For instance, if you're a plumber writing your first post, perhaps you'd
write about modern faucet setups, or tell a particular success story
you had rescuing a faucet before it flooded a customer's house. Here
are four other types of blog posts you could start with:
List ("Listicle"): 5 ways to fix a leaky faucet
Curated Collection: 10 faucet and sink brands to
consider today
SlideShare Presentation: 5 types of faucets to
replace your old one (with pictures)
News Piece: New study shows X% of people don't
replace their faucet frequently enough
If you're having trouble coming up with topic ideas, check out this
blog post by my colleague. In the post, she walks through a helpful
process for turning one idea into many. Similar to the "leaky faucet"
examples above, she suggests you "iterate off old topics to come up
with unique and compelling new topics."
This can be done by:
Changing the topic scope
Adjusting your time frame
Choosing a new audience
Taking a positive/negative approach
Introducing a new format
5. Come up with a working title.
You might come up with a few different working titles — in other
words, iterations of approaching that topic to help you focus your
writing.
For example, you may decide to narrow your topic to "Tools for Fixing
Leaky Faucets" or "Common Causes of Leaky Faucets." A working title
is specific and will guide your post so you can start writing.
Let's take a real post as an example: "How to Choose a Solid Topic for
Your Next Blog Post." Appropriate, right? The topic, in this case, was
probably "blogging." Then the working title may have been something
like, "The Process for Selecting a Blog Post Topic." And the final title
ended up being "How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post."
See that evolution from topic, to working title, to final title? Even
though the working title may not end up being the final title (more on
that in a moment), it still provides enough information so you can
focus your blog post on something more specific than a generic,
overwhelming topic.
6. Write an intro (and make it captivating).
We've written more specifically about writing captivating introductions
in the post, "How to Write an Introduction," but let's review, shall we?
First, grab the reader's attention. If you lose the reader in the first few
paragraphs — or even sentences — of the introduction, they'll stop
reading (even before they've given your post a fair shake). 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.
Then, describe the purpose of your post and explain how it will
address a problem the reader may be experiencing. This will give the
reader a reason to continue reading and offer a connection to how it
will help them improve their work/lives.
Here's an example of a post we think does a good job of attracting a
reader's attention right away:
7. Organize your content in an outline.
Sometimes, blog posts can have an overwhelming amount of
information — for the reader and the writer. The trick is to organize
the info in a way so readers aren't intimidated by length or amount of
content. This organization can take multiple forms — sections, lists,
tips — whatever's most appropriate. But it must be organized!
Let's take a look at the post, "How to Use Snapchat: A Detailed Look
Into HubSpot’s Snapchat Strategy." There's a lot of content in the
piece, so it's broken up into a few sections using descriptive headers.
The major sections are separated into sub-sections that go into more
detail, making the content easier to read.
To complete this step, all you really need to do is outline your post.
This way, before you start writing, you'll know which points you want
to cover and the best order to do so in. And to make things even
easier, you can download and use our free blog post templates,
which are pre-organized for six of the most common blogs. Just fill in
the blanks!
8. Write your blog post!
The next step — but not the last — is actually writing the content. We
can't forget about that, of course.
Now that you have your outline/template, you're ready to fill in the
blanks. Use your outline as a guide and expand on all points as
needed. Write about what you already know, and if necessary, conduct
additional research to gather more information, examples, and data to
back up your points, while providing proper attribution when
incorporating external sources.
(Need help finding accurate and compelling data to use in your
post? Check out this roundup of sources for inspiration.)
If you're having trouble stringing sentences together, you're not
alone. Finding your "flow" can be challenging for a lot of folks.
Luckily, there are a ton of tools you can lean on to help you improve
your writing. Here are a few to get you started:
Power Thesaurus: Stuck on a word? Power
Thesaurus is a crowdsourced tool that provides users
with a number of alternative word choices from a
community of writers.
ZenPen: If you're having trouble staying focused,
check out this distraction-free writing tool. ZenPen
creates a minimalist "writing zone" designed to help you
get words down without having to fuss with formatting
right away.
Cliché Finder: Feeling like your writing might be
coming off a little cheesy? Identify instances where you
can be more specific using this handy cliché tool.
For a complete list of tools for improving your writing skills, check out
this post. And if you're looking for more direction, the following
resources are chock-full of valuable writing advice:
The Marketer's Pocket Guide to Writing Well [Free
Ebook]
How to Write Compelling Copy: 7 Tips for Writing
Content That Converts
How to Write With Clarity: 9 Tips for Simplifying
Your Message
The Kurt Vonnegut Guide to Great Copywriting: 8
Rules That Apply to Anyone
Your Blog Posts Are Boring: 9 Tips for Making Your
Writing More Interesting
The Beginner's Guide to Starting a Successful Blog
in 2019
9. Proofread and edit your post.
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 co-worker to copyedit and proofread your
post. You may also consider enlisting the help of The Ultimate Editing
Checklist or using a free grammar checker like Grammarly.
If you're looking to brush up on your self-editing skills, turn to these
helpful posts for some tips and tricks to get you started:
Confessions of a HubSpot Editor: 11 Editing Tips
From the Trenches
How to Become a More Efficient Editor: 12 Ways to
Speed Up the Editorial Process
10 Simple Edits That'll Instantly Improve Any
Piece of Writing
When you're ready to check your formatting, keep the blog
elements in mind ...
Featured Image
Choose a visually appealing and relevant image for your post. As social
networks treat content with images more prominently, visuals are
more responsible than ever for the success of your blog content.
In fact, it's been shown that content with relevant images receives
94% more views than content without relevant images. For help
selecting an image for your post, read "How to Select the Perfect
Image for Your Next Blog Post" and pay close attention to the section
about copyright law.
Visual Appearance
No one likes an unattractive blog post. And it's not just pictures that
make a post visually appealing — it's the formatting and organization
of the post, too.
In a well-formatted and visually-appealing blog post, you'll notice that
header and sub-headers are used to break up large blocks of text —
and those headers are styled consistently.
Here's an example of what that looks like:
