How to Write a Perfect Blog Post: 3 Steps to Writing Articles Your Customers Can’t Ignore!
Updated: Jul 15
Welcome to my blog article on how to actually write a blog post that converts visitors to fans, readers, and customers for your business.
I’m going to show you how to write a blog post that outranks every other content piece on Google.
How to Write a Perfect Blog Post: 3 Steps to Writing Articles Your Customers Can’t Ignore!
Whenever I want to write a blog article, there are 3 main steps I take:
Step 1: The Idea and Research Stage
Step 2: Writing Stage
Final 3: Post-Publish Stage
Step 1 - The Idea and Research Stage
The Idea and research stage is the first step I take in any content marketing campaign we run. This is an essential step that helps to set your blog article apart from the billions out there.
I mean, there are more than 600 million blogs at the moment. with over 7 million blog posts (or blog articles) published per day.
The research stage tells you what topics to consider and ones to avoid, keywords to target and keywords to pay less attention to, market needs, and much more.
What template works for the type of blog posts your customers need in 2023?
The idea and research stage helps you write only the best blog posts in your niche.
Today, internet users find and read content that actually adds value to them.
This stage can determine how well your blog post performs. The better you research and dig deep down into a subject, the better your content pieces would perform.
Here, you must ask yourself a series of questions and answer them before you begin writing.
It’s like forecasting, studying the past and present to tell what will possibly happen in the future. This will give your startup a boost.
You do a little research to see what has worked in the past, what’s working now, to tell what will perform best in the future which is your objective;
To create something that outperforms what has already been published.
What topics interest your target customers the most?
What keywords do your target search on Google, YouTube, and social networks like Pinterest and Twitter?
What sort of content do they prefer to consume?
Will this topic (or headline) help my readers solve a particular pain point?
Where can I get people that would be interested in this blog post?
You must get clear and concise on what you want to achieve with each blog post. This way, you know the direction you’re going even before you begin writing your blog post.
You already know what marketing strategy to use even before you start writing.
You know what channels would yield better marketing results for your blog post.
When writing you know certain pain points to address in your articles to better solve your reader’s pain points.
Using Quora to generate organic topic ideas is the best way to go about it.
With just a few searches, you can get 100s of organic questions asked directly by the people you want to target. This helps you get clear on what their pain points are.
For each question you come across, you can check for “similar questions” to find relevant questions that may be necessary for the blog post.
You could find headings, subheadings, and micro points to add to your blog post to make it more helpful.
KEYWORD RESEARCH:
The next thing you want to do is make use of any keyword research tool at your disposal to dig even deeper.
Not all questions asked on Quora are worth writing about. Some could be tips or subheadings in blog posts. This is crucial as it determines how many people land on your blog post after publishing.
The more grounds or questions your content answers, the better your content pieces would perform.
A reader who wants to learn how to boost blog engagement may want to learn how to create content that attracts engagement. The reader would also want to learn what sort of content type to post to attract comments, likes, and shares.
This could be videos, enticing captions, etc.
BLOG POST OUTLINE:
Before writing any killer blog articles, you should have an outline that looks something like this (or better) with all the headings and subheadings replaced with your content ideas.
Step 2: The Blog Post Writing Stage
As a b2b startup, you should focus more on these aspects of writing a healthy blog post (that actually adds value to your readers AND NOT Just please search engine).
The Blog post length.
The article's tone.
The Blog Post Length:
In blogging, the length of your articles would vary from post to post depending on what industry you’re in and what topic or pain point your article is solving.
The length of an article also plays a huge role in determining how well the post performs.
A great outline or article plan or research isn’t enough to attain the results you plan to hit. The length of the post tells you how well the post would perform.
In an industry where short and precise content formats are accepted, then shorter articles ranging from 500 to 1500 words should do but here’s the thing;
If your blog posts are ‘how to’ articles, then your articles shouldn’t go below 1500 words if you want to hit Google’s page 2 or 1 regardless of what industry you’re in.
A ‘how to’ article should always go in-depth, answer questions related to the main topic (or headline), and must always carry the reader along (step by step).
What’s the ideal length for an in-depth blog post?
Search engine journal reports 1900 words is the ideal length for a blog postseason Google’s page 1. WesFed reports 1600 words.
Buffer also recommends 1600 words.
The Blog Article Tone
Your writing tone should make your readers feel welcome to your blog. Your writing tone should give your readers the exact feeling you want.
As a writer, you’re in charge of your readers and how they feel. Whenever a visitor lands on your blog page, the reader should feel the exact way you want him to feel.
Want to kick any emotion or feelings or just want to make your reader feel some type of way? Your article should do just that.
How then do you know what tone to use in your articles?
There are 2 major determinants to picking the best tone for your content pieces.
This step is so important as it decides whether or not your readers come back to your blog. The way you make them feel matters a lot!
I’m sure you’ve come across the popular saying, “People don’t remember what you do, they remember how you made them feel”.
Make your readers feel some type of way and they’ll never forget you.
Here’s it;
Your STARTUP OR BLOG industry &
Your blog topic.
Your industry or niche is what lays the foundation for selecting the perfect blog writing tone for your blog post.
A proper definition of your ideal target audience would tell you what tone to use in your articles.
A CEO would prefer a more professional approach to writing content pieces as opposed to a student looking to go out of debt or a struggling blogger looking to increase traffic to a new blog.
Next?
The next thing you want to do is to find and read the best-performing blog posts in your industry. Pay attention to how the writers write and how they address the readers.
Is the writing style formal, semi-formal, or informal?
A good tool I suggest is Buzzsumo.
With Buzzsumo, you can easily see the top-performing content pieces in any industry on the internet. Let’s take the “Restaurant Marketing” space for instance.
You can go through and find great ideas on how to talk to your target audience.
Your Blog Topic:
Every topic demands a unique approach and must aim at achieving a specific goal.
Some topics in the marketing industry that perform best of written in a formal tone. A good example is a “News or Opinion article”. These are naturally short, and concise and mostly have a professional tone.
For every blog post article you write, your target reader must be in mind. Ask yourself questions to help you write the best blog post copy for your ideal customers.
The tone of your blog article can determine your blog's conversion rate.
If your writing tone tells the right story, passes the right message, and solves a pain point, the better your conversion rate.
Check similar content pieces and look through the ones with the most engagements or highest comments. If a blog post attracts lots of comments, then the writer did a pretty good job of conveying the message in the right manner.
Read through them and notice the pattern of communication and try to see how you can make yours even better.
Publishing better blog posts depends on how well you do your research before writing.
Final 3: Post-Publish Stage
The post-publish stage is the final stage and is as important as the previous stages discussed. After writing and publishing your blog post, the next thing to do falls under this step.
Every task you carry out after publishing comes in here.
Unlike most articles that tell you;
Share on Facebook, tweet it out severally, pin it on group boards, implement on-page SEO, submit on web directories, rinse and repeat, I’ll be revealing the 3 most vital b2b blog marketing strategies to implement to ensure your blog actually converts.
Content marketing today isn’t what it used to be. It’s at a difficult level where marketers and bloggers can’t easily get away with black-hat SEO strategies and tricks, and mediocre blog posts with little to no marketing efforts.
Startup blogging demands more than just that and here are 3 powerful marketing strategies that still work.
Influencer reach outs
Facebook ads and
Content repurposing.
In the next blog post, I’ll be discussing these 3 strategies in detail.
Thanks for reading this far.
Best,
Simon (Taki) Zaku
