The EASY Way How to Write a KILLER Blog Post in 19 Steps

The EASY Way How to Write a KILLER Blog Post in 19 Steps

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that I swear by blogging is one of the best ways to market professional services. After all, blogs let you show people what you know and inspire confidence in your expertise. Then, you can convert a percentage of these readers into paying clients.

Writing a killer blog post is not rocket science, but it’s not a walk in the park either. It takes time, effort, and persistence to produce high-quality blog posts consistently. Many bloggers struggle in the process because they don’t know the proper way to do it. They just write what they want to write, hit the post button, and hope for the best. 

But it takes more than a wish upon a star to write a successful blog post. You need a step-by-step proven system to guide you to churn out posts that keep your audience coming back for more. Here are 19 simple steps to writing killer blog posts that will take away all the guesswork.

Planning and Researching

Perhaps the most important part of how to write a blog post is planning and researching your posts. As the saying goes, failure to plan is a plan to fail, so you don’t want to be that person. Nothing is worse than wasting your efforts. Here’s how to plan your blog posts.

1. Choose the Topic

This should be obvious but pick a topic that is relevant to your business. For example, a car repair shop could blog about preventive maintenance and how to know that a repair tech is being honest with you. After all, there are as many “dishonest mechanic” jokes as “crooked lawyer” ones. By inspiring confidence, you can increase your customer base.

Next, look for ideas from competitors. Your selected competitors don’t need to be in your market, especially if you run a small business. However, you should look to competitors who cover the same topics and have the same kind of business. While you clearly don’t want to copy them, competitor analysis is a great way to see what people have to say, and then choose something that can meaningfully compete.

Further Reading: Stumped for Blog Post Topics? Here’s What Your Brand Should be Blogging About

2. Do the Keyword Research

Do the Keyword Research

Keyword research is relatively simple: Find the main keyword and secondary keywords to use. To do this, use keyword tools such as my fave SEMrush. This is a critical aspect of how to write a blog post because your keywords will be used for SEO. Remember, blogs are written to be read, so you need to have your blog show up in search engines and do well enough to get traffic. At the same time, you want to ensure that you get the right traffic: people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.

3. Measure the Arena

Keywords are great, but sometimes the ones that “seem right” are very competitive. This is unsurprising, considering the money involved with some keywords. If the competition is too hard, find other keywords to target. Generally, you can find a keyword or two that are similar to your ideal targets, but that is easier to get a ranking with. This way, you can drive more traffic to your blog while ensuring that the right people visit. It’s a balancing act.

A related thought on how to write a blog post is that you should consider using long-tail keywords: these are more specific than the shorter keywords, so they take a bit more work to insert properly. However, they’re easier to win and have clearer user intent compared to short tails.

4. Do Competitor Research

There’s an old saying: know your adversary. Or in this case, your competitor for website traffic, business, or both. Finding out what your competitors are up to is called competitor research. The easiest way to do this is to search Google for the target keywords and consume your competitors’ content. Then, select a few of your competitors’ articles, take notes, and learn from their content to create a better article. At the same time, be sure to count the average words of your competitors’ content because your article length should be similar.

Further Research: Tools and Tips to Analyze your Competitors Blogs

5. Create the Content Brief and Outline

Create the Content Brief and Outline

Once you’ve figured out what your competitors are doing, and where you want to go, the next step in how to write a blog post is planning the content itself. First, summarize your finding in the content brief. So, if you conclude that manufacturer-recommended oil change intervals aren’t right for everyone, you need to summarize why this is. That way, you’ll know where you are going with the argument.

Next, create structured headings based on your competitors’ content. Generally speaking, the competitors you read are from high in the SERPs, so there’s a lot that the algorithms loved about the content. By using similar headings, you can capitalize on their success and surpass it. Finally, make sure your outline is more complete and thorough. This way, you won’t miss anything important.

Creating Titles and Meta Descriptions

Another important part of how to write a blog post is crafting titles and meta descriptions. Both of these items will be displayed on search engine pages, so you want them to be something that draws in your audience. In addition, these items are very important to your overall ranking.

6. Write Great Headlines

Coming up with a good title is like winning half the battle. After all, headlines tell readers what your blog post is about, and it’s the biggest item that entices the reader to read. However, you won’t always nail the title the first time, so make sure to come up with alternative titles.

Further Reading: How to Create Killer Blog Titles Using Your Data, Tools & Popular Formulas

7. Write the Meta Description

Titles and meta descriptions are the first things people will see on the SERP (Search Engine Result Page), almost like a business card or online directory result. Meta descriptions should answer the searchers’ queries but be brief (150 – 160 characters). Otherwise, Google won’t display the whole meta description, and it can also hurt your rankings.

Writing Your Post

Learning how to write a blog post can be a complex process because there are often a lot of moving parts such as subheadings. However, the writing process itself is where you, as a writer, get to shine. This is where you can leverage your knowledge, humor, and other skills to inform and persuade. To maximize your results, however, you need to know how to write effectively.

8. Write the Introduction

Write the Introduction

The intro should grab attention and convince readers to read more. So, start with a bang, or as literary experts call it, a “hook.” Your hook tells people what’s in your blog post without saying too much. Do it right, and people will feel like they have to finish the blog post. Remember, the longer your readers stay on your website, the better it is for your SEO.

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9. Write the Conclusion

While it seems to be counterintuitive, coming up with the draft conclusion first will give a better goal and direction for the main content. As a general rule, you should use the outline as the guide in writing the draft conclusion, because the outline gives a step-by-step of your content or argument. The conclusion should be motivational, and make your reader believe that they can do/achieve what’s written in the body. This way, the reader feels their time is well spent, and they’ll be more likely to come back.

10. Write the Body

Next, it’s time to write the body, following the outline point by point. No matter what kind of content you have, the content of the body should be easy to follow. Otherwise, people can get “lost” in your text and have difficulty finding important points later.

Besides following the outline, you should generally use short paragraphs. At the same time, you’ll want to plan locations for images and videos to be added later. Because multimedia is increasingly important even for bloggers, this isn’t a step you want to miss. Besides, having plenty of “empty space” on the page makes your content seem more accessible.

Enhancing the Post

Words make a blog post, but part of knowing how to write a blog post is learning to enhance your text. This involves adding different elements to your text, in order to increase its value to the reader. At the same time, you’ll boost the SEO potential in various ways, such as by giving Google more to index.

11. Use Images to Enhance Your Post

Use Images to Enhance Your Post

This one’s simple: Add relevant images to all your blog posts. Use the images to improve the content’s flow, add humor, give breathing room to readers, explain complex topics, and more. However, make sure the images give additional value to the written content. If not, what’s the point? You’ll just waste your reader’s time with extra fluff. I use Unsplash for my images and recommend you do so too!

12. Add Other Elements If Applicable

Sometimes, it isn’t only about pictures. You can also add other elements such as videos, tables, quizzes, surveys, and more. For instance, I could run a poll about whether or not influencer marketing is worthwhile in 2022. Or, I could insert an infographic about how to increase influencer marketing ROI. Either way, be sure that what you add increases the value of your post.

13. Add Links

Adding links improves SEO and keeps your visitors reading about the topic at hand. First, add internal links to other relevant content on your website. This increases your website dwell time, which is great for analytics in many categories.

Next, add external links to relevant references and resources. Not only does this help you avoid plagiarism, but you’re doing everyone a favor by directing them to new resources. Plus, backlinks are gold to bloggers, and by giving them one you increase the chance they’ll reciprocate.

Further Reading: 10 Top Tips to Increase Your Blog Post SEO

Editing and Publishing

Once you’ve written and enhanced your content, it’s time to send it out to the world. But before you do this, it’s always a good idea to polish your content to make it better. A large part of how writing a blog post is striving for excellence.

