Writing your first blog is an exciting and nerve-wracking challenge, but a necessary one. Blogs are an interesting, engaging, and fundamental part of our businesses, so to ignore the challenge to start a new blog would be crazy. Here’s how to go about writing one for the first time.

Let’s discuss why we write a blog

Blogs are a great way to reach our customers, increase online presence and traffic to our WordPress website, and let people know who we are, and what we are about. This is your opportunity to make personal connections with your audience and to find readers who will appreciate your expertise, honesty, opinions, and sound advice (we hope!) Ultimately, it makes perfect business sense because marketers now rate blog writing as higher, or as high, as any other content strategy.

Where do you start, and how to plan your time

With everything in life, knowledge is power, so research on how to write a blog is a great start. Finding out that the average blog takes four hours to write (Orbit media) and that editing should take up 70% of the task (The Minimalists) enabled me to plan my time accordingly. From the masses of articles and blogs, I was most grateful for one or two, that I will share with you later.

Who is your audience?

You want to produce something that people can connect with, so most importantly, write for your audience. Picturing your target audience is key and the more clarity you have on that, the easier it will be to write for them. Are they starting their own business, self-employed, working remotely, 30-50 years old, lacking writing confidence…?

What could you write about?

Idea generation is the fun part and a super successful and relevant way to do this is to start with keywords that are relevant to your business or a related topic. Keywords can include any phrases or words that describe what you sell, your specialism, and even your location. I chose to mind-map these as I think more creatively using freehand and images, rather than lists. Grab a tea or coffee, have a sip of water, deep breath, and give it a go.

Why are keywords so important?

Keywords are the basis of Google’s analytics and are a necessary requirement of blogging as these are the way your blog will be found. Keywords affect your ratings, accessibility, and readership/audience numbers. Therefore, use these with purpose, strategy, and due consideration.

Where to place those keywords:

• In your title
• Within the first paragraph of text
• At least another two times in the rest of the text
• Add it to your image file names
• Alt text
• SEO title
• Meta description

What does your audience need to know?

If readers view you as an expert, authority, or someone in a position of trust they are more likely to engage. I have the expertise of writing a first and subsequent blog posts, which is why I have chosen to share this with you. My authority (i.e., reputation) is down to you, my reader/audience and there is only one way to build that authority and that is by doing and learning.

In Summary

Blogs are an important requirement of any business, when writing them be crystal clear on your target audience, idea generation needs to include keywords for your business, and always consider what is most useful for your audience to know.

Finally, get your keywords ready and a 6–8-word title, and why not start to write your first blog today? Do not underestimate the time it will take and enjoy the process.

The blogs I found helpful included 2020 Blogging Statistics: Survey Data, Trends and Insights from 1000+ Bloggers | orbitmedia.com and 11 Ways to Write Better | The Minimalists.

If you want to know more from me, please look out for next week’s blog where we will be looking at what you must include in your copy and a recommended format for a blog.