How to Write Effective Blog Post-9 Stunning Tips You Must Know

As a blogger, surely, you would always desire, and have strong urge to stand out in the crowd by writing an extraordinary Blog Post.

But,

• How do we ensure every block of content we write receives an appreciation and applaud?
• How do we make our blog post enriched with value?
• How can we keep our readers engaged?

Is there any secret recipe which we are not aware?

Absolutely No!

All we need to know is fundamentals and essentials to make our Blog Post sticky, valuable and glitter forever.

What we will go through today are 9 essentials we have to keep mind every time…every day when we are ready to draft a blog post. And, follow this till becomes a habit.

1. Know Your Target Audience – Understand Their Pulse.

You should know the target audience before you commence writing.

It is important we have a clear understanding of the reader base we are focusing on, to whom we are writing for? How will it help them? How can we structure our content to fulfil their needs? etc

Ignoring such basic  aspects would surely end up with zero results.

Like,

• Reader may opt to leave your blog.
• You are likely to observe a spike in bounce rate.
• You may lose your credibility by providing generic content.
• Worthiness and value of your blog may diminish.

What we should attempt to do is, create reader persona.

Yes, creating a reader persona will help you in understanding the readers in depth.

Here are the 3 tips to create effective reader personas.

Know the demographics – collecting the demographics details will help us to know –Location of our readers, their age, their gender, income, religion etc.  The best way is to use Alexa.com to gather such information by entering your own blog URL or competitor’s blog URL.

Here is the best example of demographic data indicating visual representation of Pintrest usage among vital demographics.

Image source:sproutsocial.com

Numbers clearly indicate that Pintrest is largely a female dominated platform.

Imagine you are running women-centric blog. How about creating an Infographic type of blog post providing beauty tips? What if this gets shared on Pintrest?

Outcome: it would really do wonders and attract serious amount of targeted traffic to your site.

Visit online forums (of your topic) and closely eye-ball the threads with most user engagement. Analyse readers’ information needs, their Likes, and Dislikes.

Content format: Remember, it’s not necessary that the format you have represented content will be liked by every reader. Some may like analytical type posts some may have a deep liking towards visuals and graphs.

Hence, it is important for us to feed our readers with content as per their hunger and in the form and shape they would enjoy.

2. Outline the Content.
   
   This is a KEY step.

You must have a rough outline for your blog post. This will give you a clear picture on the sections you have to cover, the sequence of sections or the flow and brief description of each.

Having an outline will keep you focused especially if you intent to write a pillar post. Above all, with an outline in mind, you will never run of out of ideas when you have gained momentum.

3. Write a Stunning Intro.

You have to grab reader’s attention in first 5 to 8 seconds and hook them to your blog post.

The best way is to sprinkle emphatic words and sentences at the beginning, like emphasizing their problem, stressing on their pain indirectly, a humorous quote or even interesting factual information.

Once you do this, indicate them the objective of the content and subtly pull them by indicating the benefit they would reap if they continue to read more.

Most effective method to my knowledge is to have a table of content as it would give readers glimpse and overview of the content they can’t skip.

Anil Agarwal of bloggerspassion.com does this effectively.

 

4. Systematize Your Content.

These days, you would hardly see any blog post with lesser than 500 words. Reason – Google rewards lengthy content.

Correction: Unique Valuable Content.

Now, this should not overload the reader with information. You must ensure content is organised in a way which is easy to read and consume.

Effective ways are to have sections, bulleted points, subheadings, list etc.

Important – Avoid lengthy paragraphs as it could be intimidating for readers.

5. Include Catchy Visuals.

Visuals are key ingredients of any blog post. Without visuals, our content would look like an essay of chunky paragraphs which would turn-off the reader.

Always aim to ,

• Incorporate contextual images as per the topic of your content as it will keep readers engaged for a longer
• Have Images positioned …placed at right places as it makes easier for eyes.
• Ensure images of equal size throughout to maintain consistency.

Here is the type of images you should implement…

• Screenshots
• Graphs & Charts
• Stock Photography (relevant to your content)
• Infographics (has potential to get shared virally)
• Animated GIFs
• Royalty Free Images

6. Call-To-Action – Trigger Actions.You should always have an end objective in mind for your blog post.

What is it you want the reader to do once he is through with reading part?

You want him to subscribe, download a report, or, post a feedback or comment, rather, any action that will help you.

One and the only way to provoke user to take an action is to insert a Call-To-Action (CTA) which is very distinct and noticeable.

7. Edit, Edit, and Edit.Never publish a post before editing thoroughly….twice or thrice.

It is critical for us to proof read our content and remove grammatical errors. Else, our post would look very amateurish and sloppy.

Here`s the short checklist you should and remember follow for editing the content.

Read it loudly: Once you are done with the first draft, read the entire post loudly and sense any difficulties or abrupt pauses you may face. This will give you clear indication on awkwardness your readers would have.

Tip: Try re-writing the sentence and chuck-out the words which lead obstruction in reading the content smoothly.

Remove duplicate words: Every writer have a habit of repeating a filler word sub-consciously. This word will diminish the reader experience. Moreover, it will shoot up the keyword index of your post.

Hence, it’s essential to avoid repetition of words.

Aim for short sentence and paragraphs: Big blocks of content at times can be intimidating and depreciates the readability.

Tip: Try to phrase your sentences which are to the point by eliminating unnecessary words and filler. Group the sentences which alike in ideas and thoughts. Ideally, though not a hard-and-fast rule, the average length of the paragraph should be a range of 100-200 words.

Thrash out what is unnecessary:  When we start drafting the blog post with undivided focus, creativity is at its peak. What we don`t realise is –unessential additions we incorporate which creates a lengthy post.

As I have mentioned above, you should have a clear outline in mind as it will keep you aware of the crucial point to be covered in each section or sub-topics.

Note: you have to be extra cautious if you are accepting Guest Post on your blogs .Doubly verify them for grammatical and formatting errors as it may spoil your reputation …Beware!

8. Interlinking.
   
   Interlinking relevant blog posts within has dual benefits.

A: It enables search engines to crawl your site deep, index all the pages and get a sense of the structure of your site.
B: Keep users hooked as they are naturally navigated to other relevant posts via anchor links. This, in turn, will reduce the bounce rate which said to be a positive ranking signal in SERP.

Best common practices to Internal linking would be:

• Interlink old post in new post.
• Interlink new post in old post.
• Have action oriented and descriptive anchor text so that visitors are clear where they are heading towards.
• Interlink from highly authoritative and popular pages to low-performing content.
• Internal to most fresh content.

  Read:  Best Internal Linking practices blogger should follow for best results.
  

9. Length of Content.If you aim to have higher position in search engine result pages, it is better to have content of 2000 words plus.Quickly look  the stats of average content length of domains on the first page of the SERPs.

   

Image Source: blog.serpiq.com

Of course, other ranking signals also play a role, but lengthy blog posts which provide value, enriched with to-the-point benefits, eliminates certain pain areas, provides a solution to a problem and enhances the readability is likely to earn more respect from search engines.

But, beware!

Don’t rush to achieve content length of 2000 words by scraping the information and adding useless fillers. Big G is equipped enough to identify such crap and might penalise by de-listing your site in SERP.

Hope, these tips will equip you to write a superb blog post. Do let me know if we have to include some more tips.

Do let me know if we have to include some more tips to create a Super High-Quality Blog Post.