7 Simple Steps To Writing An Engaging Blog Post From Scratch

1. An Overview of What's Inside 'How To Write A Blog Post': Hello there. I'm Jeanine Jackson and I'm the founder of hello bombshell.com and bombshell entrepreneur.com. I've been blogging for quite a few years now. And I am so passionate and dedicated to helping ambitious creatives start and grow their own profitable blogs and businesses from scratch. In this course, I'm gonna be showing you how to write a blog post from scratch, how to do it in a structured way, and how to do it fast and easy. And by the end of this course, you'll understand how to brainstorm topic ideas, how to do content research and competitive analysis. How to edit your content, how to format your content, and how to optimize your content best for both search engines and for your reader, you have something to say. And blogging is an excellent platform to be able to share your ideas and insights with the world. And so welcome, and I can't wait to see you inside. Let's get writing. 2. Choosing A Great Topic That People Want To Read: Welcome to this lesson on how to write a blog post. So perhaps you're starting a new blog. Maybe you're already an established blogger, or maybe you're just looking for whatever reason to write a blog post. In this video, I'm going to share with you my personal process, how I come up with the ideas from my blog post and draft my blog posts from my personal lifestyle blog. I've been blogging for about 23 years now. And it's definitely been a learning process on how to actually put blog posts together. It can be quite difficult, right? Because you have all of these ideas turning in your head and then you sit down in front of the computer, the cursor is blinking and you have no idea where to even start. It's like writer's block. But if you have a consistent kind of dependable system and process that you can look towards when you have a blog post to put together that you're going to find is very, very helpful. Over the years, I've developed my own personal process and it really, really has made writing blog posts super, super easy where I could sit down at my computer and if I need to pump out a blog post in a matter of just a couple of hours. And I could do this every single day on a consistent basis. The most important tip I'm going to start with is Keep It Simple, Stupid. A lot of times we tend to overthink things, especially when it comes to something that we're creating. Well, before you even sit down and start with writing this blog post, I want you just to remember progress, not perfection. The wonderful thing about a blog is that it's not a book that you're writing. It's not a scientific journal. A blog is supposed to be casual, it's supposed to be easy to read. It's supposed to be conversational. So you don't have to worry about making things so perfect and so grammatically correct. The most important thing is that you're getting your ideas out on paper or out on the screen rather, so that other people are able to find your content and receive the information that you're putting out there. So just keep that in mind before we get started. All right, so the very first step in writing a great blog post and writing it fast is brainstorming. What are you going to write about? Perhaps you already have a list of ideas of things that you want to write about, or you already know the topic that you want to write about. Well, it's important before you start writing your blog posts that you kind of narrow that topic down even further. Let's say you just came back from a wonderful vacation in Mexico into loom and you want to write a blog post about it, you need to narrow down that topic even further. And so you can brainstorm about different parts or different aspects of your vacation. Do you want to write about how to get from the airport to your hotel? Do you want to write about your food experiences and all of the restaurants that you went to. Do you want to write about the nightlife in toluene that you experience? Do you want to write an overall guide to toluene to help someone who's visiting there for the first time, you have to really narrow down what is the message? What is the main core idea that you want to communicate in this blog post? Something that I found super helpful over the years of producing blog post is we tend to kind of want to write from what we want to share with our audience. However, that's not necessarily the best way to go about it. What you may want to consider instead is instead of writing about what you want to share, you could consider writing about what other people would like to know or what other people would like to find or consume or reads. That kind of mindset is putting your reader first as opposed to you as the writer first. One way of accomplishing this is by coming up with a problem to solve. What are issues that people have, that you have the answer to that you can be the bridge, that solution for them. One way that you can accomplish doing this, or it gets some ideas is see what people are already searching for on the Internet around the topic that you'd like to write about. One brilliant way of doing this is by utilizing Google. If you go onto Google and you search for a particular topic, you'll notice that as you type out whatever it is that you're typing, Google is trying to guess and complete the phrase for you. And a lot of times it will complete the phrase that you're wanting to type. And it will also give you other suggestions of what they believed that you may be typing. This is based on Google's algorithm of around of what other people are searching for. So you want to kind of pay attention to these suggestions that Google is giving you, because that's going to give you some ideas as to what other people are searching for. Once you go ahead and complete your phrase and go ahead and enter into Google. Go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of Google, below the 10 results on the first page. And at the bottom of Google, it's also going to give you other ideas that are related to the topic that you've just search for. It. These are topics that people are searching for a lot, which is why Google is suggesting it to you. So these are going to be ideas to help you further narrow down your points and the topic that you want to write about in your blog post. So to wrap up this section, make sure that you are clear in exactly what is it that you want to communicate in your blog post. 3. Researching Your Topic and Writing From Personal Experience: All right, so the next step in writing a really great blog post and writing it fast is your research. So you've already done your keyword research. You've brainstormed on your topic and you know exactly what you