A Step-by-Step Guide by Professional Bloggers
For many people, including businesspeople, writing a blog post seems difficult. Where do you start? What do you write about? What’s the point? You have lots of questions, and we — the professional writers at Ray Access — have some answers for you.
The very first step is to answer two questions:
- Who is your intended audience?
- What do you hope to accomplish?
If you’re in business, your audience is likely the same as your business customers (and potential customers). If you’re writing a business blog, you could be writing to educate (a how-to), to share tips (a list) or to share news about your company or industry. All are valid. Once you’ve answered those two important questions, follow these four steps to write your blog post.
1. Pick a Topic
No matter what your business does or sells, people have questions about you and your industry. Pick a question and answer it in your blog post. The more pertinent and timely your answer, the more traction your blog post may get. Lists and how-to articles are especially helpful and popular. Some sample questions, just to get you started, include:
- How do you find the best [dentist in Asheville]?
- What’s the best way to [stop a leaky faucet]?
- 5 steps to [writing a blog post]
- The 5 best [questions to ask your Realtor]
- [Insurance] tips no one told you
Your topic question or statement may become the title of your blog post. If it’s engaging and promises an answer, use it. Otherwise, wait until you’ve written the blog post to come up with the title. Then you’ll know what to promise.
2. Do Your Research
Believe it or not, you don’t have to be an expert in a field to write knowledgeably about it. We’ve written about subjects as diverse as industrial roofing and cloud computing. What you do need to do before you can write about your chosen topic, regardless what it is, is to research it adequately.
So once you know your topic, do an Internet search to find what others have to say about it. Whenever possible, use reputable sources to get your information. In other words, never use Wikipedia.org. If you’re writing about your industry, you should know which sources are reliable and which aren’t. To be absolutely safe, don’t use anything until you find it on two different authoritative websites.
3. Write the Blog Post
After you’ve collected bits and pieces of solid data, you can write your blog post. Keep the original question in mind as you write. A clear answer should be your goal, while explaining it as best you can. Often, a simple question takes a long time to answer because one question leads to another. And that’s how you string one sentence to another, one paragraph to another and one section to another.
Remember who your audience is and what they may already know. Your goal is to answer their questions and connect with them. Use language that reflects how they use language. For example, at Ray Access, we often write in a comfortably conversational tone. It’’s the way we talk, and most likely how you talk. But we’ve written for clients who didn’t want any contractions in the content. The point is to write for your audience.
4. Have It Edited
Congratulations, you’ve written a blog post! But your task doesn’t end there. Before you share it with the world — or at least with your customers and potential customers — have the article edited. Have someone else look at it with a critical eye. This step shouldn’t be just a proofread. While catching typos and misspellings are important, a good editor can improve the flow of your blog post so that it reads smoothly, point by point, from beginning to end.
And by the way, did you know that Ray Access offers editing services? That’s right. We can take your original blog post (or whatever you’ve written) and make it better. And our editing services are just half the price of our writing services. Good editing can make the difference between a sale and a fail.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.