Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hey, welcome to this class on blogging for
Virtual assistance, turning writing into
a client service. This class is
basically giving you all the ins and outs of blogging and a bit of an understanding on how to
turn it into a client service. What will you learn? Well,
you're going to learn how to pick a client aligned topic
and write a one page brief. You're going to look at
outlines of a natural blog. We're going to look at
drafting and editing 801,000 web posts and sound a bit about SEO because that's really important
when it comes to blogs and how to package
a service as well. If you want to add this to your list of things
that you want to do, what's the best way
basically to do it? Let's get started.
2. Blogging Foundations: So we're going to look
at blogging foundations. But let's learn what a blog truly does for
you and your clients. First of all, blogs
answer real questions. They provide valuable
information that addresses the needs and
curiosities of your audience. This not only helps in
attracting readers, but also in engaging
them effectively. Secondly, blogs build trust
and demonstrate expertise. By consistently sharing
knowledgeable insights, you position yourself
or your clients as an authority in that
particular field or industry. Finally, blogs guide readers
to their next steps, whether subscribing
to newsletter, buying a product or
simply learning more, a well crafted blog post nudges readers towards
a meaningful action. Remember this, each blog post is an opportunity to connect, inform and lead your audience
towards a desired outcome. Now let's look at the
structure of a post. Here on the left
is a lovely image of a typical blog post. As you're staying out,
this is a good thing to refer back to so you
basically get an understanding. So let's break this
down a little bit. At the top is the
headline, or H one, as you might know it eventually to become. It's your hook. It's the first
thing readers see, so it needs to grab their attention and convey
the post main idea. Next, you have the intro. This is where you identify
a problem your audience is facing and hint at the payoff
they'll get by reading on. It sets the stage and
draws your readers in. The body will then contain headings H two and H three or heading
two, heading three. This structure helps readability and keeps your message
clear and concise. Finally, quarter actions
need to be added in. So as you can see
from structure, you can add one in midway
and one at the end. It's important to add multiple calls to action
throughout because often some people might not get it to the end and
notice that quarter action. That's why we suggest putting
one in the middle as well. This is call to
action will guide readers to whatever
happens next. So to subscribe to
explore a product, however you want
to structure it. But this is a typical layout. Screenshot this so that you will remember
this for later on. The last thing I want to share
is the voice and the tone. When it comes to this, this is a very important skill
to eventually learn. But as you're starting out, it will take a lot of tweaking
before you get this. But there are three
points to think about. First of all, use plain English. This is a given. This means avoiding jargon, complex words. Instead, opt for language that's clear and understandable, making your content more accessible to the
wider audience. Next, remember the power
of short paragraphs. Breaking up text not only
makes it easy to read, but also helps retain
the reader's attention. Think of each paragraph as
a complete thought or idea. How many blogs have you
gone onto and gone, don't want to read the
rest of that because the paragraphs are too long. Keep them short and sweet. Lastly, prioritize
examples over claims. This approach builds
trust with your audience by showing rather
than just telling. Use relatable examples
to illustrate points, and it will resonate
really well with people and it's a good
way to connect with them. These strategies are nice and effective and very
simple as well, and they'll help ensure your blog posts are
engaging and impactful. The other point I want to share with you is when it
comes to voice and tone, when it comes to doing this
for different clients, it will take some time to learn basically what their
voice and tone is. You might find one
of the clients you have will be very friendly tone, you've got to learn to adapt to that compared
to another client, which is very corporate like, very professional, very straight to the
point language use. But this will take time and, you know, learning, basically, it's important to
try these things out to see where you're at. So from this, a good idea, I would suggest is
going to look at, say if you've got a
client currently right now that, you know, wants blogs, go and have a look
at the industry, have a look at their website, have a look at the language, and note down their voice, the tone what structure
their blogs are, what kind of course of
action is they're using. It will help you get
into the mindset of writing blogs for
clients and not just for yourself because you've
got to be thinking about them and what they want to achieve over what you're doing as well.
