How to Write a Blog Post in Five Easy Steps

How to Write a Blog Post in Five Easy Steps [Summary]:

    Step 1: Plan your blog post by choosing a topic, creating an outline, conducting research, and checking facts.
    Step 2: Craft a headline that is both informative and will capture readers’ attentions.
    Step 3: Write your post, either writing a draft in a single session or gradually word on parts of it.
    Step 4: Use images to enhance your post, improve its flow, add humor, and explain complex topics.
    Step 5: Edit your blog post. Make sure to avoid repetition, read your post aloud to check its flow, have someone else read it and provide feedback, keep sentences and paragraphs short, don’t be a perfectionist, don’t be afraid to cut out text or adapt your writing last minute.

Now let's review each step in more detail.
How to Write a Blog Post, Step 1: Planning

First, a disclaimer – the entire process of writing a blog post often takes more than a couple of hours, even if you can type eighty words per minute and your writing skills are sharp. From the seed of the idea to finally hitting “Publish,” you might spend several days or maybe even a week “writing” a blog post, but it’s important to spend those vital hours planning your post and even thinking about your post (yes, thinking counts as working if you’re a blogger) before you actually write it.


Write an Outline For Your Post

Great blog posts don’t just happen. Even the best bloggers need a rough idea to keep them on-track. This is where outlines come in.

An outline doesn’t need to be lengthy, or even detailed – it’s just a rough guide to make sure you don’t ramble on and on about something tangential to your topic.

For example, this is the outline for this post that I sent to my editor before getting to work:

Introduction

[Quick summary explaining what the blog post will cover]

Section 1 – Planning a Blog Post

- Things bloggers should do before putting pen to paper – outlining, research etc.

Section 2 – Writing a Blog Post

- Tips on how to focus on writing, productivity tips for bloggers

Section 3 – Rewriting/Editing a Blog Post

- Self-editing techniques, things to watch out for, common blogging mistakes

Section 4 – Optimizing a Blog Post

- How to optimize a blog post for on-page SEO, social shares/engagement, etc.

Section 5 – Conclusion

- Wrap-up

The purpose of this outline is to make sure I know what I plan to cover, in what order the various sections will appear, and some bare-bones details of what each section will include.

Outlines keep you honest. They stop you from indulging in poorly thought-out metaphors about driving and keep you focused on the overall structure of your post. Sometimes I’ll write a more thorough outline (and sometimes I won’t bother with one at all), but most of the time, something like the outline above is perfectly acceptable.

Whether you write your outline in your word processor, on a piece of paper, or even scribbled on a bar napkin, do whatever works for you to keep you focused.

Cancel Reply

Leave Reply

Full Name

Email Address

Phone

Website Url

Write a message

Refresh Code

Security Code