Are you a passionate beginner who wishes to write about your favourite topic? But feeling a bit stuck on how to proceed with it.
Writing a blog article can seem challenging, but it’s definitely doable and fun.
Here we’re listing some essential blog writing tips that make the blogging process simple and effective for beginners.
What is a blog post?
A blog post is a piece of content written around a particular topic and published on a website under the ‘Blogs’ section. Usually, it ranges from 800 to 1000+ words and is meant to provide detailed information on a particular topic.
Businesses publish content to boost their brand awareness and promote/sell their products to their customers. Individuals use blogging as a powerful platform to grow their personal brand by showcasing their skills and expertise in their niche. This helps them establish themselves as an authoritative person in their field.
Some see it as an extra income opportunity through various methods such as affiliate marketing, Google Adsense etc..
Mainly blogs help individuals and businesses to drive traffic to their websites.
Tips for blog writing
Now, let’s learn some useful blog writing tips for beginners that help them to create a blog post that captivates readers and provides value to them for the time they spent.
It’s highly important to set up an adequate blogging platform for posting your articles.
Understand your audience
Before writing your blog post you need to know who are your readers and what they want from you. So it’s very important to define your target audience.
Try to find answers to the questions like Who are your readers? Their age, gender, location, interests etc… What do they want? What are they looking for? What are their pain points?
Closely examine various social media platforms such as FB groups, Quora, Reddit and other forums where your target audience spends time to find answers to the above.
Then create your reader persona accordingly.
Once you have figured out the same, prepare your content in a way that best suits them and meets their intentions.
For example, if your readers are young men who want to reduce their weight, then you can create your content related to weight loss exercises or diet plans such as the keto diet etc. They probably don’t want to know about high-calorie food and it’ll be totally inappropriate if you write content around it to them. Surely most of them will turn it down immediately without reading.
So it’s very important to understand your audience before writing to them.
Set your goal
You should have a clear picture in your mind of what you want to achieve with your blog.
Whether you just want to provide some information to your audience, promote your brand, showcase your skills to your Client/ Customer or just drive traffic to your website.
When you write keeping in mind your goals, you can create more specific contents that help achieve your goals.
Check your competitors
Identify the top players in your niche and check their popular articles to understand their writing style, articles they are writing (listicles, how-to guides etc..), the data and images they are using etc. This helps you to understand what made them popular in their niche and provides insight into what strategies to follow in order to grow top in your niche.
Come up with blog topic ideas
Once you’ve identified your audience, and set your goals and strategies, you need to decide on which blog topic you should write. You need to find the topics which are in high demand in your niche in order to achieve the desired results. Find out the topics in which your readers are interested.
Many blog idea generator tools such as Hubspot Blog Idea Generator are available on the web that gives you a number of unique ideas in just seconds.
Keyword research
Once you’ve found a suitable topic for your blog post, then you should do keyword research in order to find the queries people are searching around your topic. Keyword research has a lot of benefits and it’s a crucial factor in your blogging journey which can’t be ignored. Mainly it helps to drive the audience to your articles.
Plenty of keyword research tools such as Ahrefs Keyword Generator, Ubersuggest, Keywordtool.io etc.. are available online to help bloggers do keyword research effectively.
Go to any of these tools and enter any term around your topic. It will generate a number of related keywords around that term. Find the primary, secondary and LSI keywords that are suitable for you to use in your blog post.
As a beginner, choosing low-competition keywords will help you to rank easier in the search results.
Use your keywords naturally throughout your content. Don’t stuff them unnecessarily throughout your blog since it will result in a penalty from Google.
Create an outline
Usually, bloggers write articles that range from 800 to 1000+ words. With a lot of information, it’ll be very difficult to organise them in a readable way. Creating an outline makes this job much easier. Breaking up the contents into different sections under proper headings helps you to write long detailed content and organise them much easier.
Craft an attractive blog title
The blog title is the main connecting point of your blog with your users. When they see the title of your article among the other similar ones in the search engine results, they should be attracted towards your title forcing them to click on it and read your article.
So your title should be attractive enough to grab your users’ attention thereby tempting them to click on it. Add emotional and powerful words to your title and also highlight your article’s goal in it.
Write subheadings
Subheadings organise your blog into a hierarchical structure. It helps your readers understand easily at a glance what your blog is all about. Use your subheadings to highlight the benefits or features.
Start with an introduction
The introduction is also equally important as the blog title to hook your reader to your article.
Start with a question or anything that addresses your user’s problem and then tell them how your article will help them to solve the problem. Include some stats about your topic.
Since the intro is an important part of your blog post, you need to spend more time on it. So it’s highly advisable to finish writing your blog article first and then come back later to write your introduction. It’s a very easy way to finish your introduction faster.
Write the body of your blog
Write the body part of your blog post in your own creative and unique style.
To write authoritatively on your topic, you need to research a lot. Think of the key points that you understood, add more details and then write on it after adding your own experience and ideas to it in a simple understandable way.
Online tools such as Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, ZenPen etc. will help in writing your content in the best way.
Use images, infographics, videos, statistics illustrations etc. to give illustrate your points effectively and keep your users engaged.
End with a conclusion
End your blog post with a firm conclusion summarizing the key points that you discussed. Just give your audience an idea of what they can do after reading your article.
Include a call to action (CTA) at the end. It can be any of the following:
- Leave a comment or share their opinion
- Subscribe to your blog
- Share your blog post on Social Media or follow you on social media
- Subscribe to your newsletters
Optimize for SEO
It’s highly important to optimize your content for SEO to rank on top of the search engine results and to get noticed on the web. Your content should be easily discoverable for your users who’re searching for it.
So, you need to optimize your content for the search engines using the following techniques:
- Use your primary, secondary and LSI keywords naturally in the blog. Also include the primary keywords in your title, meta description and URL.
- Use a short readable URL.
- Provide proper tags (h1, h2, h3 etc.) for your heading and subheadings.
- Link your blog post both internally and externally to other blog articles on your website as well as other websites. Also, try to get some backlinks from other sites.
- Get your article indexed by Google (once it’s published).
Edit and publish
Once you finished writing, you need to read it again and again. Edit as much as you want. This helps to scrape your blog post to become a great one.
Wrapping Up – Blog Writing Tips for Beginners
Many blogging tools are available online to ease up your job of blog writing. Some are free and some are paid. Make the best use of these tools to produce some unique, high-quality and evergreen content that your audience love.
Share your blog post on social media to get some initial traffic to your blog. Run some paid ads also if you want some immediate traffic.
Update your content from time to time to keep it fresh.
As a beginner, publish articles consistently to grow your website and get authority in your niche.
