Blogging is a unique platform where you can show your emotions, thoughts and opinions. It gives the ultimate joy of expressing yourself to the entirety. Since its first appearance in 1994, blogging has come a long way.

In the beginning, J. Barger named it “weblog” which is believed to be originated from the term “web+log” and later, it became “blog”. From the late 1990s, this platform has evolved significantly; 23 blogs in the year 2000 were joined by another 50 million till 2006 and from there it never stopped.

Despite having so many blogs present today, still blogging is essential for several reasons. It can improve your website’s SEO, increase traffic to your website, builds community, grow your email list and several others. Blogging is also a great way to present your products to the customers.

Here you can read Why Blogging is Important for your Business

But this only works if the content is informative, useful, engaging and delivering value to the readers. To create the blog having all the listed quality often becomes challenging for many. If you are the beginner, then you must know that writing a great blog is not something which can be done within 2 hours. Trust me, it takes more than that as for some, finding the right topics can even become difficult.

So, what does a great blog look like? How anyone can write a great blog regularly?

Nothing is Confidential

Well for me, blogs are more than just the word on your laptops or digital screens. If you are one of those who believes in just writing tons of words and publishing it daily, then I’m sorry to say: It won’t work anymore!

As already gazillions of blogs are present out there, what makes your blogs so interesting or unique?

In this article, I’ll tell you some of the basics which every great blogger uses before writing their blogs.

So here’s all the key things which I’ll be going to discuss:

1st Step: Research about your audience, the appropriate topic and the content
2nd Step: Nail the title and the introduction of your blog
3rd Step: Create a structure or an outline of your blog
4th Step: Dedicate some time to find all the interesting stats
5th Step: Start writing
6th Step: Length of the article is vital for the success of your blog
7th Step: ALWAYS Proofread & Format the content
8th Step: Select high-quality, relevant and appealing images
9th Step: Don’t forget to mention call-to-action

Let’s Begin!

1. Research and Research and Research

Research

Be it any type of blogs or any niche, you should know the correct audience for which you are writing. You should know exactly what your audience is searching for or what your audience actually wants. It looks complicated, isn’t it?

For the starters if you are into a particular business then try to make content relevant to that business; if your blog is related to chemical science, then try to solve the problems of that industry; if you are into real estate, then try to address all the solutions which people are facing in that sector.

Before you write anything, you have to decide the topic to write for. It couldn’t be anything or the ones which you like as already tons of other blogs are present.

Still, confused? You’re lucky!

Out there, myriad of resources are present which you can use to get the idea about the topic. Some of these are:

  • Keywordtool.io– It is a free tool which you can use to search all the popular keywords of your niche according to different mediums.
  • Quora– It is one of the best websites to find all the trending questions which people are searching from your industry.
  • SEMRush– Unlike the other two, it’s a paid tool which often bloggers uses to spy their competitors, keywords and all the trending content.

Once, you’ve finalized your topic, now research about the content. Accept it that you can’t write about any topic without knowing it. Even you know any topic thoroughly, it’s better to search reliable or influential or government websites to back your points.

Always research with the sole aim to educate your reader. Try to find unique, useful and informative content. While researching, make the habit of asking yourself whether it will be informative or not?

2. Title of your Blog is the Key

Title writing motivation

Once you’re ready with all your research and sure about the content to write on, then the next big and the most important task is to write the title. Believe me, it is the one part of your blog which looks very simple. But in reality, you have to give most of the time to think some good, interesting and appealing title.

You can work on your title in two ways. One, you first finalize your title and then write the blog or you can first write a blog and then work on the title.

According to several experts, a majority of the readers bounce away after reading just the title. The Title becomes important for the success of your blog. Always prepare several compelling titles for your blog then select the most appealing one. Your title must be concise, descriptive, engaging and interesting. It should portray the clear picture of the whole blog.

There are also various online tools available to measure the quality of your title. My personal favorite is headline analyzer by CoSchedule. It scores your headline according to the different criteria and gives tips to improve it.

3. Create the Structure of your Blog

I know the excitement to write if you are ready with your research and title. But hold your emotions down. First, create the structure of the blog and the trick is to distribute your blogs in different sections. Write the rough sub-headings for each of the sections of your blog. All the sections must be organized according to the correct order or the flow of your blog.

Create all the headings, sub-headings, paragraph breaks and all the bullet points which your blog will include. Below is the example for the structure of a traveling blog which you can go through to have a rough idea.

Introduction
Inspiration or Importance of the Destination (Heading 1)
Numerous Ways to Reach to the Destination (Heading 2)
Airways (Sub Heading 1)
Train (Sub Heading 2)
Roadways (Sub Heading 3)
Things to do upon arrival (Heading 3)
Activities (Sub Heading 1)
Foods (Sub Heading 2)
Overall Experience (Heading 4)
Conclusion

However, it may vary according to different blogs but once you are ready with the structure, then you can start writing about all your headers or different sections.

4. Write your Blog

Blog Writing

As soon as you have created the structure of the blog, you can begin with the writing part. You can use your structure as a guide and write all the information which you have gathered from your research or experience. If you’re having a hard time starting the blog or finding the flow, then there are numerous tools for this one too.

Go through Power Thesaurus which provide tons of the word, to begin with; you can even give a try to ZenPen which creates a minimalist “writing zone”. There is also a tool named Cliché Finder which lets you identify all the cliché which you can replace with more specific words.

