Writ­ing blogs is a great way to boost search engine rank­ings, attract poten­tial con­sumers, earn loy­al fol­low­ers and cement your brand as a key influ­encer in your respec­tive industry. 

Quality takes your blog further

While any­one can write a blog and add to white fluff on the inter­net, it takes skill and strat­e­gy to write a blog that read­ers give mer­it. Plac­ing an empha­sis on qual­i­ty when writ­ing a blog is essen­tial to max­i­miz­ing your efforts and the writing’s mar­ket­ing potential. 

Benefits of high-quality blogs

The ben­e­fits of qual­i­ty in any cre­ative pro­duc­tion are vast. Writ­ing high-qual­i­ty blogs is good prac­tice in gen­er­al, but it will also help you reap mar­ket­ing ben­e­fits, includ­ing: 

  • Attract read­ers
  • Gain loy­al audience
  • Devel­op indus­try voice

Attract readers

Blogs that are well-writ­ten, have a strong voice, are easy to fol­low and stay con­sis­tent to brand mes­sag­ing or edu­ca­tion bode well on search engine algo­rithms, push­ing the blog’s host web­site far­ther up search rank­ings, earn­ing greater vol­umes of traffic. 

Attract­ing read­ers or poten­tial read­ers is the first step in gen­er­at­ing a plat­form that will one day invite and host a large audi­ence to rely on your brand for infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment. These same read­ers will, hope­ful­ly, become your purchasers. 

Gain loyal audience

As you attract more read­ers, you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op a loy­al fol­low­ing. A loy­al audi­ence will reward you by spread­ing the word about your plat­form, shar­ing your pieces and prov­ing your legit­i­ma­cy to both future fol­low­ers and to search algorithms. 

Develop industry voice

High-qual­i­ty blogs com­mu­ni­cate that you are thought­ful about your busi­ness, your brand, your indus­try, and niche. The bet­ter you write and the more sub­stance you offer, the more seri­ous­ly prospec­tive buy­ers will con­sid­er your place in the indus­try and the more like­ly they are to pur­chase from you or rec­om­mend you to a friend. 

How to Write a Good Blog Post

When it comes to writ­ing a good blog post, you want to con­sid­er both the ele­vat­ed style and stan­dard of writ­ing as well as fol­low­ing a thor­ough­ly mea­sured strat­e­gy out­line. Nei­ther one of these com­po­nents can car­ry the blog on its own, so you’ll need ded­i­cat­ed resources and atten­tion to detail to ensure that your team exe­cutes well. 

Writ­ing a supe­ri­or blog can be bro­ken down into char­ac­ter­is­tics to include, steps to fol­low and tips to pay mind to as you draft and write. 

Let’s get started!

Characteristics of a blog

High-qual­i­ty blogs include supe­ri­or writ­ing, edit­ing, per­spec­tive, and deliv­ery. When writ­ing a qual­i­ty piece, be mind­ful of the fol­low­ing blog assets:

Informative

Every­thing you present to your read­ers should be infor­ma­tive. If they want to be enter­tained, they’ll read a book. If a con­sumer has come to your site, it’s to learn some­thing, be it about you, your indus­try or prod­ucts. Inform!

Entertaining

While read­ers prob­a­bly aren’t brows­ing brand blogs just to escape real­i­ty, they do need to be enter­tained to keep read­ing. Focus on mak­ing posts fun­ny, wit­ty, engag­ing or interesting. 

woman reading interesting blog

Industry/brand relevance

Keep blogs close to home. Why is what you’re writ­ing about impor­tant to your read­ers and poten­tial con­sumers? Stay on brand. 

Now that you know what areas of excel­lence to aim for, let’s dis­cuss build­ing the best blog.

Steps of writing a blog

If you’re up for it, keep these steps list­ed at your desk or in your cre­ative space to fol­low every you sit down to write a post. If you fol­low this list each time, you can cre­ate a high-qual­i­ty piece to read. 

  • Research your audience 
  • Pick your topic
  • Out­line the blog 
  • Mas­ter your headlines
  • Write the blog 
  • Call to action
  • Edit to perfection
  • Opti­mize for SEO

We can dive into the details of each step.

Research your audience

Before you do any­thing, even before you decide to com­mit to writ­ing blogs as a part of your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, research your con­sumers. First, you’ll find out if they read. Sec­ond, you’ll find out if they do read, what inter­ests them, how long they read, when they read, why the read, etc. 

When research­ing your audi­ence, find ques­tions to these questions:

  • Who are they?
  • What do they want?
  • What do they not know they want? This last ques­tion is a per­fect segue to pub­lish­ing an atten­tion-get­ting blog post.

Pick your topic

Pick­ing your top­ic sounds easy enough, but there is a lot to it! Be smart about which top­ics you write on, when you pub­lish them and why. Before choos­ing a top­ic, be sure to:

  • Cre­ate a list of all poten­tial top­ic ideas (there will like­ly be many!)
  • Ana­lyze con­sumer research to deter­mine which top­ics are most like­ly to inter­est readers

Outline the blog

Before you write, draft an out­line to fol­low. Even if you veer from the out­line as you write, it’s good to have a shell to keep ideas with­in the con­text and orga­nized enough to follow. 