want to write about. And now we want to make sure that the content that we're actually producing, the meat of the blog post is going to be substantial. It's going to be valuable, and there's going to be a lot of content in there. So you're going to want to start actually researching the topic. Perhaps you have experience and that is your research around the topic. So back to the example around a vacation and Toluene. I just came back from a vacation until loop. So although I'll want to do more research to make sure that my blog post is solid and it's, it's very specific and there's good information in there. I am the research I went on vacation to Toluene. I had those experiences. So I'm going to be writing from experience. So you wanna make sure that if you're not writing from experience or even if you are writing from experience, you're also reading up other articles. You're watching YouTube videos, you're reading books, you're listening to podcasts, you're watching shows, you're getting research and getting general and specific knowledge around the content matter so that your content is really, really solid. Another great idea that's going to help in their research step of writing a blog post is competitive analysis. There's a good chance that you're not the only one that's come up with the idea to write a blog post about whatever it is that you're writing about. There is a likely videos on YouTube, there's likely other blog posts, podcasts, there's other content on the Internet about this particular subject. Find those pieces of content. What is the perspective that bees pieces of content are coming from? What is the writer including that? You'd also like to include in your own content. What is that particular content producer not including in that particular content that you can add to make it even more valuable. A lot of times what I will do when I'm writing a blog post is I'll find people that have written blog posts on that topic, exactly the topic that I want to write about. I'll find multiple people, multiple blog posts. And I'll see, okay, I like what they're doing in this blog post. I'm going to do that. I like what this person is doing in their blog posts. I'm going to add that as well. And I like what this person is doing. I'm going to add that as well. I also think, how can I add my own kind of style on it? What unique of value can I, as a writer, add to this piece of content? I've heard a very influential market are referred to this as the skyscraper method. Where basically you're looking at content that already exist and you're building on top of it. You're building a bigger skyscraper. You're making it more valuable. And then on top of that, the cherry on top of the, on top of the skyscraper is your unique perspective, your unique ad. 4. Outlining a Solid and Cohesive Blog Post: Alright, so the next step in writing a blog post is creating an outline. So I know you're excited, right? You're ready to write this blog post, right? The creative juices are bubbling. You're excited to start typing and getting your ideas out on paper. But I want to encourage you that before you start writing anything that you first create an outline. This is going to offer you some structure on exactly what you're going to write about in kind of a sequential order or in a logical order. But it's going to make sure that you don't forget anything. It's going to make sure that you include everything that you want to include. And it's going to make things so much easier for you. So for example, you know that you want to write about your vacation into a room. You know that this particular blog post is going to be about the restaurants and the food scene into Looom. How you could further break this down in an outline is by, for example, including the types of restaurants perhaps you want to include, okay, I want to include breakfast restaurants, lunch restaurants, and dinner restaurants. Then I also want to make sure that I include a part about street vendors. I want for each different section, I want to include a subsection, perhaps on the cost, the particular dishes at those particular restaurants. Basically an outline is just you getting even more granular on the topic with your headlines and your sub headlines and your bullet points. Now in the outline for your blog posts, you also want to include some very, very important questions. I, I find it, make it tremendously easier to write a blog post. And that's who, what, where, when, why, and how you want to make sure that you're answering these questions when you're creating your outline. Who was this for? What kind of restaurants are these? Where are these restaurants located? Are they located on the beach? Are they located in the downtown area? As you write your outline and as you create your actual blog posts. Continuously asking yourself these questions, who, what, where, when, why, and how it's going to really help you to be as detailed as possible and make sure that you don't forget anything that may be important and your audience may also want for you to include. 5. Writing and Getting It All Out: All right, it's game time. You have your topic, you have your outline, and you're ready to start writing. This is the best part about creating a blog post is when you finally get to just sit down, you open up your computer screen and you get to start writing. What I've learned over the years is that when you first start writing or you're not really used to the skill of writing content, you can kind of get stuck in this zone of perfection, right? You write a sentence, you write another sentence, and then you delete the sentence, and then you change it around, and then you go back to the first sentence. Oh, that's not what I wanted to say before. You know it. You've been sitting in front of the computer for four hours and you haven't gotten very far. Going back to one of the very first things that I mentioned, keep in mind that this is not a scientific journal, this is not a book, it's a blog post. It's okay to be conversational, It's okay to not be perfect. The point of this is to just get your ideas out on the screen. So during this step of writing a blog post, you'll just want to just kinda get it all out. You're just going to vomit your ideas, vomit words onto the paper, onto the screen rather. And you're not going to worry about grammar. You're not going to worry about, is this good? Is it not good? You're just going to let it flow and get all of the words out on the screen for as long as you can. I would recommend you turn off the Wi-Fi and you use an editor that is native to your computer where you don't need internet. So you don't have any distractions. Don't try to research during this phase. You've already done your research. Just get the ideas out on paper that as it is in your heart and in your mind, the hardest part about writing a blog post is finishing it, is getting all of those juicy words and getting your content nice and solid. Once you get that part out of the way, it's much easier to go back in and perfect things. Trust me, it just get it all out. And then you can always go back. And perfect beings. 