3. Research & Planning: In this lesson, we're going to cover off research and planning. Let's dive into
the first step of our blogging service
Workflow, quick research. Quick research is
crucial and we can achieve a lot in
just 15 minutes. First, use Google
Autocomplete to see what people are
searching for in real time. This can give you an
immediate insight into popular topics. Next, check out People
Also ask section. It's a treasure trove of questions that can
inspire your content. Then review the top
three results on Google. These show what type
of content ranks well, which can guide you in
your approach to writing. Finally, don't forget
about clients FAQs. These are directly tied to
what your audiences care about and can be a gold
mine for content ideas. Remember, the goal is to gather relevant information
quickly and efficiently. Let's dive into the
writing a one page brief, a crucial step in developing
your blog servers. First, focus on
identifying the goal of your blog post and
who the readers will be. This sets the direction
and the time. Next, craft a working title. It doesn't have to be
perfect right away, but it should capture the
essence of your blogs message. After that, outline three
to five key points. These are the main
ideas or pieces of information you want
your readers to take away. They should align with
the goals you've set. Finally, include one
clear call to action. What do you want your
readers to do after reading? Do they want to sign
up to a newsletter, find out about a
product or a service? Remember, this brief
is a map guiding you to a successful blog post. Now that we've done that, now
we need to do the outline. This is all about setting a clear roadmap for
your blog post, one that not only helps
you stay organized, but also captivates
your readers. First, start with
the heading H one. This is the main headline that captures the essence
of your post. At this point, you should have
an idea what this will be. Next, we'll outline three
to five H two headings with support bullet points. These headings break down the main promise into
digestible parts, making it easier for your
readers to follow through. The bullet points helps you to flesh out each section
with key details as well. That's why we keep it nice
and simple at this point. Remember to include
an FAQ block. This is where you address
common questions or concerns, adding value and increasing engagement with your audience. Lastly, don't forget to note
two or three interlinks. These are links to other posts, resources, that kind of thing. It's really important for SEO
because it helps boost it. So what makes a good outline? This image on the left hand side is an example of a blog outline. It's really straightforward,
as you can see. Number one, you've
got the intro. Number two, you've got a title
and a few bullet points. Number three, same, number four, same, and then you
have your conclusion. It's intended to be in a logical order just to make your life
easier and help you understand what you're
writing about and it's easier for your readers to
follow through as well. Each section will
solve a problem, something that your readers are interested in and it will
keep them engaged too. Lastly, a good outline
will always include quota actions we initially showed that in the first lesson, the layout, quarter actions
can be placed anywhere. You can have multiple
of them as well, so it doesn't need
to be at the bottom, after everyone's
read it, it can be bang straight in the middle
if you want to as well. That's the end of this lesson and we'll see you
in the next one.
4. Writing & Editing: So we're going to cover
off writing and editing. Let's dive into the process of drafting the body
of your blog first. When starting your draft, it's crucial to focus on
the body before tackling the introduction and we will cover introduction in a moment. This helps you to clarify your points and your
structure in the content. So remember these key rules.
