How To Write A Blog Post [Beginners Guide]

If you’re someone who is just starting out writing blog posts, you are in the right place. I have gathered all the information you are gonna need to know; how to begin with, what to keep, what to let go of, what makes your blog stands out and much more.
So lets get right into it.

Platforms for Blog and Article Writing:

Well, to be honest choosing the platform that fits you depends on YOU!! . For me, Medium.com is one of the best platforms. For you, it could be Wordpress. MS word and Google Docs also remain on this list. So, choosing a platform depends on ones own comfort. Once you have opted for a platform, you can get right into writing your article. Here’s how:

SELECT A TOPIC:

After choosing the right platform, you need to have an idea in your mind about what you wanna write about. You have to know a TOPIC of your choice. Know your niche, know what you love writing about. If you’re confused about choosing the right topic you can check out: 12 Freelance Writing Niches That Make CRAZY Money ($100+ PER ARTICLE)

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE:

Knowing your audience plays a major role in your blog visibility. The topic you choose to write on, should be according to the audience you are going to present it to.
The tone of your writing should be accordingly. Pick a tone that goes well with your content. For example, it could be formal, informal, highly technical, businesslike, or casually conversational depending upon the context.

Photo by Antenna on Unsplash

RESEARCH :

This is the part that takes most of the time. And for an article to be well written you need to know everything about it. After gathering all the information and covering all the aspects of your topic, you may wanna look into Google scholar. Its a platform that provides all the academic an scholarly related material for your article.

Now, if you wanna provide stats on what you’re saying; check out Statista. Your audience is more likely to believe you if you put in statistics. Search for the keywords and it will provide you with the relevant stats.

OUTLINE:

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Some of the people while writing an article may wanna skip this part. But trust me, a little mind map in your head and then giving it an outline is gonna cause much less trouble then starting without it. You should know where your headed. You can use this article to divide your article in different sections, assigning relevant citations to them, assigning the word count. This helps a lot at the end when you wanna add up or remove accordingly.

WRITE:

Lets start writing without any distractions. Give in whatever you had in your mind. Start with an intro, then later the content and ending with a conclusion. Here, you do not worry about spacing, grammar, punctuation. Rather, you just give your thoughts and ideas words. This part is most fun for a writer I guess, right?

EDIT:

• Add Visuals: Research shows that posts that include images produce 650% higher engagement than text-only posts. You can get free photos from Unsplash, Pablo, Shutterstock.
• Split it into paragraphs: We do it often when introducing a new idea. One of the factors that attracts the audience. Space it and split it !! Make it less complicated! Splitting a bigger paragraphs into smaller ones makes it easier for a reader to grab what they came looking for.

image from howtogeek.com

• Highlight/Bold/ Use Bullets: Since everyone is in a rush. Use bolds to differentiate the most important stuff from the rest.

Jakob Nielsen’s seminal web usability study from 1997 showed that 79 percent of web users scan rather than read

• Grammarly: Use Grammarly.com to check any grammatical mistakes. Its free and provides extension for your browser.
• Add/delete: Take a look at the outline that you made. Add any thing that you might have missed and remove the data that you now realize no longer needs to be placed in the article.
• Proofread: Give your article a final read before publishing it. Proofreading will help to eliminate any errors that you might have made along the way.

HEADLINE/ TITLE:

Headline should be catchy that targets the audience. Study shows that on average 8 out of 10 people choose whether to read or not from the title.

Check out 5 Tips For A Perfect Headline.

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar”. — David Ogilvy

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZE YOUR POST:

• Use a SEO Headline.
• Utilize keywords throughout the post.
• Snippet preview; Meta description: Wordpress provides a snippet preview before publishing your article. Readers after checking the headline jump to the snippet and if it gives them the answer, they go for it.
  Meta Description helps to filter. It catches the eye of reader so make sure you use it the right way.
  Check this Screenshot out: