Whether you are like me and love to write, or the opposite and it fills you with dread, it is becoming an essential business skill. If you are of the latter category the dream is to farm this job off on someone else (a virtual assistant like myself, perhaps? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge), but if that isn’t within your budget at this time it means tackling the task yourself. But if you are going to do it, you might as well do it right! So I’ve compiled my 5 easy steps to writing an awesome blog.

It’s not just writing.

These days it’s not simply just learning to write well, it’s learning how to translate that piece of writing so that it performs well on other mediums, such as a website. As of 2014, adults spend approximately 20 hours per week online (telegraph.co.uk). This means that having a meaningful web presence is essential to the success and longevity of your business. What do I mean by meaningful? I mean actually writing something of substance, not just fluff as filler. Find a problem your target audience is facing, or a tutorial on how to do something related to your business or product. This will keep people coming back and as they come back they will begin to know, trust, and like your business and depend on you to keep them informed, educated, and become their go-to supplier of the product or service you sell.

So how do you write this non-fluff, meaningful blog you ask?

Find out what the people want to know.

Ask your reader: Is there a recurring problem or question that keep popping up?Read reviews of products services and how people have used them to improve their lives then teach others.Keep on top of the latest news: If something new or big is happening within the industry keep your audience informed.

Its all about the headline.

Peoples attention spans are getting shorter and shorter (the blessing and curse of media on the go). To grab attention you need to write a catchy headline that grabs their attention. Here are some examples of popular headline formats:

Best of something: Best backyard BBQ recipe

Numbered lists: 10 tips to clean your house faster

Teach something: Learn to chalk paint furniture (and you don’t have to be a master painter!)

And at the end of it there is a fabulous free site https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer that will analyse your headline for key elements. It can help give a leg up when you’re not sure what makes a great headline and what doesn’t.

Be authentic.

Readers enjoy when they can envision the human behind the writing. That doesn’t mean you have to get real personal when writing your blog pieces, it just means give the readers your thoughts and ideas. Tell them what worked or what didn’t when you tackled that home project, or recipe. Give the reader a slice of humour if it calls for it. Readers will return to businesses that made them feel good. And the more they return, the more likely they will become a paying customer.

SEO

Ah that dreaded term. Search engine optimization. How does one do it? Well first of all there are a lot of free and paid courses out there. I will give you my quick and dirty tips here: Keyword research: how popular is your search term? Will it be hard to rank for?

Natural integration: You don’t want to overdo it, but you want to make sure you naturally integrate the word you want that page to rank for. Make sure your keyword or phrase makes into a) the first paragraph in the post, b) the title of the post, c) at least one subheading, and d) into the metadescription. A free service like Yoast will help you out by pointing out ways to increase your ability to rank for a specific term.

Provide inbound and outbound links to other articles within the same topic. Go to your old blogs that are categorized similarly and link to your new article and vice versa. You can also put a link to an outside article as well (Just be judicious in your selection, you don’t want to encourage people to heartily to leave your site, but you also want to provide good will by linking to other important information that may be of assistance to the reader).

Share it!

Have a plan to share your posts to social media. You don’t have to share it on every social channel. Do your research to find out where your people at and target those channels. You can also share your blog as an article on LinkedIn Pulse, or Medium.