It doesn’t seem fair, does it?
You’ve put blood, sweat and tears into writing the content for your website and getting it just right. Finally, after months of hard work you breath a sigh of relief as your website goes live.
Thank goodness you don’t have to go through that again!
Content is king
But, now you keep hearing that content is king and you must write something new for your website on a regular basis. Yes, at least every month!
“What a pain”, I hear you say!
I want to help you go from…
“Aghh! Do I really have to write blog articles?” to…
…”Yippee! It’s time to write my blog article!”
5 steps to writing a blog post
Here are 5 steps for taking the pain out of writing blogs. With practice, writing your articles will become second nature. Even something you look forward to!
1. Who is reading your blog
Don’t fall into the trap of writing an article that would be a brilliant answer to an exam question. This would be a great read for your Professor, but totally baffling to the reader of your article.
When you write an article, put yourself in your customers’ shoes.
They don’t want to be overwhelmed by the deep understanding of your knowledge. This is likely to put them off, rather than impress.
They do, however, need to quickly and easily grasp that you understand their problem and how it’s affecting them. They need information that will help them find a solution and get a sense that you can be trusted to resolve that particular issue.
Get into the habit of having a clear image in your mind of who your ideal customer is. A real person.
Write as though you are talking to your ideal customer on a one to one basis.
This way you will come across as genuine; that you really care about them. That, surely, has to be easier than writing an exam question!
2. Developing the content
Start with a general topic, then hone it down to something more specific and give it a title.
To gather your thoughts, jot down a few headings relating to points that you’d like to get across and a couple more words under each of these headings. These might cover:
- The situation your prospect finds themselves in
- The problem they are experiencing
- How life will be better when they’ve addressed the problem
- How you could help them
Now go back to your title and double check you haven’t gone off topic. You want your article to be clear and concise, rather than confusing the issue with extra information.
As an example, when I started making notes for this article, I found myself jotting down reasons why you should write articles. I realised that I’ve already written an article on this subject and it was off topic of this article.
If this happens there’s one of two things you can do. One is to create a link in the current article to the older article. This is a good SEO practice and should be done where possible.
The second is to keep the extra information and save these notes to be used for your next article.
3. Grab attention immediately
The first sentence and paragraph is of the utmost importance. You have just a few seconds to grab the reader’s attention and entice them to read on.
There are several ways this can be done:
- Tell a story. They’ll want to know how it ends
- Statistics are a great attention grabber
- Empathise with a problem they have (one that you resolve and are about to tell them how)
4. The body of your article
Now go back to your notes when you were developing your content in step 2 and write what you know about each point. Just write! Don’t worry about how it reads at this stage you will come back to refine it later.
At this point you may want to do some research to enhance your content. Remember to acknowledge any references you make.
Then sleep on it!
It’s much easier to write your article in several stages. New ideas will come to mind in between time and a fresh eye the next day helps to develop the content.
5. Edit, proof read and final check
Once you’ve added all the information you think deserves to be under each heading, now is the time pare it back so that it’s clear and consice, easy to read and simple to understand. It may just be a matter of taking a few surplus words out here and there.
Add a call to action. What do you want the reader to do next? This could be to email you with a question, call to book an appointment, watch a video, download your eBook or place an order.
Don’t forget to encourage sharing of your articles on social media. Do you have sharing buttons installed on your website?
Include an image. A photo helps to gain attention, but ensure you have the rights to use it.
Can the title be improved? Your working title might need a bit of tweaking. Is it punchy enough? Does it pull on an emotion? The title is just as important as your first couple sentences as it’s a primary attention grabber.
Complete the meta data. When you’ve added your article to your website, remember to complete the meta data. On-page SEO (search engine optimization) helps Google to understand what the page is about so that your article has a better chance to be found.
Building relationships
Putting the effort into writing articles is undoubtedly worth it for your business.
Regularly writing and sharing your knowledge via articles is a great way to build relationships with your prospects and customers. It’s a way for them to get to know you, like what you say and how you say it and trust that when they make contact you will deliver exactly what they are looking for.
I hope this article has helped to take some of the pain out or your blog writing!
If you would like more help writing articles for your website, sharing them via an eNewsletter and social media, check out Attractive eNewsletter Package.