There's three of them. First, prioritize
right in the body, it sets the foundation
for your entire piece, leave the intro to the end. Second, include one strong
example per section. This will help your readers understand and engage
with your content. Lastly, aim for short
scannable paragraphs. This makes your post more reader friendly and helps your
audience stay interested. I mentioned about the
paragraphs as well. It's really important
because the amount of times you go onto a blog and
it's massive blocks text, you are not going to read that
make them nice and short. Let's move on to the intro. There's actually a
really simple formula for this one, it's four parts. You are first
identifying the problem. What challenge are
you addressing? This sets the stage
and grabs attention. Next, highlight the payoff, why should you audience care? Share the benefits
or the results that they can expect
from your blog. Then offer a preview, give a brief overview
of what you'll cover. I builds up the anticipation
for your content. Finally, clarify who it's for. Specify who will
benefit the most so listeners can see
themselves in the stories. So let's dive into how helpful writing
styles can make your work more
effective and engaging. This is three points
I'm going to cover now. First, aim to write clearly, this means using plain English. I actually mentioned
this previously as well, but it's really,
really important. Avoid complicated
words, phrases, jargon, all of that,
keep it nice and clean. Second, embrace
the active voice. It makes your writing
more direct and dynamic. For example, instead of saying the report
was written by me, so I wrote the report. Notice how much clearer and
more engaging that sounds. Finally, cut filler words. They can bog down your message, whereas just or really often don't add any value
into it whatsoever. By trimming these,
your writing becomes more concise and more impactful. Remember, keeping
your writing style helpful and clear not
only benefits you, but also makes your services more attractive to the clients. So let's dive into
the editing parts. Editing effectively is crucial for delivering quality content. We're going to focus
on three main passes. First, structure. In this stage, make sure your content
is well organized. Look for logical order ensure your headings are
clear and effective. This will help your readers
follow along easily. Next, clarity. Here, simpify your language, aim for concise sentences, and make sure your
message is easy to understand without
unnecessary jargon. Finally, proof, big
one that often gets missed out because
people are either rushing, very, very important. This is where you check for
typos and verify the links. It's the small details like this that maintain
your credibility. How many times have you been
on a blog and a link doesn't work or there's a typo
or loads of typos, you instantly come
off of that blog. That's why we say proof
is really important. And finally, now we've talked about turning blogging
into service. Let's focus on how to format
your blog post for scanning. We've done all the
other extra steps and now this is the point where you need to format it in a way that people read it skim read, we all skim read, by the way. The way you do this is first, make it easy for your audience by using head of twos
and head of three. This helps it break down
your content and guide the readers through the
essential points really easy. Next, incorporate
lists where you can. Lists are a great way to present information in a
digestible format, making it easier
for your readers to absorb key details quickly. I prefer a lot of bullet points. I think it's a great
way to break up things. I would use them
throughout as well. Lastly, use bold sparing. It should emphasize the
most important ideas without overwhelming
your readers. A lot of people will use it to highlight keywords
throughout the entire blog, but it can look
too overwhelming, having bold words here
there and everywhere. Just the key ideas
you need to be doing. So you now know about
setting all up. You are at the point
now where you should be able to go off, research a blog, do all the steps
that we've covered and get to a point
where you're right here right now where you have
got copy that is scannable, it's formatted correctly,
there's no jargon in it. You've broken it up
with some images probably, some links, and now we're going to
move on to the next sm, which is about the
SEO side of things.
5. Publish, Basics of SEO & Maintenance: We're going to look
at publish basics of SEO and maintenance. You've done your
blog, it's done, it's set up, fantastic. Now you need to do the
on page essential. This is the SEO side of things. SEO stands for search engine optimization,
and it is crucial. It helps your
content get noticed. On every blog that
you are publishing, they will have an
option for you to fill out this
particular information. Some of this is
your SEO settings and some of this
will be actually built into your blog, but
we'll go through that. Now. First of all, on the actual back
end of things, you will fill it in a title. The title ideally needs to
be about 60 characters. Then you'll move
on to filling out a box that says the
meta description. This should be
140-160 characters. It's your chance to
hook your readers by summarizing the post main
point. Think of it this way. When you go onto Google
and you type something in, you'll see a blue title, and then underneath, there'll
be a little snippet of information about what
R will send you to. That is the meta
description, by the way, and the title is the title that we've just said right
now 60 characters. Those two pieces are basically what are going to draw
people into your blog. The next thing is the
short slug for URL. This is the part
after your website, it'll be like website.com
slash and then the blog Title. Try and make it
short as you can. Some people just use
the entire title, but sometimes that could
be a little bit too long. Just try and shorten
that down if you can. Then another thing that often gets missed is Alt
text for images. It's not just about
accessibility, it helps search engines
understand your content. What this is is
going on your images in your body of content
and each of those images, you should be able to right
click or provide Alt text, which is basically justscribing
what the image is. It's just putting your
text with the images, matching it up and then Google goes, this is what
