How Do You Write a Successful Blog Article?

Why Blogs Are Important

Whether you have an ecommerce business or plan on showcasing your contractor skills, blogs can help highlight your knowledge, give tips on topics, and (arguably most importantly) entice your visitors to buy your products or services.

Let’s go over everything you need to start a successful blog, how to formulate blog posts ideas, how to write articles, and how to use blog writing tools to your advantage.

What to Know Before You Write a Blog Article

There are a few things that are vital to have a hang on before you start creating a blog and write your first article.

Who Your Targeted Audience Is

The first rule for creating effective content for your business blog is to completely understand why you’re blogging. And this should revolve around what your readers want (more on that later).

Have a thorough understanding of your ideal reader’s (your customer’s) profile and of your core message as it relates to your business. If you have a really clear idea about who you’re writing for, it’s going to be easier to write. Your blog posts will be on target and on purpose. You won’t be meandering off into subjects that are irrelevant to your audience.

Discover What Your Readers Want

Always write with your reader in mind. Write as if you are answering the question “what’s in it for them?” Your readers are asking themselves all the time whether this blog is worth their time to read. You’re more likely to keep them interested if you’re viewing your products and concerns from your customer’s point of view.

Address your readers’ major issues and concerns. If you don’t know what they are, ask!

Surveys are a great way to find out what customers or leads aren’t happy with. You can even figure out which blog article topics generally get more traffic by using a great blog article or website-building tool. TruVISIBILITY’s new blog application can let you see your analysis so you can improve or write more of a popular topic to gain leads.

You’ll Need to Edit Often

So many blog posts start off with, “The other day, I was thinking about…” or “You know, summer’s almost over and….” A blog post is not an essay and it’s not poetry. Get to the point right away. Follow the KISS rule. Keep It Short and Sweet. That means you can actually write less.

Write short, declarative sentences and omit all unnecessary words. This means read and reread your posts before you publish. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t been trained as a journalist or taken a lot of writing classes.

If you can write an email, you can write a blog post. However, your blog writing will improve when you reread before publishing to be sure you have taken out all unnecessary words.

After you click the ‘publish’ button, read your post again. Often this is when you will catch typos or grammatical errors you didn’t see before. Show respect for your readers by having clean copy.

It doesn’t take much for readers to abandon your blog; some might unsubscribe simply because your spelling is sloppy. In the online world, your words are all you’ve got.

Create SEO Keyword-rich Headlines

Write compelling headlines by using strategic keywords that are relevant to your topic. Keywords are often touted as gold by search engine optimization experts who want to charge you an arm and a leg for their services. But let’s make a complicated issue simple.

Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal reader. If this reader was searching Google for information or solutions to a problem, would she find you? Make a list of all the words or phrases she might use to search for you, your business, and your solutions.

Those are the keywords and key phrases that you want to use frequently on your blog. When you write a headline for your blog post, use these keywords. This alerts the search engines as well as your reader about what’s important in your post.

Doing keyword research from time to time will help you stay on top of what your prospects want. You’ll find out exactly how readers are looking for the information you’ve got.

Write a Catching First Sentence

Write an optimized first paragraph using the same keywords you used in your post headline. Make your point right away rather than leading into it.

Use clear keywords in the first sentence of the first paragraph, and then summarize them again before you close your blog post. Always close by asking readers for their comments.

Have Short Paragraphs and White Space

When writing, keep paragraphs short. They should be one or two sentences at most, and then break for a new paragraph. White space is your friend. Sometimes just one sentence can be as effective as a paragraph. You want lots of white space between paragraphs on your blog.

Remember, most readers are in a hurry. Text on a computer screen is also harder to read than text on paper. You want to make it as easy as possible for your readers to grasp your message quickly.

Use Bulleted or Numbered Lists

Use bullet points and lists as often as possible. This makes your post easy:

To read
To scan
To understand
To remember

Research shows that people prefer things to be easily digestible and chunked down for them. It’s easier for them to remember your message if you’ve given it to them in a list of three to five items.

Some online writing experts also recommend keeping lists to an odd number of bullet points, but the important part is to use lists whenever you can.

Add Images, Gifs, and Videos When Appropriate

Writing for the web is an entirely different animal than writing for print. Oftentimes, people simply don’t have the time, will, or ability to focus on lengthy blog posts without some visual stimulation.

Even a well-formatted blog post consisting solely of text is likely to send your reader screaming back to Reddit or Twitter within minutes, which is why it’s so important to include images in your posts.

Sometimes, digital marketing and hundreds of other niche topics aren't the most accessible subject to newcomers. That’s why images are an essential part of your blogging toolkit if you’re hoping to expand your audience. Diagrams, charts, infographics, tables, and any other visual assets can help your readers understand abstract or complex topics and grasp the points you’re trying to make.

Steps to Write a Blog Post

How do you start writing a killer blog post, though? These are the basic steps every professional blogger uses.

Plan Your Article

An outline doesn’t need to be lengthy, or even detailed – it’s just a rough guide to make sure you don’t ramble on and on about something tangential to your topic.

For example, this is the outline for this post that I sent to my editor before getting to work:

Introduction

This is the quick summary explaining what the blog post will cover. Not too dissimilar from the conclusion section.

Section 1 – Planning a Blog Post

These are the things bloggers should do before putting pen to paper – outlining, research etc.

Section 2 – Writing a Blog Post

These are tips on how to focus on writing, productivity tips for bloggers.

Section 3 – Rewriting/Editing a Blog Post

Self-editing techniques, things to watch out for, common blogging mistakes.

Section 4 – Optimizing a Blog Post

How to optimize a blog post for on-page SEO, social shares/engagement, etc.

Section 5 – Conclusion

This is the wrap-up. Briefly go over what your article covered, but give a call to action for your audience to take. Such actions could be a button or ad that takes a visitor to your website or product page, possibly giving the readers more information about what your article touched on.

The purpose of this outline is to make sure I know what I plan to cover, in what order the various sections will appear, and some bare-bones details of what each section includes.

Write a Great Headline

Everyone seems to have an opinion about headlines. Some say you should be as specific as possible to avoid misleading your readers and manage their expectations, while others recommend taking a more abstract approach. Vague headlines might work just fine if you’re Seth Godin, but for most of us, being specific is better.

There are two main approaches you can take to writing blog post headlines. You can either decide on your final headline before you write the rest of your post (and use your headline to structure your outline), or you can write your blog post with a working title and see what fits when you’re done.

Actually Write the Article

This may be the hard part, but also the fun and creative part! Similarly to headlines, there are two main approaches to writing a blog post. You can either sit down and write an entire draft in a single sitting (my preferred workflow), or you can chip away at it gradually over time. There is no right or wrong answer here – only whatever works for you.

However, we recommend getting as much done in one session as possible. This makes it easier to stay focused on the topic, minimizes the chance that you’ll forget crucial points, and also lets you get the thought process out of your hair faster.

There are no hacks to write better. Over time, however, you will know exactly what you want to say (the outline will help a ton), and the process will go faster.

Use Images, Gifs, Videos the Right Way

Even a well-formatted blog post consisting solely of text is likely to send your reader screaming back to Facebook or Twitter within minutes, which is why it’s so important to include pictures in your posts.

Images, whether they are created on Canva or other Adobe or grabbed from Adobe Stock Photos, can:

Help your blog post flow more effectively
Add humor or something catchy for readers to remember
Help readers understand complex things, such as an infographic

Editing

You thought writing an entire article is hard? Editing may be harder still. We get it. You just want to be done with the writing and publish the thing already.

Many people mistakenly assume that editing is simply striking through sentences that don’t work or fixing grammatical errors. Although sentence structure and grammar are both very important, editing is about seeing the piece as a whole and, sometimes, being willing to sacrifice words (and the hours it took to write them) for the sake of cohesion.

You should be line editing, checking for grammar and spelling, to begin with. But true editing means deleting whole sections and possibly moving things in spite of your original outline in order for the article to make more sense or be more entertaining and informative.

Conclusion

Make sure there is a conclusion paragraph. But don’t just end the article there. This is important, particularly, for businesses trying to gain leads and customers. Give them an action at the end of your article.

Sure, you sprinkled in your CTA buttons throughout, perhaps. But this last call-to-action should redirect your readers to your landing page or a product page while also offering a good deal or showcasing some benefit to them.

What You Need to Write Blog Articles

The right tool should give you some essentials for your blog. Such tools that every software should give are:

Add picture - Adding images (and gifs or videos, for that matter) are vital to an eye-catching and sometimes informative article.

SEO - You should be able to add meta description and keywords to your article so that it is easily found and makes the top search engine results page

Easy text box - A simple box where you can types your article or copy and paste from another program (Word, Google docs) is important. Autosaving the text you write is also great to have.

Saving and preview - Being able to save your work is important since you don’t want it lost, especially since these programs are online. You should also be able to preview what your blog post may look like before publishing on your site.

Integrations - The most important thing to have is the ability to publish your blog directly onto your site (which can easily be connected). You should also have the option of integrating and sharing your new blog post on social channels.

TruVISIBILITY’s Blogs App

Blogs is a new app developed by TruVISIBILITY to easily integrate your blogs to a blog page on your business website or blog site. This is a great tool for bloggers and businesses of all kinds who want to generate more content for their audience (and gain more visibility and leads).

Let’s go over the most important features so you can see how easy it is to use Blogs. Apart from being simpler to navigate than other blog writing tools, what’s the best thing about it? It’s free to use for life!

Writing Tools

You can easily copy and paste whatever you’ve written into the blog tool with minimal to no format changes. Let’s say you already wrote your articles in a Google doc. No problem! Simply copy and paste, edit, add other content like images, and you’re on your way to publishing it.

Image/ Video Tools

You can add any image or video below any text, as seen in the below example.

And that little blue plus sign? This means you can click on it to add any feature/ widget you need. You can also use it to drag the section (such as an image) above a few blocks or at the bottom of the article. Anywhere you need it!

SEO Features

You can change the title tag (also called headline, headline 1, or H1 tag) along with the url for the article and article description, which is essentially your meta description for search engine result pages or SERPs.

Integrations

The most important thing is the simple ability to connect your website with your blog page. Once you click “publish”, the blog post will publish on your blog webpage on your site. You can easily configure this to automatically publish and update to your website, especially if you created your website with TruVISIBILITY.

You can also integrate your social accounts and manage how posting about your new blog will appear. Below is an example of the text that you can change for sharing on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Publishing

In the upper right-hand side of your text editor, you will hit the blue “Publish” button to start publishing your blog. You can also hit the arrow next to this button to schedule the post to publish on a specific day.

Once you see that everything looks correct, such as title, meta description, etc., you can click “Confirm”.

What’s Next?

Try out TruVISIBILITY’s Blogs app today! You can continue to keep your account and use the platform for blogging for free for a lifetime!

It’s a great addition to the other apps offered that are easily and quickly integrated with your website and social channels for better lead generation, ultimately growing more sales. Other apps offered that go well with the Blogs app include Websites, Chat, and Messaging (Email and SMS messaging).