Writing can be as easy as putting together letters that make words, words that make sentences, sentences that make paragraphs, and so on, until you get the desired length. However, writing well goes beyond this and even the good use of spelling and literary figures and devices that we have all learned at school. When we talk about writing on the Internet, there are many other factors that come into play, such as SEO positioning or the final objective of our text. And it is precisely these elements that I am going to talk about today in this definitive guide on how to make a blog post.
First step: What is our goal?
There is no doubt that there will be those who have a blog because they like to write and, for the moment, do not have any type of objective. People are free to do whatever they want with their blog. And if what they really want is to write for the mere pleasure of doing it, that will be solely and exclusively their objective.
However, when we set out to create a blog at a professional level, it is essential to have clear general objectives, a mission and vision of our project. And each new post should be consistent with it. Thus, every time you consider making a post for a blog, you should ask yourself if it will allow you to achieve your general strategic objectives.
If, for example, your objective is to increase web traffic, you should make a post for your blog with a really attractive headline that calls to action, high-quality content that leads users to share it and at least one image with great visual appeal. However, if the objective is to increase the time spent on the web, what you will need will be many images or even embedded videos, a very long text and numerous links to other posts or pages on the same web. In short, depending on what your objective is, you should consider a type of post or specific characteristics that it must meet.
Second step: What do we want to tell?
When making a post for a blog, something very important is knowing what we want to tell. If we are not clear about it, most likely we start writing, writing and writing, but… after having a few paragraphs, we realize that they are empty of content, without a clear structure, and therefore meaningless to us. the reader. The ideal at this stage is indicate in a short sentence the main topic that we are going to deal with, and then, at various points, other elements that we believe are important to develop.
It is a first summary that will serve as a guide to later structure our text and write it also taking into account the importance of its SEO positioning.
Third step: Who is our audience?
Before you start writing, take into account who you want to reach. The Internet is freely accessible to everyone, and you probably have a lot of readers who don’t even interest you, but who are freely interested in reading and following you. However, when making a post for a blog, it is essential that you be clear about who is the audience you are targeting in your general content strategy, and who is the audience you are targeting with this particular post.
For example, your blog may be focused on digital marketing consultants and you have a consolidated content strategy that covers all the different profiles of people who may fit within that description. However, when you start to make a post for a blog you will tend to narrow your audience even more; In this case, we could specify our audience as marketing professionals interested in blogging or content marketing.
Depending on who our audience is, we can approach a subject from one point of view or another, in a more general or detailed way, entering into more strategic concepts, or on the contrary, focusing on tactical work.
Fourth step: How to tell it?
Based on the factors previously analyzed, we will determine the way to transfer the information we want, to the specific target audience and with a specific purpose. It is important to take into account numerous elements when making a post for a blog in this phase: type of language, if we are going to use photographic resources, videos, diagrams or infographics, the length of the text, the depth of the content, if it is You are going to introduce some element to obtain feedback such as appeal to comments, lead magnets or subscription, etc.
Fifth step: How to position it?
We have already reached the fifth step, and there are those who will tell me that this should be the first. It is true that many people (especially the so-called SEO experts) tend to start with this step, considering it the most important. And I’m not saying it’s important, I just think there are things that should be considered before. Undoubtedly, it is essential when creating a content strategy for a blog, to have a study of keywords that guide us when raising issues, but that does not mean that we have to limit ourselves to them. It is also important to get out of line, investigate new fields and decide, depending on the evolution of the project, the incorporation of new keywords.
It is at this point where, already knowing what we want to tell, we will look for the best way to position it by finding a main keyword to use in our post, which we will also try to relate to the previous content in order to enhance its SEO. We will also search referral sources to link to with good SEO and secondary keywords to consider.
Sixth step: General outline
Although some may be surprised, the fact is that making a blog post is not far from what it has always been to create a story for a newspaper. It is really recommended, both for SEO reasons and for understanding by the reader, that we start with the most important information in our text (a brief summary) and continue with the rest of the information from the most to the least important, and even generating sections concrete with subheadings that divide the text and give rhythm to the reading, allowing the so famous vertical reading. This is what, for a lifetime, was called the inverted pyramid of journalism. To many I am sure that it will sound familiar, to those who do not, I invite you to read more on Wikipedia: Inverted pyramid.
In short, the idea in this sixth step of how to make a blog post is to create a scheme with the following information:
- Qualification: keyword + the most notable of the information that we are going to capture in the post.
- Entrance: the most important elements or introductory summary of the information (what, who, where, how, when and why).
- Body: the previous more detailed information, which we can structure with different subtitles (H2, H3…).
- Other details: additional information that may be useful to the reader. In the case of the Internet, this section is usually ignored or replaced by links of interest or reference sources that we can put at this point or throughout the text.
- Conclusion or closure: It is the best time to introduce the author’s opinion and appeal to the reader to translate theirs through the comments.
Step Seven: Writing
And finally the moment everyone has been waiting for has arrived… let’s write our post! To do this, take into account the previous structure and do not forget to use your main keyword in the title (which must not exceed 65 characters), the slug (which must not exceed 40 characters), the meta description (with a maximum of 156 characters) and the alt of the images. In addition, the text must have more than 300 words with a keyword density of between 3 and 7%.
Eighth step: How to make it more attractive?
Reflecting so that our contents are more attractive to the specific reader we are addressing is a step that is not always taken into account despite its importance and the great results that can be obtained with little effort. Sometimes, just by changing the featured image or headline, we can take a post from mediocre to viral in the blink of an eye. I am not saying that we have to limit ourselves to always publishing list articles (for example, the 10 most beautiful towns in Spain) or other similar tricks, but it is important to analyze the panorama, see what works for others, and try to apply it to ourselves when making a blog post.
Step Nine: Review
Before hitting the “publish” button, it is essential that we review a series of elements of the post to find out if it is correctly written, as well as optimized for SEO, and confirm that with it we are focusing on the proposed objectives of our content strategy. Do you want to know what questions to ask yourself and how to check that everything is perfect? We have a practical and complete checklist for it!
Now that you know how to make a near-perfect blog post, don’t hesitate to get hold of our free resource that will make this task even easier for you. You just have to click here: Checklist to find out if your post is ready to be published.
Step Ten: Publication
Now, yes yes… you are ready to publish your post! However, let me give you some advice. Don’t post it now because that’s when you’ve finished it and it’s ready. Unless it is a topical issue and you want to be one of the first to talk about it, take some time to analyze what is the best time to spread your post in the different media you use: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… Find the right moment and you will see how the results are also intensified.
I hope that the next time you consider making a post for a blog you take these steps into account. Thus, at first glance, it may seem like a lot and too much work for a simple post, but in reality, once you make a couple of posts following these steps, it will be very easy for you to follow the dynamics and adapt it to your day to day. Each time, you will have to spend less time thinking about all this because it will become an internalized work dynamic that will help you achieve better results.
And if, by chance, your problem is that you still don’t have your blog, don’t miss this post on: The first 5 steps to create a professional blog