this is about. That's basically
what you're doing. It's a really important aspect of anything related
to SEO as well. Lastly, aim for two to
three internal links. It keeps the readers
interested on your site longer and will
improve your SEO ranking. Which is always important. Now let's move on to your
images and accessibility. Let's just focus on these. We mentioned your Alt text. This part of the Alt text, it helps people screen readers understand the
content of your images. Think of it a painting
a picture with words. Describe basically
what the content of your blog is about in a very, very short description,
basically. That's all you need to be doing. You don't need to
think about too long, just briefly write
what it's about. When it comes to visuals, try and stick to things that are relatable to the content, good contrast, adds a little bit of a value to what
people are reading. If you are discussing
about, for example, we'll go with pets of some kind, put in images of relevant pets in the right
parts in those paragraphs. It just adds a little bit
of an easier flow for people and especially people who are skimming or anything, if you're sharing top tips about different types
of dogs, for example, they'll scroll down to a dog that's same dog as they have. It makes it a little bit
easier for people as well. And finally, when
it comes to images, don't use text heavy images. You can use things like infographics, that's
absolutely fine. If it's basically reaffirming what you're talking about
or sharing some stats, that kind of thing, that's fine. But images that have got
loads of text on them, it's not going to add any value to basically what
your blog is about. Try and stick to images
that are relevant as well. There are tons and tons of sites out there
for stock images. If you're worried about where you're going
to find the images, there are tons and
tons out there. Just find images that are
suitable for your blog as well. And finally, you're about to
hit the button for publish. Fantastic. You're at that point. This is the final rundown. Before you publish,
this is your checklist. Preview it on a
mobile if you can. It's vital because many readers will view your content
on the phones. This is where you
can see everything reads really well, the headings. Maybe you've got an image
in there and it's too big, it's taking up too much space, then you can resize it. It gives you the opportunity to make sure these
little tiny things are sorted before you publish and have to go
back in and fix it. Next, make sure all
your links work. There's nothing worse than putting the link
in, doesn't work. People get really frustrated
and they don't like it. Also it makes you seem
blessed by professional. Finally, this is one that I tend to do is
read it out loud. Read out your entire
blog out loud. This will help you catch
those awkward phrasings or typos or misspellings of words because that
can be easily done. Finally, hit send, hit publish. It's out there. It's done. Fantastic. But one thing, you've published it. Now what? This is the point
that you need to be being very proactive, which is looking at the
analytics of your blog. There's a few things
you just need to make sure that
you're looking into. Simply, you can track the date and the URL
of the contents. This will help basically organize and retrieve data really easy if you're
looking for something, and make sure that you are documenting the
topic and the goal. Understand what you
aim to achieve with each piece of content helps
to measure its effectiveness. Businesses will
probably ask for this. They'll probably go,
well, when did you do it? URL, so they might need
the URL so that they can pass on to the social media team or anything like that. The topic and the goal, they
probably would need that, for example, if they have
various products and they want to make
sure that they're talking about all of them. In different blogs rather
than just focusing. When it comes to blogging,
you will find that you'll have to put plans
together in place, thinking ahead of if there's new product launches or talking about things
that are existing, that type of thing,
and working out what the goal of the
blog is as well. We've mentioned goal
quite a few times. It is important to have
a goal for your blogs. What do you want people
to do with it, basically? Also, any interlinks added, you need to keep an eye on them. It is really important to
add links and make sure that they are interlinking with
parts of your website, keep people on
there a lot longer. Making sure that those links are still active is important too. That's the reason why you track
them because for example, if you had a link
to another blog, but the blog got taken down,
that link will go nowhere. So it's really important
to track all of this. Keep it on an Excel sheet. If you are removing a blog, then, well, actually on
this blog, we mentioned it. Let's remove that link. Let's
actually mention something else because you've got to stay on top of the
ball with blogs as well. The content matters. You've got to remain
professional, you make sure that
you are making sure that the data is relevant
and all of that. At some point as well,
you might have to update the blog itself later on. For example, some
piece of content might be outdated,
that type of thing. This isn't essentially
analytics, it's more, I would say, just keeping on top of
everything really when it comes to maintenance of the
entire blog system itself. What I will mention as well
is there are analytics for your blogs to see
how many people read them and things like that. You can track the source of where people are reading
them, that type of thing. Also, if you're finding
that you're not really getting many people on them or people aren't staying
on them long enough, then there might be a bit
of a reason behind it. For example, your
meta description might not be up to par. They might be like, actually, I went on
there looking for this and actually that's not
what I went in there for. But it's really important to track everything
that you're doing. Put it in one document because you will be effectively
managing all their blogs. And blogs are essential source for information for everybody. Also as well, a lot of the stuff that you
do for blogs will go into other social posts or freebie guides or they'll be
linked to something else. It's really important
to make sure that you're on top of all
of this as well.
