One of the biggest goals for inbound marketing involves producing relevant content for your target audience to consume. The most popular way that businesses can do this is through carefully written blog posts. If you aren’t already doing this, be sure to follow along and you’ll find out how to write a blog post like a pro.
How to Write a Blog Post Effectively
Know Your Target Audience
Before you can start writing or even know what you’re writing about, you need to make sure you completely understand your target audience. Without specifically tailoring your content to appeal to a certain demographic, then the purpose of your blog or marketing campaign becomes obsolete.
Understand your target audience by coming up with hypothetical buyer personas that represent your customers. Therefore, your blogs can be better optimized to fulfill the intended purpose of relating to a particular group of people. Doing so will move them further along the buyer’s journey to eventually becoming customers.
Narrowing Down a Topic
Using your own knowledge of your business and its goals, you need to come up with blog topics that are applicable and conducive to your company. For instance, if you run a bicycle shop, you might write a blog about the best bike trails in your area.
The intention is for the blog to resonate with your readership in the hopes that it might convince them to do business with you. Likewise, the blog should be of some benefit to the reader. Otherwise, why else would they read it?
Getting Down to Business
You should always start your blog by coming up with a savvy, attention grabbing headline to seize your reader’s attention. Next, open your blog with an engaging introduction that accurately sums up the rest of the post and lets the reader know what they will get out of it.
When you’re in the midst of writing, it’s essential that you stay organized and brief. You will lose the reader’s attention if the blog is long-winded and all over the place. Always stay on topic and try not to deviate too much from your message.
Blog posts should always be segmented by sub-headings that mark off the different points that you write about. Too much text can be overwhelming. Likewise, with broken up text, the reader can jump around to only the sections that apply to them.
It should go without saying, but always double check the information you write about such as sources, spelling, and grammar. An unprofessional blog post can only hurt your business.
Formatting and Optimization
Writing the blog isn’t all that needs to be done. You need to make sure it gets in the hands of your target audience and converts into sales.
When you are writing up your blog, make sure to add relevant images. Also, be sure that your blog is properly styled to enhance visual appeal.
It is essential that you equip your blog with applicable tags and a solid meta description. These keywords will ensure that your blog gets into the hands of those with relevant searches. You can also do this by optimizing your post for web search. The URL should be brief and keyword-friendly.
Finally, conclude your blog with a catchy, appropriate call-to-action that will turn those readers into potential customers.
