How to Write Amazing Blog Posts & Capture Your Audience PART 1
We are a restless family of four, looking for adventure, ways to increase our funds, and more educaitonal options for our littles. We have exchanged things for experiences. Join us!Amazing content is only the beginning.
When writing your blog post, there are many factors to think about to ensure that your post gets the attention it deserves. There’s nothing worse than to spend hours and hours writing a blog and formatting it on your website to have only a few people actually come to read it.
“Why aren’t people reading my blogs?!”, “I’ve written great stuff! I mean, if I had known this stuff I’ve sharing with them long ago, I would be far better off today.”, “How can I make sure this blog is helping others?!”
In this blog you will learn about how to write great content, how to optimally structure and format a post and how to ultimately capture your audience so that they keep coming back.
If you haven’t signed up for our free email course: From Start to Launch: A Free Email Blogging Course to Add Clarity to Your Business then I highly recommend that you do this to make sure you don’t miss any important information on how to start your blog well. It’s a ‘get to the point’ step-by-step guide that will ensure you are ready to launch your website.
On your computer or a piece of paper, I want you to write down as many blog post topics as you can as quickly as you can. This list doesn’t need to focus on the name or details of the blog, but should get your brain juices flowing and get you in the mind set to go deeper.
Once your list is created, I want you to take a look at what you have and narrow down (even if it means adjusting what you have) to the top 10 best topics that you are confident in writing and that you think your readers will be most excited about.
TIP: When picking your topics, always go with the biggest WOW factor you can think of. Ask yourself, what will excite my audience most? What will make them want to read this? The most important part of picking your topic, title and content (coming up next) is to ask: ‘What’s in it for them?’
Once you have your Top 10 Topics picked out, it’s time for the next phase:
Blog Title Phase:
What many may not realise is that your blog title might be one of the best marketing tools at your disposal. It’s the thing that makes or breaks whether or not someone will actually click on your blog; or on someone else’s; or delete it from their email.
For example:
Bad: ‘Saving Money While Working Overseas’
Ok: ‘I Saved Money While Working Overseas, Find Out How I Did It”
OR
Great: ‘How I Went From $14K Debt to $25K Savings in 10 Months’
OR
Also Great: ‘How I Saved $39K in 10 Months and Traveled to 8 Countries’
When I look at Pinterest, first I see the graphics, then I see the title. If the title doesn’t interest me I don’t click on it.
When I see a post on my Facebook newsfeed, I see the graphic (they should ALL have graphics!) then I see the title and comments. If the title doesn’t interest me, I keep on scrolling.
I judge a blog post by the title in my Google search too.
I won’t open an email from a blog I’ve subscribed to if the subject line (title) isn’t interesting to me. I will delete it (I like an organized email).
The title is one of the first things your audience sees and it’s like judging a book by it’s cover. Make sure you have a cover/title that interests others. Make it a WOW title. And absolutely you need to follow that up with WOW content.
Blog Title exercise:
Take your top 10 blog posts and recreate the titles. Give each topic at least 3 titles because sometimes it takes our minds a bit to get to the best title. I say to do this now because it may change the nature of your topic a little in doing so, so I don’t want you to write a post, then not be able to make a great title for it.
Post Structure Phase:
Keeping your topic and title in mind, you will now begin to structure your post content. If you don’t see yourself as much of a writer, then that’s okay. It’s an art that gets better over time. Use this guide to get you started and the more you write the better you will get.
TIP: If you really want your writing skills to get better, then, in addition to writing a lot, you will want to read lots of great content. The more you read it, the more you will understand how great content sounds. Through your exploration, you will find voices of others that resonate with you and that you can test in your writing. Make sure that you are reading from successful bloggers/online entrepreneurs that are in your field (or at least adjacent to your field). Follow the ones that stand out to you and that really help you.
Blogs often have their own structure, much like different genres of writing. This doesn’t mean that they are all cut from the same cloth or that your can’t go outside the box (this is often a great tactic for getting attention), but after time and examination of what works and doesn’t there tends to reveal what grabs people’s attention best and what doesn’t. This begins to narrow down how people like to structure their writing, but this again doesn’t mean you have to stick to it.
