How to create great content for your blog

by Sharon Chihaka Chanyau

Did you know?

What you put on every page on your blog is very important, when you create a page it will be indexed in the SERPs (search engine result pages) every time you publish a blog post from your website. Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com spread your materials and content to the world wide web for you for FREE, thus your brand is out there for everyone to see and evaluate. Blogging alone places and markets your content and brand out to the public thus it is very important to create worthwhile and authentic posts. How? You ask. Below some of the tips you can use to create great content for your blog.

Do Your Research

Blogging about a certain niche does not make professional bloggers experts. Your audience deserves quality information so please do your research! Professional bloggers (myself included) are not keen on their audience knowing that they don’t actually know everything. But to be honest, most of the great stuff that you see and read in blogs come from hours of research. Sometimes we don’t know anything about a topic before we sit down to write about it.

It is always good for one to use various sources of information to do the research. It almost goes without saying, but relying solely on Wikipedia as a primary source is almost always a bad idea. It is very true that Wikipedia does have a wide range of brilliantly researched articles, but is it dependable? Unfortunately no! There are many sources out there that you can use to do your research depending with your audience.

Well-researched blog posts can differentiate your content from your competitors. Being known as a reference point or a trusted source of information  in your industry will help make your blog and brand stand out. I find that utilizing a variety of sources helps with gathering. It may sound outdated in this day of the World Wide Web but libraries are a great source of good information too.

Create Strong Headlines

The headline, or title, of your blog post must be created to capture the interest of potential readers and your intended audience. Keeping in mind that thousands of headlines and topics flash by in social media newsfeeds or in search results. Make use of great keyword phrase so that people searching on that particular subject will easily find that topic in your blog. Make sure the keyword phrase is included in your headline. A strong headline will sell the whole article to your audience; it will communicate the full message to your intended reader plus an added bonus of grabbing and keeping their attention until they finish reading the whole body text.

Make the introduction fun

Let the introduction be captivating. People love stories. You can use an anecdote in your introduction or have a story woven into your blog post. Stories can also help put across a point more clearly. Whenever possible, add a story to your post content. It will make it more appealing and may also help the reader learn. Once again put to use your targeted keyword phrase for search at least once in this paragraph.

Create Engaging and Thought Provoking Content

Engage your audience to a point that they hang your every word and take in all that you write or say. The only way to do this is to make engaging and informative content. This centers on you and what you write.  The first body paragraph of your blog post will either keep or bore the people reading. Make sure that it encourages your readers to carry on reading the rest of your content. Most readers probably decide within the first few sentences if the post is worth reading .  Readers should feel drawn and not want to cut short the read. Make them want to read your current post and then browse through the next articles in your blog. 

Leave readers with questions and wanting more. This doesn’t mean to have an incomplete post, but rather to include questions that make readers reflect on how they can implement the knowledge you provided.

Stay in tune with the reader

Readers like bloggers who care about and acknowledge them. The best way to stay in tune with your readers is to make them part of the blog. Some ways to do this include replying to comments, responding to queries from your comments section.  Take and thank them for their advice and suggestions. As you do this, you will build stronger relationships with your readers and learn more about what they want, something that can help inspire your future content.

Check your facts

Everyone makes mistakes, it is human but it is important to avoid blunders like wrong and misinformed facts at all costs. This is quite costly if you are a new blogger and just starting out. Publishing incorrect information will ruin your integrity and authority, and even if you have millions of loyal readers, your regulars will be quick to jump and splash the error in your face.  Always double check your dates and references. In the event that you have made an error, acknowledge it and fix it fast.

Lastly check your blog for grammatical errors. Do not be afraid to ask someone or a friend to proofread your work, it’s not a weakness but part of quality control.

The trick is:

If you provide content that sparks a flurry of comments, the search engines will notice that your post is important and is being updated regularly. This is a great way to get the engines to come back to your site more frequently.

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