As you pre-struc­ture the post, include these items in your outline:

  • Key­word place­ment: where will key­words have the most effect and flow? 
  • Flow: what is the best way to present this infor­ma­tion to the reader?
  • Struc­ture time man­age­ment: giv­en the out­line sec­tions, you can appro­pri­ate­ly des­ig­nate time to each blog part

Master the headlines

Some of your read­ers will only read your head­lines and oth­ers will only read your writ­ing if your head­lines are decent. Include key­words and make sure your head­lines are:

  • Com­pelling
  • Take advan­tage of sub-head­ings to dive deeper

Write the blog

Once you have a plan in place and research to fuel your con­tent, start writ­ing! Keep it engag­ing and enter­tain­ing and try to do the following:

  • Stick to your outline
  • Inform and edu­cate, even if you’re crack­ing a joke
  • Over­write (this will make edit­ing eas­i­er than if you haven’t writ­ten enough)

Call to action

At the end of the post, write a clear and action­able step your read­er can take. Wise­ly decide if you want to ask for an email address or a com­ment after read­ing. The more acces­si­ble and rel­e­vant the CTA, the more like­ly its execution.

Remem­ber, when writ­ing a CTA:

  • Be clear
  • Be rea­son­able 

Edit to perfection

After let­ting your blog sit a day, edit two or three times before pub­lish­ing. As you or some­body else edits, look out for the following:

  • Gram­mar
  • Punc­tu­a­tion
  • Con­text
  • Flow

Optimize for SEO

Before you pub­lish your post, make sure you’ve checked all the SEO box­es so it can rank well and earn more readers. 

You can fol­low these SEO essen­tials in your outline:

  • Meta Title
  • Meta descrip­tions
  • Focus key­word
  • Relat­ed keywords
  • Inter­link

Got it all? Great! Now, we have a few expert tips to share to real­ly make your piece shine.

seo optimizing blog

32 Tips for Writing a Blog Post

When writ­ing your post, you’ll fol­low your out­line and research to pro­duce a qual­i­ty piece. If you want to go the extra mile and tilt read­ers toward repeat vis­its and shares, fol­low these pieces of advice below.

When researching your audience…

  1. Go above and beyond, search­ing inter­ests out­side of your indus­try to con­nect dots
  2. Use a data col­lec­tion tool such as: 
    1. Quo­ra
    2. SEM­Rush
    3. Twit­ter Advanced search
    4. KewordTool.io

When picking your topic…

  1. Make sure it’s inter­est­ing to your readers
  2. Make it use­ful to your reader’s life
  3. Keep it rel­e­vant to your brand and industry 
  4. Research to ensure it’s a unique idea or spin
  5. Ques­tion if it has poten­tial for length and depth
  6. Ques­tion if it’ll be use­ful or rel­e­vant in 3 years
  7. Thor­ough­ly eval­u­ate con­sumer research
  8. Look out for high vol­ume and low com­pe­ti­tion when research­ing keywords 

When making the outline…

  1. Do it every sin­gle time
  2. Thought­ful­ly place keywords
  3. Out­line the essentials:
    1. intro
    2. head­ings
    3. sub-head­ings
    4. bul­let points
    5. alt. for­mat sections
    6. con­clu­sion
  4. Cre­ative­ly break away if you want to

When crafting smart headlines…

  1. Let key­word research guide you
  2. Be action-ori­ent­ed
  3. Stick to pos­i­tive language 

When writing the blog…

  1. Don’t force it, be yourself
  2. Research first so you have plen­ty to say and sol­id context
  3. Write in the morn­ing before you’re tired or not excited
  4. Don’t edit as you go, it will waste time and break your focus/flow
  5. Over­write so you have plen­ty of con­tent to edit down
  6. Save con­clu­sion and intro­duc­tion for last

When calling to action…

  1. Be straight­for­ward and clear
  2. Keep it rel­e­vant to the post’s sub­ject matter
  3. Don’t ask for too much, make it easy to comply

When editing to perfection…

  1. Wait a day to edit so you can review the mate­r­i­al fresh
  2. Have some­body else read it so easy errors aren’t over­looked, con­text is sound and flow is easy to follow
  3. Pre­view lay­out before pub­lish­ing to see how the read­er will digest the info
  4. Proof­read again before pub­lish­ing, always!

When optimizing for SEO…

  1. Focus on the essen­tials and basics, don’t get lost in the clut­ter of SEO potential
  2. Use a check­list to ensure you’ve includ­ed the bare minimum

Are you ready to write a stel­lar blog post? Let us help you!

Rosy Strate­gies pro­vides supe­ri­or mar­ket­ing solu­tions to brands who want to grow and make an impact in their indus­try. If you are search­ing for help on draft­ing ide­al blog posts or curat­ing a blog strat­e­gy that com­ple­ments busi­ness goals, get in touch with our team at Rosy Strate­gies today.