How to Write a Good Blog Post – An Ultimate Guide

The slogan “Content is King” has gained momentum in recent years. This has caused the world to accept the importance of written content. When the www did not exist, every piece of data ranging from scientific findings to personal journal entries was handwritten. With the internet taking over the world, all of it went online. This is when blog and blog posts emerged. This article will shed light on understanding blogs, blog posts, and the most important aspect of online written content i.e. how to write a good blog post.

 What is a Blog & Blog Post

Blog stands for Web Log. It is a written log of information that is published on online platforms with access to readers across the globe. A blog especially stands for written content where images and videos form a small part of the blog. Blogs can either be stand-alone websites or a part of a website.

You can think of a blog as an online journal maintained by either individual website owners or business corporations. There are different types of blogs that we will get to, in some time. Having a blog gives an upper hand to the blogger (Blogger is someone who writes a blog).

Your readers know that since you are blogging about a certain topic, you have a complete understanding of the same. This helps establish a blogger as someone whose views on that topic can be accepted at face value. Running a blog also helps in diverting traffic to your website or other social media accounts, which establishes an individual’s online presence.

What is a Blog Post?

The individual entries on a blog are known as blog posts. These single e-journal entries are specific, cover one single topic & provide detailed insights on the topic. Creating good and interactive blog posts reemphasizes the credibility of the blog itself. To become a reputed blogger is to know how to write a good blog post.

So if you are new to the blogging scene, hear me out. If you are an already established blogger, a refresher on a good blog post is always a good idea. Before getting into how to write a good blog post, let’s first brush up on the types of blog posts.

Types of Blogs

1- Guest Blogging:

As the name itself suggests, this type of blog post is created by external bloggers for someone else’s website. Generally, companies or business entities hire external bloggers who have expertise on the topic of the blog. Guest blogging is beneficial to both partners. For the organization, guest blogging helps in getting a new perspective, a new style of writing, and a fresh outlook for the blogs on their website. The guest blogger benefits by expanding his reach to the entire reader database of the organization. Guest bloggers gain monetary benefits as well while guest blogging.

2- Listicle Blogs

Have you read an article that followed a list-based format? Well, these are your listicle blogs. These articles are numbered or bulleted. At the same time, they have to be comprehensive with the topic chosen. Listicle articles generally tend to get more views since the data provided are compact & easily readable.

3- How to Blogs

Such blogs contain graphics & help the readers better understand the process. These blogs are also instructional. The key aspect is to make the instructions easy to understand and the end goal should be delivered.

4- Infographics

Infographics stands for information + graphics. Infographic blogs are the reader’s favorite. They are easy on the eyes & deliver the same information a normal blog would. They comprise images, written data, graphs, charts, etc.

5- Interviews

The easiest of all blog posts. This involves interviewing a known personality from any field of your choosing. You can simply contact as many personalities or known people as you wish to. Send them a list of questions and request a response from them on the questions they would like to answer. Blog posts like this require that the blogger ask questions whose answers readers would be interested in.

This is less time-consuming. Since only drafting interesting questions are the main focus here. Once you have the answers, a bit of formatting is all you have to do before making the post live

6-News Blog

They consist of new articles related to a trending topic. Publishing a news blog regularly establishes the blogger as someone who stays on top of the trending topics and is always well aware of what’s going on in different industries. Creating news blog posts is another way of increasing a blogger’s credibility.

New blogs have to be factual. While creating News blogs, bloggers should maintain impartial views. News bloggers have to thoroughly understand their responsibility of giving correct, unbiased information to their readers

7- Personal Blog

These blog posts give you an insight into the personal life of the blogger. These blog posts have a higher level of personal connectivity where you can gain insights into the thoughts, daily life activity, views, etc. of the blogger. Creating personal blogs and blog posts helps your readers relate to you on an intimate level.

We will get to the main point of discussion which is how to write a good blog post. But before that, I would also like to discuss a few generic points. A blogger must pay attention to these points while creating any blog post.

