing and what it is and what it isn’t.

  • Blogging is not content marketing.
  • Tweeting is not content marketing.
  • Facebook advertising is not content marketing.

Of course the tools above could be what you use to implement content marketing, they are still only tools.

Content marketing has a problem, if everyone follows the same strategy, using the same tools, creating the same content, connecting with the same followers then you will most likely fail.

It’s not that you simply “do” content marketing. But that you must do it better than your competitor.

Not only that, but you must persuade the audience you are communicating with that your content is worthy of their time and therefore their tweet, link, facebook like, brand connection…etc.

Which highlights the two foundations of content marketing.

Communication and persuasion.

  1. You must communicate the message, clearly and effectively. You need to transport your message into the brain of the person you are communicating with. If this does not happen, you have failed.
  2. You must persuade the person you are communicating with to perform a specific form of action which will meet the objectives of the project. If you do not manage to persuade the minimum amount of people. You have failed.

Everything else, blogging, tweeting, networking…etc is an enabler to allow communication and persuasion to work.

This is what the foundational elements of content marketing are, communication and persuasion.

So when you try to improve your content marketing, don’t just focus on the using the tools, focus on the actual things that make up content marketing.

It is by improving your communication and persuasion skills, and then picking the tool for the job, that you get good at content marketing.