Want to be a better blogger? Here are my top tips for writing better blogs.
Put a content strategy together
Blogging is a great way to share knowledge, showcase your expertise and raise your profile. But you’ll only see these benefits if you’re giving people content they find useful and valuable. If you haven’t done this already, set some time aside to put a content strategy together. By thinking about the audience you want to attract and the content they’ll want to see, you can write blogs that are genuinely useful rather than just more words on a screen.
If this is something you’d like to explore, try HubSpot’s How to Develop a Content Strategy: A Start-to-Finish Guide.
Take time to plan what you’re going to write
Most of us are pushed for time these days. You are, so the more efficient you are in your writing process the better. Your customers are too, so the more efficiently you say what you want to say, the happier they’ll be.
Before you start writing, take a few minutes to map out the points you want to make and the order you want to make them in. It will make the blog quicker and easier to write, so you’ll save time and effort. And because it’s more focused it will be quicker and easier to read, so your readers will thank you too.
Keep your reader in mind when you write
Thinking about your target audience is a critical element of your content strategy. It’s also a critical element of the writing process. When you’re thinking about your audience you’ll instinctively stay on track and will know:
- how much to write (see How long should a blog post be?)
- the words and phrases you should be using and the way you should be writing (for example, the language you’d use when talking to your peers is different from the language you’d use when talking to non-expert customers).
Practise
As with all things, you get better with practice. The more you write, the easier it will get. (But remember, outsourcing is an excellent option if you feel your business would benefit by having an expert on board right now.)
Test and measure
Readers will vote with their feet. Schedule time in your diary to look back at previous blog posts. Which ones performed particularly well? Which didn’t do as well as you’d hoped? This exercise will help you fine tune your content strategy so it’s delivering more and more of what people want and less of what they don’t. And in the process of doing this, you’ll see better and better results from your blogging.