Also Read: How to Promote a Blog

Checklist Before Writing a Blog Post

• Choose your target audience.
• Choose a trending topic or a topic that will gather the most readers for you.
• Research the right keywords, and words that will help expand your reach. Keyword planner is a favorite of bloggers to research trending keywords.
• Once you have decided on the topic make sure to thoroughly research. Read up on the latest articles already present on the web. They will act as a guiding source.
• Never plagiarise someone else’s work. Always give due credit where required.
• Keep the momentum going on until the end of the article. In some cases, when the articles are long, you may end up losing the vigor you started with. The article should have the same feel throughout the entire reading page.
• In case of new blogs/ technical blog posts, double-check the data provided. You cannot make the mistake of giving out wrong information to readers. It is important to pay close attention to the facts/ numbers. Etc, provided in these types of articles.

Now That All the Bases Are Covered, Let’s Get to the Guide on How to Write a Good Blog Post!

1- Keep it Relatable:

The readers should be able to find a sense of belonging to your article. Say, for example, your target readers are from the tech field. If you write a technically incorrect blog post, your viewership will suffer eventually. As a blogger, you have to serve your readers what they want to read. You can always conduct a poll, and ask them to comment on your previous post about topics they would like to read about. A good blog would be an incomplete article without considering relativity as an important component of a good post

Here are the Essential Blogging Tips

2- Attention Seeking Is After All Not That Bad:

The first thing a reader reads is the headline of any article or blog post. No matter how engaging the actual content is, if the headline does not grab the attention, the chances of readers scrolling through the blog post will be relatively low. A good attention-grabbing headline is one the first & crucial ways to generate a reader’s interest in your blog post.

Headlines are such that it creates curiosity for almost all readers to read the entire content of your blog post. Let’s take for example a blog post on tourism in India. There are 2 possible headlines.

A- Visit the most beautiful tourist places in India

B- India – A beloved country for travelers

Both the headlines talk about the same topic but headline B is more interesting & would grab more attention than headline A. While learning about how to write a good blog post, please do read up on how to write an attention-grabbing headline as well.

3- Keep the Excitement Up!

A monotone blog post would not be able to hold the attention of readers for long. A blog post is successful when the reader reads the entire article from one end to another. One of the traits of a good blog post is to keep the excitement level of the reader up for the entire article. Give the readers more exciting information throughout the blog post up until the very end.

You should avoid keeping one tone in your article. Add some quirky quotes and statics. You can also add rhetorical questions, making the reader more anxious to know what comes next in the blog post.

Recommended Read: Content Writing Courses in India

4- Visuals Are Best Friends of a Blog Post

A blog post with only text will fail to leave an impact on the readers’ minds. While researching how to write a good blog post, we came across articles that had visuals, images, videos, charts, and other graphic components, which were relatively more appealing. Such articles tend to have higher viewership than the ones which lack some visual effects.

In some cases, blog posts tend to be text-heavy, for example, technical blog posts, but even in those cases, bloggers should try and add visually pleasing graphics for the readers. These graphics act as a visual break to the eyes and improve the quality of the blog post. So it is not just about how to write a good blog post but also about good graphics in the blog post.

5- Call to Action is a Call of Duty

CTA is when the bloggers ask the readers to take some actions related to their blog post. Maybe ask them to subscribe, follow other social media channels, comment, like, share, etc. These calls to action are a way of asking the readers to follow the next steps. Bloggers should always add clear CTA’s in their blog posts.

Clear CTA helps the reader with what they are supposed to do next after reading the blog post. CTA can also look like, asking them to read your previous blog posts, asking them to buy a copy of your books, inviting them to read your previous blog posts, etc. It’s a way of opening two-way communication with your readers. Good CTA’s are a great contributor to building relationships with your readers.

6- Keep the Engagement Going

Creating a good blog post means engaging your readers. You should avoid adding too many distractions like pop-ups on your blog page. The material should be easy to read and should have a cohesive outline throughout the blog. Add some actionable pointers for the readers, like asking rhetorical questions, guesswork, etc.

