Writing a blog can be tough, but with a cup of tea to hand and a will to succeed anyone can create a successful blog. Here are 7 easy and entertaining steps on how to write a blog post to help you create a masterpiece.
1. Prepare
As they say in the scouts, failure to plan is a plan to fail, or something like that! Maybe you will do some meditation, go for a run to clear the mind or write your gratitude journal followed by some calming yoga.
Probably what will happen is you will switch your computer on and stare at the screen blankly for half an hour, typing a few words and immediately deleting them over and over before realising you don’t even have a cup of tea – how can you be expected to do this without a cup of tea first!
Off you go, oh and while you wait for the kettle to boil make sure you keep your energy up by eating your body weight in biscuits – after all Rome wasn’t built on an empty stomach. This is a perfectly acceptable preparation for writing a blog post if you ask me.
2. Figure out what you’re going to say
I know, I know you can’t remember if you fed the cat this morning let alone why you thought being your own boss was a good idea and what you want to tell your potential customers.
You definitely weren’t living the dream at 3am this morning when you were still staring at your email and trying to figure out where you put that receipt for your expenses, and now you have to sound like you’re the authority on your specific niche.
Think about what information your customers would value, what they need to know about to get the most from your product or to help them decide to buy. What is the solution you’re trying to solve for your clients? Could you write a case study about how you helped in a specific circumstance?
If all else fails, go take a look at your marketing strategy so you can remind yourself who your ideal customer is and what the message you are wanting to communicate is. If you’re now wondering whether you should have done a marketing plan already, the answer is yes and if you don’t have one – call us!
3. Sell yourself – just a bit!
Yes, you! Go on, tell everyone about how amazingly awesome you are…….go on, there must be something. You got something, great!
As amazing as it is that when you were 7 you rescued a caterpillar from a puddle and your cousin awarded you with a daisy chain and called you a hero, I’m not sure it’s what we’re going for here.
You’re going to have to write about how you help clients overcome those obstacles they have, how you are going to make a potential new customer feel with your product or service and how it will enrich their lives.
If you have never written a blog post before and it’s your first one, you could go with telling people how you got to where you are today, and I’m not talking about when your car broke down last week, you had a client meeting to get to, your mobile phone battery was flat, and you felt like you were in an episode of the crystal maze! More along the lines of why you’re passionate about your business and all that jazz.
4. What’s everyone else done?
You’re struggling, and you thought you’d look at what the others had written, get inspired and the words would flow like you were the next JK Rowling. Except now you’ve read every single blog on the planet (or it at least feels like it), and you’re questioning the meaning of life and considering moving to the Outer Hebrides for a simpler existence and possibly being a sheep farmer.
It’s good to see what the competition is up to, but remember your business is uniquely you. You aren’t the competition, and you have every right to take up space and shout about how awesome your product is.
Don’t copy others work, it’s not cool. Just write about what you know, after all, no-ones more of an expert on your business than you.
5. Conclusion
So, you’ve managed to cobble something together that would have you got you a strong C minus from your English teacher, and you’re feeling pretty proud of yourself.
Now all you’ve got to do is come up with some sort of inspirational take away to end your blogging masterpiece. Problem is all you’ve got is ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade’ and something tells you people will know you didn’t come up with that.
If all else fails just summarise your main points in the post you’ve put together and what you want the reader to remember from your article, or if you’ve got a call to action put that in. For example, prompt people to sign up to your newsletter, download your free guide, register for the next training course – whatever is relevant to your audience and the blog post you’ve just written.
6. Spell check
Feeling accomplished, all you have to do now is spell check your article or if you are a real glutton for punishment pop it into Grammarly to be critiqued.
This is where you find out that you have no grasp of the English language, and you type like a drunk 5-year-old judging by the number of spelling errors. The only relief comes from shouting at the screen ‘we don’t spell it like that, that’s American spelling’, before changing it anyway just in case you’re wrong!
7. Publish that bad boy
All set? Load it up to the website, complete all the metadata, alt text, and all those other things that help with your SEO – then press publish – yay!
Yes, you can now go and hide under the duvet and wait for any comments to come in. But don’t forget to let people know you wrote something, it’ll be ok, honest. Social media channels are good for this sort of thing.
Good luck to all our fellow business owners who have to go through the pain of writing about themselves for the good of the world as we know it – I hope the technology gods are kind to you and you don’t close down your laptop without remembering to save the blog post! Now go and have another cup of tea, you deserve it.
Oh, and if writing blog posts and the such like have you running for the hills, then don’t worry we got you covered. Just email heidi@bookable-online.stackstaging.com, and we can get you sorted with as many content ideas and written blogs as you need. We’re actually very good at this sort of thing – just saying!