Start with an appealing introduction or the opening paragraph. Create the atmosphere with this paragraph with which your audience can indulge. The introduction must be captivating as it is the second most important thing in your blog after the headline. A boring introduction is enough to make the readers go away without even reading the whole blog.

Telling a personal story or experience is a great way to begin your article. A joke or fact or even empathy works. You can mention a quote or begin with a question or some audacious statement which intrigues your reader.

After finishing with the opening paragraph you should try writing the whole blog in a flow. Don’t use irregular sentences i.e. one or two large sentences are followed by a very small sentence. Though you’ll learn it with practice but still, try to keep your sentences of similar lengths.

At the end, don’t brag about yourself or your knowledge or skills anywhere in your blog. Try to write in a way that your readers find the value themselves without directly reading about it. Try to build trust with the readers by providing the value of their time.

You can even read the 5 Tips to make Content Writing Easy & Efficient. In the meantime, if you are still not sure about your writing then you can opt this course on Blogging which teaches you to write awesome content with higher conversion rates.

You can even read the 5 Tips to make Content Writing Easy & Efficient.

5. Interesting Stats and Points

Stats

Stats are beneficial in many ways. It builds the credibility of your writing, enhances the reading experience, justifies your work, builds the trust and brings originality to the article.

Whatever you write, there need to be some supporting points which can keep your readers glued to it. Always use statistics from credible and authoritative websites and add links for the same. Remember, one wrong or misleading stats have the potential to portray you or your blog negatively.

It’s not necessary that you have to add one stat after every two or three lines or even after each section. Adding 2 to 3 stats are sufficient or else, you can add wherever necessary.

6. Length of your Blog

The eternal question for every beginner: What should be the approximate length of my blogs?

According to me… There are no such criteria set as of now regarding the length of your blog for better ranking on Google. One sure thing is that avoid writing small blogs i.e. Under 500 or 600 words.

According to many expert bloggers, longer and useful blogs have a better chance for social sharing, higher ranking and conversion rates.

If you’re regularly writing blogs within the range of 1000-1500 words or even more than that then you are doing pretty good. Contrary to this, if you’re thinking about writing blogs of about 200-400 words then please, don’t even bother to write about it.

7. Don’t Forget to Format and Proofread your Blog

Correction

Whether you’ll agree or not but nothing is more boring than reading one giant paragraph of more than 1000 words. To tackle this, bloggers do formatting. Skim your article and divide it into all the essential paragraphs. Here are some of the things which you can do to make your blog user-friendly.

  • Try to use bullet points wherever possible
  • Use short paragraphs of around 5-6 lines
  • Use simple and easy-to-understand words
  • Highlight the key information by making it bold or italics

When you’re done formatting it, now is the time to proofread the same. Whatever your field is, no matter how good you are or fluently you write English, always and always PROOFREAD your work. Editing is a very important part of any form of writing, be it blogs, articles, stories and others.

Today, most of us want to read new things but almost everyone loves to point out the mistakes. We are humans and we do make mistakes, be it a typo, grammars or anything. Here, proofreading becomes vital and don’t overlook it.

Various tools such as Grammarly, ProWritingAid and others are available for checking these errors. I would suggest that first, you should check it thoroughly by yourself then you can use all these tools.

The best way to do this by yourself is to give yourself some time after writing the article by taking the break. If possible, you should check your article after a day with a fresh mind. This helps you to clearly check your content by examining each comma, capital letter, quotes, semicolon and so on.

8. Use Good Images

Images

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is one of the most famous idioms which is widely accepted on blogs too. Go through any of the major blogs and right away you’ll understand the importance of images. Always use high-quality, relevant and eye-catchy images.

You can look for images on free sources such as:

Or else, you can create the images and graphics by yourself using Canva. It is one of the best designing tools available online for the individual having no knowledge of image editing.

However, for the in-depth understanding of image editing, you can take Photo Manipulation: Master Photo Editing course.

9. Mention Call-to-Action

Once you did all the research, created the structure, selected the title and written the whole blog, now you can’t leave it as it is. Every writer writes for a reason which helps them to connect with the readers. You should always end your piece with an effective call-to-action. These acts as a trigger for the audience to do something or to respond to something.

Depending upon your blog or niche, it could be anything such as “leave a comment” or to “share your blog” or to “subscribe”. Whatever it is, just be very clear about it and be careful when you are intending to ask your readers to buy things. If not done in the correct way, it could backfire creating a negative impression of you.

Bottom Line

Patience

Today, blogging is not what it used to be during its early days. Earlier, writing and publishing a content worked for many but now, it just doesn’t work. The Internet is filled with information; if you are thinking about something, chances are that already someone has written about it or at least something related to it.

Because of this, all the search engines are now giving priority to the newer information, unique content and useful blogs. After reading this article if you are thinking to write your blog on any topic then again drop the idea. Give yourself some time, search for some unique information then write upon it.

Whereas your blog is concerned, following these points are enough for you to come up with a great piece every time. Although, every blogger has their own style of writing most of them follow these steps to create great content.

I’ll hope that you’ll find these points helpful and if you have some other tips which work for you, then mention it in the comment section below. And if you need further assistance for writing then check out this online tutorial A Beginner’s Guide to Writing a Great Content.