A Simple Guide from Your Content Agency in Toronto
A blog post is an accessible, versatile format that has the potential to reach and engage a wide audience. You can write the blog posts in-house, or you can outsource content writing for your blog. The important thing is to ensure that your blog presents a professional image, offers memorable and shareable content, and proves effective in helping to achieve your business goals. If you're just starting your blogging journey, read through our ‘Step-by-Step Guide to Start Blogging' - parts one and two.
Step 1: Choosing Your Blog Topics
You probably have a bunch of different ideas about what you want to say on your blog, and that is a good starting point for possible topics. But it's even more important to find out what your audience wants to know, what they are searching for, and what your competition is doing to serve those searchers' needs. What are the most common questions about your shortlisted topics? What aspects of those topics are frequently discussed? Where are the gaps in information dissemination? Keep these considerations in mind as you build your list of topics and create an editorial calendar for your blog.
Step 2: Copywriting for Your Blog
Deciding how you want to say it is just as important as deciding what you want to say. You'll first need to decide what type of blog post you're writing. It may be a list, an infographic, or something else of your choosing. You can then create an outline by organizing the information you have into a visually appealing, easy-to-read, informative draft.
Depending on your personal preference, you may want to start with your title or save it for last. Next, you'll need an introduction which will draw in readers. Now, you can write out the blog post as you please, building on each section of your outline and including various media elements to emphasize these sections.
Finally, your outline should include a call to action for your audience – whether it's encouragement to comment, subscribe to your company's social media channels, or visit other parts of your website. Your immediate goal might be to engage readers and drive interaction from a specific piece of content on your blog, but the long-term, sustainable goal is to keep them coming back for more and encouraging them to spread the word by sharing your blog posts within their circle of influence.
Step 3: Editing and Proofreading Your Blog Posts
No matter how rushed you are or how confident you feel about the quality of your draft content, do not skip this vital step. While it's a good idea to read through it once yourself to catch typos, formatting errors, and other basic copyediting, it's also advisable to have an outside party edit your post for you. This way, you'll have an unbiased party and a set of fresh eyes examining your work. Your editor doesn't necessarily need to be at your level of knowledge for the topic they're editing for. In fact, having a less experienced editor review your work will allow for a stronger sense of missing definitions, explanations, instructions, and other necessary details that a subject matter expert may fail to elaborate on.
If you've hired a copywriter to write your blog content, this is the time to review it yourself. Be sure that the posts follow the tone and format of other posts on your blog and do a good job of representing your company, communicating your brand credibility, and further reinforcing your subject matter authority. TIP: Your blog content must always be good enough to E.A.T. (Google's algorithm favours three important things: Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness).
Step 4: Publishing Your Blog Posts and Getting Results!
You've written and edited your blog post; finally, you can publish it. But there's still work to be done! After your post goes online, review it one final time to make sure that your intended format transferred properly when it was published. Don't forget to promote it on social media and draw more people to your content. Lastly, you'll want to see how your post does over time; who's reading your blog? What are they saying? This information and feedback will strengthen your future blog content.
Step 5: The Look, Feel and Sound of Your Blog
If you're unsure of how to begin formatting your post, Rachel Leist has written an excellent post on blog.hubspot.com with several free blog post templates to choose from. Leist also advises, “If you don't know where to start, start by telling a story.”
Make sure your content can be skimmed quickly. In the world of fast-paced technology, information that is too long or too wordy can often go ignored. This is another reason to use images, videos, and other media that break up the monotony of heavy blocks of text-based content.
Blogging is an ongoing learning experience. You do more of what works, and you stop doing what doesn't. There's always more to learn.
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