Now that you’ve set up your blog, chosen a theme or had a custom design installed, it’s time to begin posting — share what you love, what you know, and what you’ve learned! But, it’s more than just writing. To create a great blog post, you need to incorporate the following:
1. A Killer Post Title: The post title is the first thing people see and read in the post, so it has to be powerful enough to grab their attention.
- The posts that have numbers in the title do best, such as "10 Quick Tips To Grow Your Blog’s Subscribers", "7 Great Tips to Help Promote Your Jewelry Business on Pinterest" or "5 Ways To Make a Wedding Unique".
- Posts that feature a checklist also tend to do well.
- Build a "top ten" list post for another interesting angle.
2. Strategic Keywords: Your blog post and the post title need to contain keywords specific to that post’s overall message. If you strategically use keywords every time you publish, you have a new opportunity to have each post rank well in search engines!
- Use Google Trends to find the hottest search trends.
- Try Google Keyword Planner to help identify keywords you should be using and see traffic estimates based on those proposed keywords.
3. A Clear and Concise Point: Make sure your blog post is specific to one topic. It may contain many points and tips, but in general, one message should be conveyed in each blog post.
4. Error Free Writing: This cannot be stressed enough! Make sure to use a spelling and grammar checker. If possible, have someone proofread your posts too. Show off your best work!
5. Headings: Use headings to help guide your readers through your blog post and to highlight key points. Additionally, if you use the specific Heading 1 or Heading 2 style settings when composing your blog post, it helps improve your search engine rankings, so make sure you have keywords in your headings too!
6. Helpful Links: When writing a post, it’s a great idea to provide your readers with even more helpful information pertaining to the topic by linking to other posts — whether those on your own site or external sites. Your readers will appreciate the extra resources or information. However, keep in mind that linking to other posts on your own site keeps readers on your site longer, increases the number of clicks on your site, and improves your performance on search engines such as Google.
7. A Visual Hierarchy: The post excerpt from Content Marketing Institute, "Is Your Content Curation Ethical? A 10-Step Checklist" is a great blog post overall. It includes keywords, numbers in the post title, headings and links. Even more, it is visually appealing and contains a great balance of images, text and headings.
8. Share Buttons: This is a feature you should have installed on your blog to help your readers share your posts, versus something that you write. In the Content Marketing Institute example above, you’ll find small social networking icons under the post title. Those are called share buttons and are available on all major blogging platforms such as Blogger, TypePad or WordPress.
9. A Call to Action: Last but not least, when concluding your posts, you’ll want to give the readers something to do, somewhere else to go, or something to sign up for. This is referred to as a call to action. You may ask them to sign up for your newsletter, download your new eBook, or sign up for an upcoming free webinar or event. You don’t need — or want — to have a self-promoting call to action in every post, but give readers something to do periodically to keep them engaged.
Bonus: Want to learn how to start a successful blog? Enroll in the New York Institute of Art and Design's Blogging Course today!
