Having embarked on this blogging journey for more than two years, I actually realised that this journey is more of a journey of self improvement in terms of knowledge and skills. It was not a difficult journey but yet, it is not entirely easy either. It requires a lot of determination, perseverance and time. 

Starting out with simple content, I pen down whatever is in my mind about a certain thing I would do or a topic which I have known and experienced. Slowly, I began writing about bigger things and started to improve on each and every piece of my work with greater research. No one is born a great writer and no writer is perfect. It’s all about conveying and narrating a content with style and panache. There are also many different types of readers with their preferred content styles. So basically, a piece of content cannot please everyone in the world. Surely there will be trolls out there to “trash you” or ridicule you. But, be firm. As long as you put in your best effort in your work, there is nothing to fret about. Writing is all about the journey of improving oneself continuously.

You are the boss when it comes to writing your own stuff. You can choose to put in effort and time, patiently researching the facts that you need to build a great piece of work or you could simply type out just anything that crosses your mind, which, more often than not, be a total waste of time getting you nowhere.

A great blog consisting great content equates to great SEO rankings on meta-search engines. This is important as SEO helps you gain traffic and generates good leads. It is absolutely essential if you want to turn your blog into a business. 

Whatever your purpose is for creating a blog, it is always good to start it right. As I have been through this path, dug deep, been there and back again, here are my recommended 5 steps to creating a great blog. I have also included a free downloadable Blog Planning Blueprint for you to help you plan for next blog post.

Before you start, it is crucial that you understand your own topic. When I say understand, it means that you know your topic from inside out… The depth of the concept or evolution of the topic from its past to current, from what is happening behind the scenes to its grand finale displayed on everyone’s screen or tablet. Understanding your topic by researching more information helps you strategise content while helping you gather the ‘bricks of concepts’ of the topic. This in turn gives you a clear intention or direction of what your purpose is in writing this blog.

Many people are caught with this: Information versus Concept. When you have the information, that does not mean you understand the concept hidden behind it. Now, let me break it down for you:

Concepts are plans or intentions of ‘why’ you want to write this blog and what do you hope to achieve.

Information are steps given or illustrated examples given to help readers learn and understand your content within your blog with the hope that these information will benefit them.

So for example, let’s say I’m going to write a blog on ‘Life Of A Travelling Girl-boss’…

My concept or plan for this blog is to inspire more ladies to pursue after their passion, to prove that ladies can travel solo, and hope to inspire more ladies to put on their entrepreneurial hat while showing them how travel can also bring forth life changing experiences and inspirations that I too have gained from travelling around the globe. 

Next, I will provide a guide with information that I have gathered through my real life experiences, broken down into steps which they can easily comprehend and follow. Information may include things like:

1. How I found my passion
2. The Advantages of Solo Female Travel
3. My Voyage – The Journey Of My Entrepreneur Soul

This is the foundation I’ve always used when building my blog and I’ve found that it really helps me a lot when brainstorming for ideas and crafting my new blog outlines. And of course, though I do not necessary use all the data I’ve gathered, I have to say I really learned quite a lot from each piece of my work.

Having a title that hooks leaves readers curious with that little urge of intrigue to find out more.

Not only do you want to make sure that your title is addictive or ‘hooking’, you also want to make sure you let people know what your blog is about. If you give a vague title or a title that does not specify what your blog is really about or worse still, not even in the dimmest related to your blog, people will just turn away.

Why is it so? Let me explain.

A simple question to ask yourself. Why do people come to your blog or why do people visit a blog page in the first place? The answer is simple. These people are looking for something… That something can be either a solution to a problem they are facing or an advice to assist them in achieving certain things that’s boggling their mind or maybe even an answer to complete an urgent project.

Simply put, people visit blogs for a purpose and to look for something they need.

So, it is really important that you incorporate ‘about’ into your title, letting readers know what your blog is about or what they will get from visiting your blog.

For example, let’s say I’m writing a blog to entail the entrepreneurial life and achievement of a self-made girl-boss who had built an empire with incredible success, overcoming uncountable roughs, obstacles and negative events in her life till finally, achieving her life’s goals.

I would not want to simply name my blog ‘Girl-boss’. Yes, it is all about a Girl-boss and her life’s story. But the word ‘Girl-boss’ is already everywhere online and it is too vague. I want to project a title so people would know why my Girl-boss story is so different from others. So, I want to name it something like ‘The Girl-boss’s Attitude Towards Success’, ‘The Ingredients To Becoming A Girl-boss’ or ‘The Ultimate Truth To Living A Girl-boss Lifestyle’.

This way, readers get an idea of what my content is about and what will be their takeaway after reading.

Besides title, headlines play an important role as well. As I have mentioned above, people visit your blog for a purpose. Therefore, to attract people’s intrigue to ‘click in’ for a visit, your blog should have an incentive or takeaway for them. A catchy headline does the trick. 

A distinct ‘incentive’ or ‘takeaway’ description as a headline adds value to your blog. A reader may not be so interested in your title. But given a catchy or attractive headline, it gives the reader a second consideration to click into your blog, especially if the headline clearly touches them on something they need.

A headline should appear before or after your blog title in clear readable fonts.

Take mine for example, right below my title “5 Steps To Creating A Great Blog” is my headline ‘The Essentials To Make Your Blog Grow’. The reason I came up with this headline is because I want my readers to know that in this blog, my content focuses on the important elements that will not only help you create a great blog but also help your blog growth in spurring more attention.

So, the takeaways? Besides understanding how the 5 steps written here work, readers will also gain an insight on how these 5 steps can have an impact on their blog’s future, getting them more attention and ultimately resulting in blog growth.

As I have mentioned earlier, people visit blogs for a reason. Your blog should be a place of advice and solution. Meaning, it has to be able to solve a problem to which people are looking up. By creating actionable content, not only will you help people who visit your blogs, it will also makes your blogs stands out amongst others. You are also likely to secure like minded folks out there or even a loyal social-media follower and subscriber as well.

With the vast expanse of data and meta-search engines all over the internet, any information can be easily found online with a click. The blogging trend actually started many years back and some or most of the information therein may already be out of date and non-actionable in the present world. Blogging in today’s world has greatly evolved from the past. It’s more than writing a piece of personal story or about how nice the slice of pizza you recently had tasted. Blogging today is all about sharing constructive advise and solutions openly to the world. 

Thus, today’s blogging content should focus on ‘HOW to’ instead of ‘WHAT to’. The process of writing ‘HOW to’ turns your blog into an actionable blog. Knowing ‘what to’ do does not necessary mean that you know ‘how’ to do. Hence, you should show it visually.

Example 1: Crocheting a scarf. 

Instead of writing long descriptions on the tedious crochet steps to construct the featured scarf and patterns, which may lead to confusion, I will do a video tutorial instead to clearly show how I construct the scarf. Written descriptions are still provided especially for the intermediate and advanced users. However, the video tutorial gives a stronger hand to helping people understand quickly and witness the construction process visually.

Example 2: Keyword search on Google’s Keyword Planner.

Instead of me telling you to just look for your desired keyword on Google’s Keyword Planner, which you may have already heard of but do not know how to use it yet, I will share screenshots in a step-by-step guide to lead you through the keyword search process.

So, by creating ‘HOW to’ content, readers are more likely to continue reading your blog and return to your blog in the future should they need further resources.

After you get your blog published, you definitely would want it to reach as many people as possible demographically. The one and only best way is to make search engines your best friend. Honestly, without this best friend, you will hardly get noticed anywhere.

Search Engine Optimization, in short SEO is responsible for driving the quantity and quality of web traffic to your website or blog through ‘organic’ meta-search engine results. SEO, if used correctly, will also boost your post rankings higher in search engines bringing more organic traffic that will result in more potential blog followers and subscribers.

Thus, whenever you start a blog, remember to insert some related keywords into the content and here are the best places where you can put them:

1. Blog title
2. Blog headlines 
3. Blog post URL
4. Within your blog content
5. Image file names
6. Alternate text images

Giving your blog a SEO makeover is not difficult at all. For starters, you may find it a tedious hassle or just simply troublesome. But trust me, SEO is something that will eventually come to you naturally the minute you start clicking your keyboard away. This effort will not go to waste as it will certainly help you generate more traffic from all the search engines out there online.

I truly hope that this blog has added value to your writing life and given some insights that will help you in your renewed writing journey.

If you have just written new blogs based on these key elements, do drop me a line in the comment below so that I can ‘stalk’ you. =) 

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