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It’s time to face the facts, everyone is blogging. If you’re not blogging, there is a good chance you ought to be. Blogs are a great way to help you generate traffic to your website and share your expertise. But there is so much information out there, it is easy to feel that you need to write something special in order to break through the noise. Here are the steps that I go through when writing a great blog.
Step 1: Do Your Research & Create An Outline
Even if I am writing on a topic I know very well, I still find it nice to do some research. Finding facts to back up your opinions will give yourself more credibility and help you earn more respect from your readers. I find that it is also nice to look at other blogs on the subject. I look at other blogs for two main reasons. For One, it helps me to formulate my ideas. And second, I am able to see what others are writing about and find out what is missing.
The last blog I wrote was on Social Media. While I was writing it, I read tons of material about social media. What bothered me about all the articles I read, was that there were very few ideas that someone could immediately take and start to implement into their social media strategy. There was lots of great advice but much of the ideas were very cliche and hard to get immediate results from. In response, I came up with three ideas that readers could implement immediately into their social media plans.
Step 2: Don’t Wait, Start Writing
Awhile back, I was taking a creative writing class. I had a great idea for a story but I was having trouble coming up with the specifics. When I mentioned this to my professor, he told me to, “just get started.” That is the best advice for any writing. It is easy to want to wait for the perfect idea to formulate; but that doesn’t always happen. Much of the time, your ideas will start to come together much better after you have started writing. Just start it, once you have your general ideas down, you can always edit it and make it perfect later.
Step 3: Make Your Advice Easy to Apply
Our world likes instant gratification. So making your blog post easy to understand and implement is the way to go. Giving readers something they can immediately take and start doing is a great way to get more engagement on your blog. Plus, you can even ask your readers to share their results in the comments. Now that everyone can post something in the internet, there is allot of “fluff” out there. Your readers will appreciate it when you write something that is substantive.
Step 4: Formatting
SocialTriggers.com has a great format for the “perfect” blog post. The only thing I really want to add is how best to organize your points. Lets say you are writing a blog and you have three great points to get across. Unless these points belong in chronological order, I always put my best points at the beginning and the end. People typically remember the first thing and the last thing they read. When I am not quite as confident about one of my points, I make sure it is in the middle.
Step 5: The Home Stretch
Once I have successfully written my blog, I come up with a winning title. I read back through it and make revisions; Obviously I check for spelling and grammatical errors and I always check to ensure that everything flows correctly and the formatting is easy to read. If you’re not a seasoned writer, I would suggest having someone else take a look at it. There are some great services out there such as ProofreadingServices.com that will proofread your blog for you and make sure you are coming across professionally.
Good luck writing! Have any other great ideas for blog writing? I’d love to read about them in the comments.
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