How to Build Successful Blog Content?

“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail” _ (Wooden, John)

Are you seriously working on your blog project?

Did you build your blog content yet?

Now check if you’ve answered the below questions before we can go on with this article:

• What will you write about? What is your niche?
• How can you assure the frequency of your blog content?

Now that you’ve chosen your niche and believed in its stability, let’s move to another important question: How to create your blog content successfully?

Why Should You Build Your Blog Content?

Your content plays the decisive role in your blog success. If you want to generate leads, you need create unique content that attracts your targeted audience. Why?

Content is King

Blogging is mostly about content creation. You may argue that good design and excellent SEO can boost your blog’s rank to the top of Search Engines, content is just bullshit.

A well-designed blog without good content is like an empty house. Though people might “wow” at first, they will definitely get disappointed to see nothing in the house later. They need food and drink; they don’t need a well-decorated house. People go online to search for information so you should provide them what they need.
The more unique and informative your content is, the more chances you attract prospects and turn them into your loyal readers.

I recommend you read “Content Rules” by Ann Handley to know more about the art of creating effective content.

Content is Your Brand

Your content reflects your personality. The way you write, your tone of voice, your arguments, opinions and other things are your true image. That’s why content is your brand.

If you have great content that is convincing to different people, you’re successful in building a trusted brand name on the Internet. And that means you’ve reached your goal as a blogger.

Content Increases Conversion

Content increases conversion rate from 25 to 50 percent, according to a study. Great content turns your visitors into your readers or buyers.

The better your content is, the higher rate of sharing it generates on social networking sites and other blogs. The more people know about you, the more likelihood they’ll consider you as a trusted resource for reference or purchase later on.

Good content is not only about good writing skills, it’s also about appropriate SEO copywriting techniques applied on your blog. So creating your blog content carefully and you’ll see your conversion rate increasing rapidly.

How to Build Blog Content For Your Blog?

It depends much on your depth of understanding about your blog theme or niche. The more you understand your niche, the easier you can be able to build effective blog content.

Let’s see how to do it.

Make a List of Blog Content Ideas

Why Should You Make a List of Blog Content Ideas?

I had to admit that this task used to be my trouble because I just wrote when I was in the mood; the prepared list scared me. After a while, I realized that this attitude was just for amateurs. If you want to become a professional blogger, building the list is an inevitable task.

A list of blog content ideas reminds you of what you’re going to write on your blog. It’s also one of the factors to ensure your blog’s frequent updates. Certainly you must commit yourself to writing hard. Don’t just make the list and then forget it.

Another advantage to build a list of blog content ideas is that you’ll be able to see the whole picture of your blog content. And it will be more convenient for you to build inbound links to boost your site’s rank on Search Engines later.

How to Build a List of Blog Posts?

The list is based on your blog niche. Think around the main theme and write the ideas down on paper. For example, if your blog niche is about raising pets, let’s write about things like pet’s proper nutrition, playing with your dog, how to brush your cat’s hair or something like that. Don’t write about your favorite car or worst, make money online.
Spend twenty minutes on this task. Be focused!

Then, spare five minutes for coffee. You’ve done good job.

Come back to your workplace and arrange the ideas into different categories. You can even add more posts if you want.

I recommend you use mind-mapping software during brainstorming process. It’s my good companion along with coffee. I usually use Mindmeister to share the map with my colleagues to make further changes. You can also try other online tools like Gliffy or Bubbl.

If you prefer offline services, download either xMind or EDraw Mindmap for free to use on your laptop.

Have you finished? Did you add some more ideas?

Now save your mind-map, you’ll need to work on it along the way.

The Process of Writing a Blog Post

It’s never easy to write a blog post. Many new bloggers, especially those using English as a second language, don’t know where to start.

If you’re blogging for fun, it’s much easier to write about things you like. But when it comes to business, you need to put more effort and patience into researching, then writing.

What to Research?

Firstly, you do keyword research. Let’s head over to Google Adwords Keyword Tool to figure out some keywords to focus on.

You should look for long tail keywords (more than three words) with less competition (fewer global or local searches) for easier SEO work (or you may want to beat other famous bloggers; it’s OK if you think you can do it).

Also, don’t try to insert too many keywords into one blog post which makes it sound unnatural for human beings. Two to three primary keywords are relevant for five to eight hundred word articles.