Engaging readers also means promoting your content/blog post on other social media handles. Promotions help in increasing readers’ traffic to your website & blogs. The more a blog is promoted, the more eyeballs it grabs and eventually more people talk about it. This ultimately increased the number of clicks on your blog posts

Must Read: SEO Practices for Blogs

7- Value Addition is a Must

While choosing the topic or the content you wish to present, ask yourself “how does it help my readers?’ If you have a concrete answer to this question, then you know you are on the track to writing a good blog post. Creating blog posts that add value to a reader’s prior knowledge is an essential component here. Choose topics, and provide information that your readers are searching for.

You can conduct a poll, and ask them to comment to understand what they would like to read more about. Draft your articles around those expectations to give your readers an experience of a good blog post. This way your readers know that you care about their views and their reading experience. Knowing how to write a good blog post is also about knowing what your readers want.

8- A Good Meta Description All the Way!

A little bit technical in this pointer on how to write a good blog post. Meta descriptions are the brief descriptions that readers see below the title of any article. They provide a gist of the content in the blog post. The general criteria for a reader to select any blog post to read entirely are to first look at the summary provided in the meta description. Since it saves time and effort for the readers. So a good meta description is one way of increasing reader traffic to your website

Listed below are certain features a good meta description should have

• A call to action (Maybe a phone number/email id)
• Active voice
• Focus keywords
• Bullets pointers matching the content

9- What Will We Do Without SEO!

Every blog post, if it wants to be ranked up in search engines, has to be search engine optimized. SEO is the building block of content writing on the web. In case your articles do not search engine optimized, it will lead to your content becoming invisible in the ocean of an unlimited amount of content on the internet.

Recommended Read: Technical Writing Courses in India

10- Deliver the Promise Made

While writing a long descriptive article, it is easy to get lost in the sea of words. However, a good blog post is a post where the goals promised at the beginning of the article is delivered by the end of it. Say for example you write a guide on “How to upload data on iCloud”. In this case, the end goal is to assist your readers in learning how to transfer data to iCloud.

The blogger should touch upon all the steps that a reader will have to take while transferring data on iCloud. A good blogger would also think of all the possible obstacles/doubts that your readers might face & have the answers ready beforehand. By the end of the article, if the reader has learned all the aspects of uploading data on iCloud, then you can consider your blog post a good blog post.

FAQs 

1- How many words should a blog contain?

The word count of a blog post can range anything from 300 words to 3000+ words. However, a low world count blog post would not be ranked well on search engines. The average word count for the top-ranking blog posts is between 2500 words to 3000 words.

2- How do you generate money from blogs or blog posts?

A large chunk of money is earned by the bloggers by displaying advertisements on their blogging websites. This is further divided into cost per click or cost (CPC) or cost per impression (CPM). Every time a user clicks on the advertisements displayed on the web page, a blogger gets a certain amount paid. Paid promotions are another way of generating money for bloggers.

3: Can blogging become a full-time career?

Yes, in recent years, blogging or any type of content creation has become a full-time career option for many creators out there. Blogging is monetary as satisfying or more than other corporate jobs. The best part about blogging is that you can also do it part-time depending on other responsibilities and still earn a decent amount of income out of this.

4: Can I write different types of blog posts on a single website?

The answer is yes, you can. But it would be more beneficial to follow one type of blog throughout your website to establish yourself as an expert in the chosen niche. What you can do is, divide your web page depending on the types of blog posts you wish to write about. But I would recommend not to divulge into every type of blog post. Try sticking to 1 to 2 types of similar blogging styles, to gain more authority in your niche.

Conclusion:

With this, we come to the end of my tips on how to write a good blog post. Every blogger has his criteria of what qualifies as a good blog post & they are all correct. There is no right or wrong when it comes to content writing. From exp successful bloggers’ experience, the points mentioned above form the core of how to write a good blog post are the best steps to follow.

We also suggest, do not just stick to what is already established. As a creator, let your mind free from constraints and let new ideas flow. Do not be afraid of making mistakes. You might not achieve all the points mentioned above in your first blog, but that is Okay! Just keep writing and eventually, you will get there. Happy Writing Folks! & the pointers on how to write a good blog post can help you.