It’s been some time I last published any post regarding blogging. There are plenty of resources on blogging and it is hard to catch up with everything. So, I was thinking to keep blogging related posts number low.
As a marketer, I know that if you want to promote your content, it must be a good one, well structured and solves a problem of your readers.
Is there a guide to learn the ‘How to Publish a Blog Correctly?“.
Definitely, there are many. Online is full of blogging help, tips and secrets(!). Although, after reading all of these most people get confused.
Before you publish the new blog post you need to make sure two things, it is easy to read and well structured for most of your readers to get it easily.
How to achieve this with your posts? I am going to discuss that but, first I want to give you a spoiler.
There is no perfect or strict rules how you should organize or write your articles. No post is perfect for a very long time. It depends on the niche, time and on your readers mostly.
The points here I am going to discuss today is the best practices you should follow to make your blog post more visible and read worthy. This is not a perfect guide or science.
This is going to be a long read so brace yourself.
01. Stop trying to be perfect
This is the first rule I have started to follow since 2015. I am blogging for more than 5 years now.
When I read my earlier posts from my first blogging life, I see them very much immature and a forced style trying to be in a conclusion quickly.
Almost anyone can get that I was trying to be perfect, forcefully. But, I was far from that. That was my mistake.
Those content were small, less elaborate and fewer examples were included. Whenever I get time I go back and update one blog post at a time now. You can find them still on this blog.
I have learned a lot in these years. Now, when I start to write a new idea or blog post, I never try to be perfect. I try to communicate with my readers. I know that my idea is not the ultimate one and only my ways can’t be perfect.
What I do now is read a lot and ask my readers for their opinions.
Lesson learned you can’t be perfect. There is no guru, only skillful people/blogger, who got the skill through hard practice and mistakes.
So, this can be your first eye opener. Stop trying to be perfect on each article you write. At least, stop trying to make anything perfect at the very first try.
Things will go accordingly when you fail enough time.
You need to write an article about how to learn swimming or riding by-cycle? Go for it, just write, do mistakes, edit again and read again. Trial and error are the way to be good in anything.
And you can’t be perfect, nobody can. We can only be as good as much we practice.
02. Structuring your blog post
There are no exact science or rules for creating the structure of a blog post.
Still this is one of the most important things that determines if a visitor is going to be a reader, or a reader is going to read the full post.
So, how this thing works?
To me, a blog structure depends solely on your blog theme. On what topics you are blogging about. Every blogger or marketer defines it in their own way.
I have some good reading about this, I am going to share those now.
[alert-note] For example : Writing a blog: creating a clear blog post structure. [/alert-note]
You all know Yoast right? This is from the Yoast academy. It clearly states that well structured blog has a long term effect on your SEO. It decreases your bounce rate and create social media attention.
They have an e-book about how a blog post structure should be on SEO aspect if you have time grab that. It helped me a lot.
You do not want to lose your contents readability. This is also why you need to follow a structure that will please your readers.
Well structured blog definitely helps the readers to find out the necessary information they want.
The following standard blog layout is from coschedule. It should help you to get the overall idea, what is a standard blog layout.
So, this can be a structured way to go on.
Now here is another one from SalesForce, They have also made a diagram that explains another standard way to grab the attention of your readers.
This is better when you are writing a small post. But, when you are writing a longer post like this one I am currently doing, you need to come up with some other strategy.
If you are not still convinced how and why you need to do this, then check out this awesome explanation and blog post from HubSpot.
[alert-note] [/alert-note]
This is an extensive reading and needed only you are really serious about your blogging or content marketing. They have outlined and explained blog post layout for 5 kinds of blogs.
- The Curated Collection Blog Post Template
- The How To Blog Post Template
- The List-Based Blog Post Template
- The Newsjacking Blog Post Template
- The SlideShare Presentation Template
To get over with it quickly you can download it from here this link: Click to download.
03. Choosing the right category
Everybody has different categories in their blog. When people come to your blog through a content they tend to look for other resources on the same genre.
So, you must put your blog post in the right category. Sometimes a content can fall into 2-3 categories. As I am a WordPress fan, I can easily select the appropriate category from the right sidebar of the blog.
I am not going to discuss long on this because I think most of us already knows what a category is and how to use that. Check the screen shot from where you can create and tick the correct category for your blog post.
04. Make schedule for your content
If you want to gain traffic steadily you need to schedule your blog post for throughout the month or even year. Posting content on a regular interval will increase your readership.
People will love to know if you have a posting and sharing calendar. Then they know when to come back at your blog or check out the Facebook for new content from you.
To most people this might not be a bigger issue, but when you are a professional blogger and you live on what you do, then this should be on your to-do list.
For example, if you are posting on every Monday and completed a blog on Saturday or Sunday, should you publish it immediately?
I would rather not. I will wait for the Monday schedule. So, nobody misses my content.