Secondly, you search for references. Let’s see what other people are talking around the topic you’re going to write about.

Looking for references doesn’t mean you copy someone’s words to your post. It means you find interesting ideas from different people that are relevant to your blog post. The ideas may be for or against your main idea, it’s a normal thing so just go on.

Resources on Keyword Research:

• Five steps to effective keyword research
• Keyword research by SEOmoz
• How to do keyword research with Google Adwords Keyword Tool (Video)

How Is a Blog Post Structured?

Some people argue that “a blog post shouldn’t have a formal structure, it’s not an academic assignment – I’m tired of assignments. I’ll write whatever I want as long as I get the idea across”

This is true to some extent. In fact, you cannot get the idea across without a structure. Any writing needs structure to make it understood.

Here is the classic structure of a blog post:

• Introduction: Hook your readers’ attention. State your idea.
• Body: Develop your ideas with arguments and evidence.
• Conclusion: Summary. Restate the idea. Call to action (subscribe, comment, …)

Does it look familiar? Absolutely!

How to Write a Blog Post?

According to Ali Luke, a writing coach based in UK, bloggers or writers experience four stages of writing:

• Planning
• Drafting
• Redrafting
• Editing

Ali Luke is more a fiction writer than a blogger but she has great talent and experience in writing. She has helped many bloggers and writers succeed in their career. I recommend you read her article The four essential stages of writing for detailed understanding about the process of writing a blog post. This article worked out for me, it’ll surely do for you.

What else?

When you’re writing for the web, there are tons of things you have to remember in terms of SEO factors. I have a thick book about SEO Copywriting and I barely can remember all of the things that the book mentions.
Based on my experience as a SEO Copywriter, it comes down to very basic things that, I think, are enough for you to get started:

• Use SHORT and ACTIVE sentence
• Write short paragraphs (two – three sentences in one paragraph are enough)
• Use headlines and sub-headlines
• Use bullets – make a list instead of lengthy description
• Bold important words, keywords
• Use italics, underline and quotes
• Put keywords on titles, headlines, content, links, tags and meta tag
• Use no more than three primary keywords in one article
• Express your personality. Don’t be a machine!

For the elements of web writing, I highly recommend you read Brian Clark’s e-book How to create compelling content that ranks well in search engines. You’ll deeply understand how Google works and how to feed this toddler.

How to build links?

Building links is one of the factors that decide your blog’s success.
There are three most important types of links you have to remember:

• Internal links: Links within your blog
• Inbound links: Links from other websites to your blog
• Outbound links: Links from your blog to external websites

I’m providing you reliable resources to explore more about link building for your blog and Trung Nguyen will share with you his experience on doing link building in his next post. He’s a real SEO expert.

Now let’s read the articles below:

• 32 White Hat Ways to Build Inbound Links by Hubspot
• Internal Links by SEOmoz
• Do Outbound Links Matter for SEO (and more) by Darren Rowse
• Anchor Text by SEOmoz
• 101 ways to build links popularity by SEObook

Resources for better writing

Here I’m listing out some good resources about writing including blog posts and e-books. Enjoy!

Blog posts on writing

Helpful examples about writing you will want to read:

• How to write great blog content
• 20 ideas for writing a blog post
• 7 habit of serious writers
• Are You Too Busy to Write? Seven Ways to Blog More Productively
• 12 things that will kill your blog post every time
• Eight secrets which writers won’t tell you
• 11 smart tips for brilliant writing
• Top ten tips for better writing
• 10 tips of writing for the web

E-book on writing

Good books on writing that no one can resist:

• On Writing Well by William Zinsser
• Writing Brave and Free by Ted Kooser & Steve Cox
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
• Hot Text: Web Writing that Works by Jonathan & Lisa Price
• Content Rules by Ann Handley

Conclusion

Now you’ve known the reasons why we should build great blog content and how to do it. The article listed some guidelines with useful links so that you can get detailed instructions from specialists.

I’m a copywriter so my strength is writing sales copies but I love blogging and building content for blog anyway. Therefore, I want to share what I’ve learned and experienced with you.

I hope you find this blog post informative and make contributive comments. Share with me your blog content experience and tell me how you did it, also your challenges and difficulties. I’m listening up.

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