6. Editing Your Blog Post: So you got everything out on the screen. Congratulations. The hardest part is through if you really wanted to, you could hit Publish and you've got a blog post. But of course you're not going to do that yet because we want to create high value content. And high-value content is going to be easy to read. It's going to be grammatically correct. People are not going to be wondering, what word is this because it's Smith's misspelled or what was she trying to say? No. This is the point where you gonna go back in now and you're going to edit your content. What I found to be very helpful in the editing phase of the blog writing process is reading your content out loud when you'll get to hear the words that you've put on the screen out loud. You really get a sense of how it translates, even when people are reading it, you'll be able to pick up on things that don't flow as easily. Because if it's not flowing as you speak, it's not going to flow as someone's reading it. So read the content out loud and as you're reading it, you'll find it very helpful to go in at that point and kind of change words around, take words out. If you're trying to be very pretentious in your writing by using big fancy words. When you've read it back, you'll be able to recognize that, of course, you're going to want to use grammatical tools such as Grammarly or spell check to make sure that the grammar is correct, the spelling is correct, and all of those things are perfect. And you are almost done heavy. 7. Formatting and Optimizing For Readers and Search Engines: You've edited the content, congratulate. Then next step is polishing off that blog post that you have now successfully created. And you're gonna do that by optimizing and formatting your blog posts. Now, optimizing is going to help for search engines such as Google to be able to as easily as possible find your content. You're also going to optimize your content for the readers. And here's a little trick. When you optimize your content for the reader. It's kinda twofold by optimizing your content for the reader. You're also optimizing it for the search engine. For example, with our example about the blog posts on vacation in toluene, you've given tips and tricks on the different restaurants into Looom. You also are when I want to think, Okay, when someone stumbles upon this blog post, how can I make it even more valuable for them? How can I make it a great experience? How can I make them? So thankful that BIG came across my blog post. Here's an idea of how you can do that. You can link to the actual website of the restaurant. You can link to websites like Yelp or OpenTable where someone can read reviews about that particular restaurants or even book a table with that restaurant by making your blog posts more valuable for the reader. These things are making your blog posts even juicy or even more substantial. And that's going to help not only the reader, but it's also going to help you to rank in the search engines, for example, Google. Another way to optimize and also help format your content so that it's visually appealing is by adding pictures and videos. Make sure to embed YouTube videos to add pictures. And also attribute to wherever you got the video or the picture is from to add additional value to the blog post. It's also going to make it easier to read because who wants to sit there and read through a bunch of different text with no pictures, no break in the content. We want to see what you're writing about. So if you can add pictures that are going to add value to the blog post, make sure you add those throughout. 8. Writing a Compelling and Engaging Headline: You're almost there, your blog post is almost complete. Your dismissing one super, super important component and that's a great headline. The most important think perhaps one of the most important things for sure in writing a great blog post is having a compelling headline, because no one ever gets to read your blog post. If the headline doesn't grab them in to write a great headline, you'll want to get specific, what are they going to get when they click in and read your blog posts? But at the same time, while you're being detailed, you also want to leave room for curiosity. Because if you give away too much in the headline, there's no reason to click while at the same time giving them some, something salacious, something juicy that makes it more exciting to want to read your blog posts. Going back to our example of toluene restaurants. So perhaps I want to write something like 21 of the most Fabulous restaurants in all of toluene. I'm giving them specific details. So they're gonna find 21 restaurants. I'm giving them something a little bit salacious, fabulous restaurants. I'm not just saying the best restaurants or good restaurants. They want to see the most fabulous restaurants in all of to loom. And then just the context of 21 of the most fabulous restaurant and toluene. Those things put together give it that element of curiosity where they like, hmm, I wonder, what are the most fabulous restaurants until loom? You want to make your headline very intriguing. So someone's going to want to click and actually read what you have to say. Now that you've written a blog post, you've gotten a very compelling headline to grab people and learn that meant read what you have to say. Now, you've only got one more thing left to do. 9. BONUS: The Last Step After Completing Your Blog Post... Sharing!: Now this can be really hard as a creator to do this last step, but it's very important. You have something to say and share with the world and people want to read it. What's that one thing? Share, share your content. You've spent all this time putting together content. Don't be afraid to share it and screaming from the rooftops, share it on your Facebook, on your Instagram when you're tick tock on your YouTube, share, share, share. Sharing is caring. And the more you share, the more traction that you can gain and the more momentum you can gain with your blog and perhaps growing your readership if that's something that's very important to you in the description down below, I'm gonna link for you my essential top favorite, ultimate blog writing or resources that you need when you're writing a blog post, my absolute favorites, and I hope you find them very, very helpful.