Opening paragraph:
I often like to start with a catchy sentence that sums up what the blog will be about, but not always directly. For example, the catchy starting sentence for this blog is “Amazing content is only the beginning.” It reveals that I am not only going to talk about creating amazing content, but will also go deeper into the subject of a great blog post.
From here I may expand on that and give a sentence or two about the topic to get people’s minds into the topic before giving too many details. I find our minds needing warming up to an idea before diving into it.
Now it’s time to connect with your audience. This is still part of the warm up phase. They need to know what’s in it for them. Here is where you connect on one of two levels:
- Selling a dream: Connect with a deep desire of theirs. Make sure that you help them see, before even reading the post, how this post will benefit them and help them meet their goals
- Solving a Problem: Connect with their deepest fears/regrets/problems. Make sure that you reveal to them that they are not alone and that there is a way to help them to leave their fears behind because you are about to help solve the problem for them.
TIP: Each step of the way you are working to keep them reading. Let’s see how we accomplished this with this post:
One of all bloggers biggest fears is that they will spend all their time on creating great content, but no one will come to read/view it. We all feel that we have great information to share with others and feel disheartened when they don’t come. That’s where I started. I connected with a bloggers fear to help them see what problem I was about to solve. I connected with them and what they needed help with, then I went on to give them real solutions.
Keep in mind that while I’m giving you the step-by-step format of the blog, you may not be able to complete your post in each of these steps from beginning to end. You may find yourself writing your post, then going back with your checklist of ‘must-haves’ to ensure you have all the elements of a great post. Simply add to your post if you missed something.
Now, in one or two sentences, tell them exactly what value they are going to get from the post.
Onto the Real Content Phase:
Now that you have these formalities completed, you are onto the really helpful content part of your post. In this area you will want to ensure that you break down your post to have distinct sections and headings.
You may be making a list style post, which makes this easy. If it’s not list style, then make sure that you still break up your information into sections, phases, stages, parts, steps, etc. Give each section its own heading and keep your paragraphs shorter (up to 8 lines total). Not everyone likes having really short paragraphs, but breaking them up can make it easier for our eyes to follow, skim or jump back to a section we want to reread.
Conclusion Phase:
Just like the opening paragraph you will sum up what your content was about, restate the problem and sum up your solution. Make sure that in each conclusion you have a call to action:
- Encourage commenting
- Encourage email signup
- Encourage more reading
- Encourage social media likes
Here are some more quick tips about creating a great post:
- Each post should be at least 1000 words long (the trend is closer to 2000-4000 now)
- Write about things that matter to you: Add passion and emotion to connect more deeply with your audience
- Interact with those who write comments or email questions (as best you can)
- When you think of a great idea, make sure to write it down asap so that you don’t lose it (point form your thoughts to get what you can out)
- ALWAYS solve a problem, but don’t always present it that way. This means you can frame the problem in a positive manner (dream selling, making life easier, etc)
- Ask questions to help get input from your readers. They can comment or email those questions. If you get lots of the same question, then be sure to note that and write a post about it.
- Batch your work to give you more free time. Our brains tend to get into whatever it is we are doing. If we start writing a blog, then it can get into the mode of writing blogs. Use this and batch your work. Take a full day to write several blogs, get ahead and then use another day to format your blogs, schedule them and get your email ready. This is how the pros do it and work part-time for a full-time income.
This is the conclusion of ‘How to Write Amazing Blog Posts & Capture Your Audience PART 1’, but there was so much content that I decided I needed to give it 2 parts. Once you’ve absorbed this information and are ready to move onto more important information about creating clickable blog posts, then you can go to
How to Write Amazing Blog Posts & Capture Your Audience PART 2
If you want to make sure you aren’t missing any important aspects to building a strong blog/online business, then you will want to sign up for our FREE email course: “From Start to Launch: A Free Email Blogging Course to Add Clarity to Your Business”. We have built it to give you step-by-step actions and easy to follow instructions to bring your blog from start to launch. This series is a part of this course and is one example of how we want to give you excellent content that helps you achieve your business goals.
We have included a Blog Post Checklist on ‘How to Write Amazing Blog Posts & Cature Your Audience PART 2’ for you to pin up beside your computer to ensure you have all the most important blog aspects at a glance.
