Effective content is the cornerstone of any successful blog.

And yet, a keen focus on content is often eschewed in favor of design and/or marketing. While you should spend time on those elements, your design and marketing will be for naught if you haven’t written something that is worth reading. That’s what ultimately matters.

While I could write an entire book about writing great content for your blog, this post is a distilled collection of the most important tips you should bear in mind when writing content for your blog. To put it another way, it contains everything you need to know to start writing blog posts right now.

I’d recommend that you print it out and keep it by your side when writing. You won’t of course learn everything on your first pass, so it will be very useful as a reference!

Overall Tips

Keep it simple!

Write with short words, short sentences and short paragraphs. I cannot stress this enough.

Write conversationally – i.e. as you would speak.

Use sub-headers to break up your posts.

Each section in a post (i.e. demarcated by a sub-header) should be around 2-5 paragraphs long.

To keep the reader engaged, break up your content regularly with graphical elements (videos, images, lists, quotations, etc).

Use bold to emphasise key phrases.

Use italics to emphasise a word (as you might when speaking).

Headlines

Headlines and sub-headers should be written in title case or sentence case. Pick one and run with it. Sentence case is really easy to manage, but title case arguably looks a little more slick. Here’s a title case converter tool if you choose to go down that route.

Your headline should be as short as reasonably possible while still effectively conveying the topic of the post.

All headlines should be intriguing and/or engaging. For example, How to Train Your Dog is okay, but there are a number of ways you could make it more intriguing or engaging:

• How to Train Your Dog (In 5 Simple Steps)
• How to Make Your Dog Obedient in 30 Days
• Why Your Dog Doesn’t Behave (And How to Make a Positive Change)

You get the idea. However, when writing such headlines, make sure that you can back up any promises you make in the post itself.

Write a draft headline before you start writing the post. When you finish, come back to it and see if you can better what you wrote before.

Introduction

The introduction is the second most important part of a blog post (after the headline). You’ve got someone to click through to your post – now you need to hook them into reading it.

The job of the introduction is to clearly establish what you are going to cover in the post and compel the visitor to continue reading.

It’s often effective to start an introduction with an engaging single sentence paragraph (as I did at the beginning of this post).

Main Section

The main section of your blog post should be made up of problems and/or solutions.

To put it in other words, you should tell your target audience about the issues they’re dealing with, then reveal your positive resolutions.

The value of your content ultimately lies in the information you reveal in the main part of your blog post.

Conclusion

This is where you should sum up the main points of your article.

Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself – many of your readers will have skimmed the article; you might effectively be making your points for the first time.

Always conclude blog posts with a clear call to action; be it asking to comment, share, or take action in some way. Don’t leave the reader guessing as to what they should do next; always encourage action!

Editing

“Write drunk, edit sober”

~ Ernest Hemingway

Write without judgment for the quality of the end product.

Clearly separate the process of writing and editing; one is completely creative, while the other is more objective. Never edit while writing.

To minimise spelling and grammar mistakes, poorly constructed sentences, etc., read your post aloud to yourself once you’re finished. You’ll almost certainly spot something you’d like to change, even if you have read through the post a number of times.

Now Publish!

Don’t be afraid to get your content out there.

If you’re just getting started, I won’t lie: it probably won’t be that great. Personally speaking, my first few blog posts were terrible. But it is in writing that one can most quickly improve, so don’t be too precious about what content you put out there. It can always be edited or taken back down in the future. Remember: nothing on the internet is permanent!

Take this opportunity to write a blog post – right now – with the above tips in mind. It doesn’t matter if you don’t even have a blog yet; that shouldn’t stop you from writing!

If that’s given you the impetus you need to get your blog up and running, click here to get started. Alternatively, if you have any questions or comments, fire away in the comments section below!

Photo Credit: Sharon Drummond