VOICES: 7 Steps on How to Write a Blog Post

Step 1: Understand your audience.
Before you start to write, have a clear understanding of your target audience. What do they want to know about? What will resonate with them? Consider what you know about your buyer personas and their interests while you’re coming up with a topic for your blog post.

Step 2: Start with a topic and working title.
Before you even write anything, you need to pick a topic for your blog post. The topic can be pretty general to start with. For example, if you’re a plumber, you might start out thinking you want to write about leaky faucets. Then you might come up with a few different working titles — in other words, different ways of approaching that topic to help you focus your writing.

Step 3: Write an intro
First, grab the reader’s attention. If you lose the reader in the first few paragraphs — or even sentences — of the introduction, they will stop reading even before they’ve given your post a fair read. You can do this in a number of ways: tell a story or a joke, be empathetic, or grip the reader with an interesting fact or statistic.

Step 4: Organize your content.
Sometimes, blog posts can have an overwhelming amount of information — for the reader and the writer. The trick is to organize the info so readers are not intimidated by the length or amount of content. The organization can take multiple forms — sections, lists, tips, whatever’s most appropriate. But it must be organized!

Step 5: Write!
The next step — but not the last is actually writing the content. We couldn’t forget about that, of course

Step 6: Edit/proofread your post, and fix your formatting.
You’re not quite done yet, but you’re close! The editing process is an important part of blogging — don’t overlook it. Ask a grammar-conscious classmate to copyedit and proofread your post or you can do it yourself.

Step 7: Pick a catchy title.
Start with your working title. As you start to edit your title, keep in mind that it’s important to keep the title accurate and clear. Then, work on making your title sexy whether it’s through strong language, alliteration, or another literary tactic. Finally see if you can shorten it at all. No one likes a long, overwhelming title.

Photo credit: By Nicke L, (Computer Keyboard) [CC BY 2.0 (http://www.epa.gov/win/winnews/images05/0510keyboard.gif)], via Wikimedia Commons

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