Anyone can write a blog post. Even AI programs. But if you’re a professional that’s looking to create posts in hopes of reaching new audiences and growing your brand, it’s not enough to simply publish a semi-coherent collection of thoughts that is 100-200 words in length.
To blog effectively, you’ll need to be intentional and follow a few best practices. Otherwise, you’re mostly just wasting your time.
The good news is, you don’t have to be a professional writer in order to blog about your profession (though some writing skills won’t hurt). If you’re willing to challenge yourself a little, you can see some great results.
Let’s start with the basics.
Blogging Basics: Tone, Topics, & Target Audience
Blog posts are not written for you. They’re also not written for search engines (though they should definitely be optimized for them). They are written for your target audience. The people you’re trying to reach and help.
When you’re mapping out topics, think about those people. What are they searching for? What are their needs? What are their pain points? What kind of questions do you regularly receive from people like them?
By doing this simple exercise, you should quickly be able to come up with a few topics. If you’re still stuck, you can always take a look at what others in your industry are writing about. You should never steal topics or copy content, but you can look to them for inspiration.
With a topic chosen, it’s time to start writing. Some find it helpful to make an outline before writing the full post. This is something that AI tools like ChatGPT can help with. Just don’t be afraid to breakaway from their recommendations as needed.
After all, you know your industry and your audience better than an AI bot does.
Once you’re writing the actual post, remember that this isn’t a college paper. By nature, blog posts are more conversational. Proper grammar should mostly be followed, but posts should be written as though you’re talking to a person rather than writing a research paper.
Don’t be afraid to start a sentence with a conjunction. Tell a joke if it’s appropriate. Find a balance of being professional while still being yourself.
Technical Aspects of Blogging
There aren’t technically any rules you need to follow when creating a blog post. However, there are a few recommendations based on years of research by countless agencies, software companies, and more. Consider these guidelines when writing out your posts…
Length
Blog posts should be at least 500 words long. Any shorter, and they may not get any attention from search engines like Google. If you really want to increase the chances of a post ranking high in search engines, it should actually be over 2000 words.
That’s not to say all posts need to be that long. A succent post that’s 500-600 words long can be very effective. But if you’re diving deep into an important topic, don’t be afraid to go longer.
Just make sure you’re keeping things organized and breaking up the information as needed.
Spacing & Organization
You may be surprised by how many visitors are willing to read a 2000-word blog post as long as it’s well organized. If a visitor lands on a giant wall of text with no subheadings and paragraphs that contain 7-10 sentences, they’ll quickly go elsewhere.
People tend to skim and scan on the internet.
By breaking text into shorter paragraphs and organizing them under logical subheadings, you can assist them while keeping their attention to the end. Again, this is not a research paper for school.
A final note on subheadings:
Subheadings should either be properly capitalized with no periods like a proper title, or they can be bolded sentences with otherwise normal capitalization. Whichever you choose, this should be consistent across the entire post. You’ll note that I’m using the former here.
Titles
We could write an entire post about what makes a good title for a blog post. Instead, we’ll just link to this post that HubSpot wrote. At a minimum, the title should include the subject of the post, and it should be around 60 characters in length. Try not to get too abstract or creative with it.
No one is going to click on an article if they can’t tell what it’s about from reading the title. Search engines will also struggle to determine what the post is about.
Pictures
Even when effectively broken-up, lines of text can get boring to look at. Pictures are a great way to add some life to any blog posts. Just make sure you’re legally allowed to use the image.
When looking for website images, you should never go to Google images and select one at random. Any image on your website needs to either be owned by you, you need to have a license for it, or it needs to be rights-free.
Here are some great free images resources:
Always make sure to check the fine print when selecting images, as certain restrictions may still apply. Finally, when adding an image to a blog post, make sure to add alt-image text. This improves accessibility for people using screen readers, and it can also improve SEO.
Internal Linking
Want an easy way to improve your website’s SEO performance? Add a few internal links to your blog post. You’ll note that at the start of this post, we linked to another article we wrote about AI and what it means for content writing. We just did it again.
These internal links help Google gain a better understanding of the content on your site so they can index it accordingly. They can also keep readers engaged for longer periods of time as they visit additional posts.
You don’t have to just link to posts. You can also link to pages. Just don’t overdo it. 3 – 5 links is the general recommendation.
Be Wary of Lists
When people don’t know what to write about, most default to making a random list about something related to their industry: “Top Ways That People Do Things”, “Simple Things Anyone Can Do to Make Their Lives Better”, “10 Steps to Be the Thing you Want to Be,” etc. They’re easy enough to create, and most people love lists.
The problem is that the internet is already flooded with listicles.
If you’re creating a list pertaining to your industry, there’s a very good chance that hundreds (if not thousands) of similar posts already exist. That’s a lot to compete with when it comes to search rankings.
Listicles also often fail to highlight what you can do for your audience and how your brand is unique. I’m not saying you should never write lists. This post is technically a list, after all.
I’m just saying that it’s good to mix things up from time to time. Here’s an example of a non-list post we recently published:
The Difference Between Search Engine Friend & Search Engine Optimized
Call to Action
Finally, it’s usually a good idea to include a call to action somewhere in the post. Sometimes, it can be in the middle of the post, but often it’s at the end. The call to action could be signing up for your newsletter, asking for a quote on your services, downloading a free resource, or something else.
Whatever it is, it should at least result in you receiving the person’s email address. It should also fit naturally into the post that you have written. A good rule when writing blog posts is to never force things.
Need Help with Your Content?
Even with the advice above, some won’t have the time, energy, or desire to blog for their brand. That is understandable, but it doesn’t mean you have to miss out on all of the benefits that blogging can bring.
If you’re needing copywriting and content strategy assistance, we’re here to help.
This Blank Page is a content strategy agency that helps professionals and brands find their voice and craft content that will reach their target audience. So many professional websites fail to do these simple things, and that results in a website that fails to make your life easier.
With our help, you can reach more people and grow your business faster with less work. Click here to schedule a free consultation.