6. Package It as a Service: So we're going to look
at our last lesson, which is packaging
it as a service. Why do packages work? If you don't do
them, then I'm going to cover off why you might
be interested in doing them, especially if you're going to be offering a blogging service. So number one, it provides
consistent and visible value. People know exactly
what they're getting, which builds that trust up. Secondly, Pack is
simplified decision making. You know, the amount
of clients you probably come across
that are like, Oh, I might want to do that, or I'm not quite sure or oh, you know, you know, I'm still deciding
kind of thing. It actually helps them
make quicker decisions by showing exactly what
they're going to get and then they can decide whether
it suits them or not. And finally, with packages, it gives you clear
scope and boundaries, meaning both parties have a mutual understanding
of what's included. It minimizes that
risk of that scope creeping and you get more and more things added to
your list of things to do. No, it stops that. So this is a little
bit of an example of packaging. Some people do this. I've done this before
where I have three levels, three tiers. You've
got the starter one. The starter one, you
can offer one post per month raging
800-1 thousand words. This is perfect for clients just testing the water. You'll
get quite a few of those. Next is the Quartier. Stepping it up, you're
doing two posts per month plus a linked in
carousel for each one. This option provides a
bit more engagement, more visibility,
that type of thing. And P. This is full on
four posts per month, a detailed monthly calendar,
two pins per post. This is for the
higher end client that wants a bit more
of a content strategy, and they basically want
to hand it to you to do. Basically. It's entirely up
to you how you want to do it, but Tiers is always a
really good um thing to do because you're
basically offering your clients some
choices and all they've got to choose is which one is the
best one really. Have a think about
it at the mite. If you are currently
someone who does social media as a
virtual assistant, you can tie in blogs quite
easily into your Sabas. If you do Admin, that's fine. You could still tie it
into blogging as well. Or you could do
it as an offer or you can start going back to the clients you
currently have and say, by the way, I now offer
this and this and this. So let's look at the
pricing approach. Pricing is always a bit of a dodgy subject for some people. Some people are
fine with talking money and some just avoid
it like the plague. Think about the pricing
for this in particular. Price the output based on the deliverables and
your turnaround time. How long will it
take you to do it? In other words, if blogging, your finding is
actually not that bad for you and you are doing
it in a reasonable time, think how much that is per hour and that is
your starting rate. That is what you
should be aiming for. Do not cut yourself
short on this. I know loads of VAs that do it, they sell themselves and then they're wondering
why they're doing it for the amount
they're getting paid when they set the bar that way. Next, think about offering
a one month pilot. This is actually really good
for you and your clients. It gives a chance
for your clients to test the water
before they commit, but it also gives
you time to figure out the pricing as
well at this point. If they gave you a task and actually took you longer
than you expected, this could be that point
where you go, well, actually, the time it takes me to do this
is a little bit more. Before the client goes, yeah, I want a full commitment, then you can just say, Well, it's going to take me a
little bit longer and you can discuss pricing
from then on. And finally, when it
comes to pricing, it's always really
important to list your add ons separately
from the main packages. The three I mentioned, if there are additional posts they want, or they do want a
content calendar, but they're on the startup pack, that's an additional cost,
that's something else. Sometimes they might
want a package too, but they actually want something additional or they need this or and you'll find that clients will move it around just
to suit them sometimes. But you can be very
clear and Gary. Well, if you do this package,
I'll do this additional. It's just to make sure
things are clear, but it does give your
clients some flexibility, which they quite like as well. So revisions and timelines are the key elements to keeping your products moving smoothly. When it comes to
this, you need to focus on the clarity
and accuracy. We allow one revision
for each piece, making sure that
the content is spot on and aligns with
the expectations. You're basically telling them, basically, you'll
get one revision. You're giving them
the timeline which is 5-7 business days per post. Then some people do
offer the chance to do a rush option and if they're really really
needed ASEP for something, you can actually discuss that with your client
and offer that. But that could be an additional
cost perhaps as well. But be very clear
when it comes to blogging what it is that
they're going to get. Most clients will say
