Nail Your First Blog!
From politics to explorations, food journals and emotional ramblings, to travel diaries; blogging continues to grow in popularity and the benefits to your business can be paramount.
Whether you’re building your brand profile or striving to promote the benefits of your product, blogging gives you the keys to the mainstage, and the opportunity to share your knowledge and skills.
However, when it comes to putting fingers on your keyboard, how do you begin writing your blog? Here are our top tips on how to simply get started and what to consider to ensure you nail your first blog!
Keep it Short
It’s not new news that in this day and age, we have the attention span of a goldfish due to the impact of the digital world! We’re all guilty of it – you start reading an article of interest but then feel guilty about putting off your long list of other jobs you should be dedicating your time to.
So think about your key messages, cut back excess copy, and keep it to the point!
Use Subheadings
Breaking down the different categories in your blog with subheadings is an easy and effective way to immediately give the reader and understanding of the content that’s being covered. This helps to break up the text and provide clarity.
Subheadings also make it easy for readers to focus on the content that they are interested in reading - a feature that is particularly useful for those who are time-poor.
Write for Your Audience
Before you begin, think about your audience. It’s really important to make sure you are using the right language for your readers. For example, there is no point in writing a blog about caring for toddlers on a parenting website and using medical language – that’s best kept for students studying medicine!
Our advice is to keep it simple, conversational, and easy to digest.
Break up the Copy
Very few people want to read endless pages of words, no matter how interesting it might be. Ideally, readers should be able to skim-read an article in a couple minutes and understand the topic and recommendations.
If you want people to read your blog, don’t waffle!
Add Images
Don’t underestimate the power of beautiful imagery! The effective use of images will assist to explain your blog topic. Depending on how you use them, adding images to your blog can set the tone, keep it interesting, or add a little humour.
Blogs with images also receive around 94% more views, so keep this in mind!
Keep it Conversational
Does your blog read like you’re talking out loud? If the answer is no, maybe spend more time thinking about what you’re trying to achieve and who your audience is. As a general rule, we try to speak in a language that is conversational and written in a way that I could be speaking to you, face-to-face right now and it wouldn’t sound ridiculous! How you write should replicate how you talk, so don’t go chucking in huge and complicated words if you wouldn’t normally use them.
People relate to other people, so keep it natural!
PROOF READ!
We’ve all been guilty of spending far too long on any given piece of writing, and often when we’ve read it 100 times, we skim over simple spelling and grammar mistakes. Missing these kinds of mistakes can make you look complacent and as though you haven’t spent much time pulling it together. An eye for detail is paramount, so we recommend to re-read your blog the next day with fresh eyes or rope in a colleague or friend that can give your blog a thorough proof read!
You’ll find it’s time well spent and thank yourself when you haven’t shared an article to your 1000+ connections on LinkedIn that is full of simple grammatical errors.
Overall, when it comes to blog writing, the most important things to remember are to keep your blogs short and make them easy for your audience to read and understand! If you can master these skills, you are well on your way to writing great blogs that are highly engaging!
Happy blogging!