If you are too eager to let your readers know earlier, what you can do is give a hint about what going to come on Monday. Put a note on Facebook. make a tweet.
Does this really work?
Yes, it does. This is how I gain many visitors. I told them I am going to put some more explanation on a topic on next Monday or Wednesday. I even asked questions before I published the content. Obviously, it was related to the topics I was going to publish.
The following layout from CoSchedule states how you can maintain a blogging calendar. I love these guys, they have so many useful resources.
05. Writing a good description to help SEO
This is just for SEO purpose. If you are using the SEO plugin Yoast, you can see that it grabs 160 characters from your article as the meta description. This is what’s shown when you share or post your article link in social media.
Make this count to help your SEO. Put your SEO keywords in it with a small description about your blog.
I know it might seem meaningless to most of you, but this is what most of us do as a standard practice.
Your Yoast SEO plugin adds a section under your editing screen find the section there.
06. Optimize for search engines
Whatever content you wrote and how much beautiful it is, it might be meaningless if the content is not optimized for search engines.
The main idea of online marketing is you should spend as much or more time for promoting your content as you spent for writing the piece.
So, spend some time for optimizing it for the Google, Yahoo, Bing.
Oh… does this look similar to doing SEO?
:) Yes of course. SEO is a great part of online marketing and content marketing. If you do not do that, your writing will go into the waste. With all the hard labor done, we do not want that to happen.
Here is a good infographic on SEO optimization.
7. Call to action
Yes, I know you are familiar with this. But, how many times you forgot to add one in your blog post?
Go back to your previous blog and check if they all have a good call to action added at the very first or after the content? If the answer is no, then you are not taking good care of your articles.
Yes, I know you are familiar with this. But, how many times you forgot to add one in your blog post?
Ask questions to your readers. For example:
- Do you like the post and idea you just read?
- What else have I missed to add here in the list?
- Get our newsletter subscription to learn more, etc.
It’s all up to you, but make it count too.
[alert-note]You can read this: What makes a great call to action?[/alert-note]
08. Optimizing for Social Media
You need exposure for your blog right? So, you need to optimize it for social media. This nice infograph from salesforce will walk you thorough that path.
09. Blending your own tone
YThis part where most of us fail, because we do not care much about our content.
Go to an authoritative blog and read some of their posts, you can find out that each one of them have a personal tone to describe things.
You should have one too. Yes, it’s not bad to follow the popular blogs, but you should have your own voice in the content too.
When you are discussing a popular topic and just citing from the established person you might seem too dull. Put your own opinion and judgment. Do your research before putting those in your article.
You shouldn’t sound like another copycat blogger.
Yes, I do share content, images and infographics from other blogs, but I add those with my opinions and for reference. I gave the back link of the source, I tell the readers why I am sharing this and what they can get from the article.
10. How big your content should be?
It’s all up to the niche and the topics you are writing about.
When you are in the mood and you think there need to be much references and lot of discussions a bigger content than usual is a great idea. Back in 2013, the standard content size what most people were following was 650+ words.
Things have changed now. Longer content has much more value now for search engine ranking. When you are creating a list this can’t be short.
And it has seen that most of the top ranked blogs are publishing bigger contents regularly.
Still there is no words limit or standard for the length of an article. There shouldn’t be.
The length of content depends on the people reading your post and on your niche.
Fro Example, if you are reviewing a perfume, you can’t go more than 600 to 800 words. There isn’t enough for you to describe on that product. At that point, your length of the review will be the standard one.
But, when you are reviewing a car, you can write more than 5000 words on a single car of a car brand.
[alert-note]Read this post from Neil Patel’s blog: How long a blog post should be.[/alert-note]
On this post, he described the length of the content is not all that should be considered. It all depends on the quality, your audience and how often you post on your blog.
A blog that publishes a post every day can go with a smaller version. But, the one which publishes one content a week can go for bigger content for his content schedule.
Remember one thing, Content is king and good content takes time to produce.
Here is another great explanation about content length on different medium like on Facebook, twitter and your own blog.
http://marketingland.com/long-content-84370
Reviewing Your Content is a must thing
Lastly, before publishing a content you must review it thoroughly.
It’s obvious that there will be grammatical, spelling and other mistakes while you are writing for a long time. So, this step is a mandatory part of your blogging. You need to check twice or thrice with tools like Grammarly or other spell and grammar checker available online and offline.
Plagiarism checker for duplicate content also should be used if you are outsourcing your content.
I am a big fan of the Copyscape. Buy some credit and you can check your articles originality.
These little investments will return back to you big time.
Now, please tell me you’re thought about the content marketing and if I have missed any point here. Let me know in the comments.
I am a Blogger and Online Marketer. I started blogging in 2006 and since then I self taught myself "how to earn a decent income from online profession".
Currently, I am working as a freelance Web Designer and Marketing Consultant.
You can contact me for a schedule. Send me an e-mail at: [email protected]
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