one revision, basically. They might be like, Oh, I
don't like that picture or I don't like that wording
or I don't like the tone, give them one revision. If they want two revisions and they're not happy
with the first one, then say it's an additional
cost because it is your time at that point
to basically revise that. Add that revision cost
into your pricing as well. You've done the blog,
how long it takes you. If someone comes
back with revisions, how long would that
actually take for you to do those revisions? Have
a think about that. I think that's the part that's overlooked when it
comes to blogs, is the revision element because that could still
take you 30 minutes to do. It's 30 minutes you should
be paid for as well. Add that into your
costing as well. This part is really
important as well. So when it comes to blogs, you need to a bit of an onboarding essentials part of things with blogging as well. If you've already got a client
currently, that's fine. But it's always a
really good practice to do a client questionnaire, ask them about their voice, ask them for their socials, their websites, content,
anything that they could share with you so that you can get the voice
and the tone right. Also ask them if they've got image library as well
because some of them have their own style
of images as well and talk about targets
the call to action. This is the next step after
you've agreed the packaging. You need to be onboarding these bits because this
will help you massively. Then you going off and
thinking what they want. Is better asking at this
point before you start putting everything together
to send over across to them. A client question is
a really good idea. You can use AI tools to
help you create this, a full document that
you always give to your client to talk about
blogs and stuff like that. Then what you could
do is you could do a little a Word
document or something. Every time they want
a blog from you, you send it to them
and say, well, what's the actual
goal of this blog? What would you like
it to be and ask them for anything they
want to include as well. I always ask the
client what they want to include in things before I go off and do things
to make sure that we're on the same page basically and
sometimes they'll be like, Well, I want to mention this, this and this and
that will save you so much time and energy as well. Do the onboarding part of
things when it comes to this promoting your packages and going through this process. And delivering the
package as well. This is the final step. You have done everything,
you've done the revisions, you've done APs, everything. This is the point
where some clients of mine will ask me to
upload it myself. So that's built into my cost of my price because I
know, for example, certain platforms and I'm familiar if however you
aren't familiar with them, then there are
things you can do. Basically, you could put everything on Google Doc,
you get out the links in. You could even do I think at the bottom
of the spreadsheet, which is basically
all the information like the title, the meta, all of that and include
in your little documents, probably actually separate
the imageries as well that will go with it and the carousel pins
and all of that, put it into an archive
compressed folder, two sent to the client all done. But what you will find is a lot of clients will
ask you just to upload it rather than them
doing it because half the time they forget or
they don't have the time. If you are quite tech savvy, that is something
you can include into your package is saying, I will upload it to your platform for you,
blah, blah, blah. It works really well with a lot of clients purely
for the fact that they can see how it will actually look when it
goes on the website, it saves a lot of time with certain aspects because they can tweak things
themselves as well. You might find you send
it and actually they do a little bit of a tweaking and then they go, that's great. So it makes it a
lot easier as well, and they get to hit publish or you can hit
Publish title it to you. I hope you've learned a lot
from this entire course. What I will say
is just practice, practice, practice, practice, writing blogs, think about the clients that
you currently have, all the ones you want to have. And then think about how
you would package it. How could you link it in together with something
else or you can just do two blogs and then
list all the benefits of things like mentioning
about revisions, mentioning about put
it on the website, mentioning about the fact
that you'd source the images. But when you do get the client, Make sure you do do the
onboarding essential aspect of things where you do ask
them for all the information, I will help you massively in being really successful
at doing blogging. I'll save you a
lot of heartache, just you going off and
doing your own thing and they have another aspect. They have a different
view of how things would run because
that often happens. Sometimes clients
will just like, go off and do it
and you're like, no, I need this information
first, then I'll go do it. Be firm on that. Hopefully, this will be a service
that you offer soon.
Donna Townsend, SMM | VA | Entrepreneur