14. Edit the Content

Especially in an era of fast content and tight publication schedules, it can be tempting to just publish your work as soon as you finish. However, basic errors like typos or advanced errors like a poor argument can seriously detract from your message

Here’s a list of things you should always check before publishing your posts:

  • Make sure the whole content flows nicely from one part to another.
  • Check for grammatical mistakes.
  • Avoid repetition.
  • Read it aloud. This can help you realize when a post misses the mark or “sounds funny.”
  • Ask for feedback from others. Your inner circle isn’t afraid to voice their opinions.
  • Don’t be afraid to cut the fluffs and keep the meat. This way, you can keep people engaged and, if necessary, make changes that keep your post length in check.
  • Rewrite some of the parts if necessary. In other words, if something isn’t right, change it.

15. Hit the Publish Button

When everything is checked, it’s time hit the publish button. Although it might be tempting, don’t be a perfectionist. Otherwise, you might never publish anything for fear of failure (or imperfections). Besides, you can always rework and improve the post later. It’s one of the wonders of online publishing.

Bonus: Spreading the Word

The blog post has a better chance to be a killer one if you don’t stop the process after publishing it. Not only can you improve or add to the post later, but you can also take steps that help drive traffic. In addition, you can optimize the value of your work through some creativity.

16. Repost on Social Media and Mailing List

Repost your blog post on social media channels and mailing lists to spread the word. There are several ways you can do this. Facebook will let you post the link and automatically add a thumbnail, or you can apply for Instant Articles access. Other social media networks have different posting methods. Likewise, a newsletter-style email list is great for driving traffic: send people a nice email with the cover photo and a link.

Don’t forget to tell your friends and family, either. Often, family is great at making referrals and bragging about their kin. Plus, they can post links on Facebook and other social media, increasing the value of your efforts.

17. Repurpose the Content to Create More Content

You can repurpose the blog post to create more content for social media channels. For instance, you can extract a quotation from your post and turn it into an Instagram post. Or, make an infographic to post on Facebook. In addition, you can create videos based on the content. Tutorials and explainer videos are great formats for this. And, no matter what you do, don’t forget to link back to the original content – a.k.a. the killer blog post. This approach helps you fill your content calendar across social networks while increasing website traffic.

Bonus: Improving the Performance

No matter what you do, one of the best ways to boost your blog post traffic is to connect your website to Google Search Console (GSC). This lets you do a lot of things that “help” Google, such as giving them site maps and inviting Google to index/crawl your site. It also gives you access to Google Analytics, which can help you increase overall performance.

18. Analyze the Performance

After publishing, you can get statistical data from GSC, and use it to analyze how your content performs. In particular, you can see the numbers of clicks, impressions, CTR, and SERP positions to pick which content to improve and what other keywords to target. This means you see the opportunities and threats almost immediately so that you can respond to them.

19. Rework the Content

Make your post even better by creating better/additional content on the underperforming keywords/queries. For instance, you can look at competitors’ content that’s performing better than yours, and make your post more like theirs. It’s a very effective strategy.

Further Reading: 12 “Secrets” to Writing High Quality Content for Your Blog

Conclusion

There you have it. A detailed step-by-step guide to creating a killer blog post. Follow each step consistently each time you create a new post, and Google will recognize your website as one of the best resources for your chosen topic.

In time, your posts will rank higher faster, you’ll get more organic traffic to your website, and it means more customers. Now you know exactly what to do, the only thing left is for you to do it.

Hero Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

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Neal Schaffer
Neal Schaffer

Neal Schaffer is a leading authority on helping businesses through their digital transformation of sales and marketing through consulting, training, and helping enterprises large and small develop and execute on social media marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and social selling initiatives. President of the social media agency PDCA Social, Neal also teaches digital media to executives at Rutgers University, the Irish Management Institute (Ireland), and the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland). Fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, Neal is a popular keynote speaker and has been invited to speak about digital media on four continents in a dozen countries. He is also the author of 3 books on social media, including Maximize Your Social (Wiley), and in late 2019 will publish his 4th book, The Business of Influence (HarperCollins), on educating the market on the why and how every business should leverage the potential of influencer marketing. Neal resides in Irvine, California but also frequently travels to Japan.

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