Do you fancy your hand at writing a blog? Not sure where to start? We’ve put together a few suggestions to help the absolute blog beginner to start writing engaging content for any website.
First off – what is a blog and why do we do them? The name comes from ‘web log’, which at the dawn of the internet was like an online diary. People would update their followers on their day and what they did, just like a regular paper diary. With the rise of social media, such as Facebook, doing ‘web logs’ became less popular and the idea of blogging started to seem old fashioned.
That all changed in a huge way alongside the rise of search engine giant Google. Two of the factors Google considers before selecting your site to show to potential customers are:
- Is your site up to date and regularly maintained?
- Is the information on there accurate?
One of the things that Google looks for before selecting a webpage to show you is how new it is. If your website hasn’t been updated in, say, a year then chances are the information is out of date. However, if it has been updated recently and regularly, there’s a better chance your site will contain accurate and timely information.
Google also looks to see how many people link to your site – this is a great indicator of how useful and accurate your pages are. The more content you have which shows your expertise on a topic, the more likely it is that Google will show your pages to interested potential customers.
So enough about the history, let’s get into the nitty gritty.
How to start writing a blog post
A blog post should have a clear topic, ideally just one subject you will talk about. For example, the topic of this blog is writing blog posts. The clearer your topic, the easier it will be for readers to find you and read your post. Make your header (or headline) clear on what you are writing about.
For example, “Why do birds lay eggs?” is a better heading than “Understanding the reproductive cycle of avians”.
Make sure you pick a topic you know a lot about – especially if this is your first blog. It’s an opportunity to show your expertise, so flaunt it! Getting bogged down in research can really hinder the writing process when you are starting out and remember, it’s a blog not a scientific journal. Feel free to add references, but people are looking for your own personal knowledge on a topic.
First paragraph
Make your introduction clear – lay out what you are going to write about. Set your tone of voice here too. This is the way you write – will it be chatty and helpful (like this one! Hello!) or will it be serious, straight to the point and no-nonsense?
Subheadings
People read online differently than they do a newspaper. With a newspaper, people tend to read the headline, and then the article.
Online, people will often scan the page first, read the headline, then the smaller subheaders, maybe look at the images and if all that looks good, they will start the article. Oh, but they might not start the article at the start. They might start halfway down below an interesting subheader.
And that is why we have subheaders – to direct people to the information they want as quickly as possible. If they struggle to find what they need, they will click back to Google to find another site, and you will have lost a potential customer. Good subheadings can be asking questions which the paragraph answers, or they can use keywords which users might be looking for.
For example, if your blog is reviewing restaurants, a good subheading would be “Was Café Sorted value for money?” or “Menu selection”.
Images
Images are really important in a blog. They help people understand the topic quickly and can add further depth and understanding to your writing. They say an image speaks a thousand words, but even if it only says a few that aren’t in your blog, that’s good enough.
A word of caution here – you can’t just pick a picture you like from the internet and use it on your blog. That’s copyright violation, and there is a good chance you will get an email from someone’s lawyer asking you to take it down. Instead, there are plenty of sites which offer you free images to use as you please, such as:
Alternatively, take your own photos and use them! That way your blog will be 100% original.
Conclusion
Let’s talk about conclusions. It’s always hard to say goodbye, but this is a blog not a novel so try to keep your wordcount anywhere between 300-500 for a quick-read post to 1500 for a longer one. Sum up what you have spoken about briefly – in this case, we took you through the main aspects of writing your first blog post.
Finally, blog posts are great for pointing people in the direction of where you are offering your services, or to sign up to a newsletter. So if you have found this blog interesting, then signing up to our newsletter for more tips and articles is a no-brainer. And if you want to link people to some of your other relevant posts – like this one which talks about SEO on blog posts – then do it here!
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