How to write a good blog

One of the best ways to do this is by writing regular blogs. Not just any type of blog but a good one.

But how do you write a good blog?

First thing is to do your research. It sounds like a lot of hard work before you have even written anything but it is crucial. The research doesn’t just mean tackling a subject matter. It means digging deeper and finding out your target audience.

Who are the people that you want to attract to your site? What are they interested in? What other blogs do they visit?

By researching this thoroughly you will have a better understanding of the content you should be producing. Identifying that audience helps define who you want to speak directly with. It will also help when developing blogs with calls to action. Over time, your writing style and the conversational tone of your blogs will develop further to better speak to your audiences.

The next step is to start writing. Craft an engaging introduction to grab people’s attention. Be careful not to overload the first few sentences and paragraphs. The last thing you want to do is pique a reader’s curiosity only to lose their attention in the following sentence. There are a different number of ways to ensure your introduction is captivating for readers.

Some prefer to use a joke, an interesting fact or a statistic. Others prefer to use the storytelling method. The most important thing for you is that you come across as a human being imparting knowledge or thoughts. It helps to build that instantaneous connection with the reader right away. The last thing you want to do is just sell, sell, sell and sound like a robot in your writing tone.

Once your introduction is done and you’ve hooked the reader, the next course of action is to explain a little about the problem you have identified for your blogs subject matter. If your blog is something like “5 ways to make cooking faster”, you would need to first explain the problem and why the five ways will solve it. Once you have done this you can dive into providing the solutions.

Most people tend to find finishing a blog harder than starting to write one. Once you start writing it can be difficult to stop simply because you don’t know how to end the blog. You might want to use a sign-off or a catchphrase and then go through the motions of deciding whether that is too cliché or corny. You may even simply just experience a block where your wording just stumbles. All of these things are a perfectly natural process of writing a good blog.

The simplest solution is to include a clear call to action. Remember the research you did prior to writing? This will help you determine your CTA. If you are selling something then your call to action will be directing people to your online store. Even if you are not selling anything, you can create simple CTA such as “If you have found this useful, please visit/read some of my other blogs”. A call to action doesn’t need to be complicated but it does need to tell your reader what they need to do next.

Finally, test your blog! Have someone look over your writing before publishing. Even with the best tools, you are more than likely going to make a mistake. You are only human after all. Having a few people look over your content before you publish should catch out any mistakes and also help you get feedback on the flow of your writing. We are all our own worst critics at times. Trust in the feedback you receive and don’t take to heart any negatives. Your friends, colleagues and peers will all want you to succeed with your blog.

Once all of these things have been done, you're almost ready to publish. Utilise tools like keyword checkers and social listening tools to help optimise the SEO of your blog. Include additional hyperlinks in the article but don’t go too overboard overwise it’ll affect your ranking negatively. Also, make sure to include the title of your blog somewhere within the first paragraph. Try to avoid being too corny and on the nose with its placement though as it will likely turn your audiences off your content. Follow these steps and advice and you should be able to get a successful blog up and running in no time at all.

However, if you want to focus on your business and don’t have the time for creative writing, you could hire a digital marketing company to produce content for you. The added bonus is they will know how to optimise your SEO as well as producing regular content for you. They can also help with delivering the content on your website to the biggest and the best possible audiences that you are trying to speak too.

At Astute Media, we have a proven track record of not only producing great content for our clients but also helping them to market that content and build their audiences. We do this through our tried and test method of concept, connect and control.

If you are looking to set up blogs and generate more traffic through content marketing to your website, contact us today!