Conquer Your Fear Of Blogging – 5 Steps To Writing A Share-Worthy Blog Post In Under An Hour
I can hear most of you shudder from here when you hear a certain four letter word – “blog”. You know you should be doing it, but you either don’t know what to write about or think that it’s “too hard” or “takes long to write a blog post.”
I get it, I really do.
Blogging is a lot easier than you think, especially if you have got some inspiration to get you going. That’s why I put together this example of how to write a post in under an hour. Numbered lists are popular for many reasons and work well for getting more engagement with your business .
Allow me to demonstrate how quick and easy it can be with 5 simple steps and an example.
Think of a topic you can create into a numbered list and pick your number.
I’m using “My favorite places to eat in Oklahoma City” as my topic and my number is 5. You can take it further to get even more focused, like “5 of the Best Places to Eat in OKC on a Budget” or “5 best places to get Tacos in Oklahoma City.”
Write down your items.
If you’re writing about local places or organizations, and they have a website or social media page, link to it. If your article is about something like “The 5 most common mistakes first time home buyers make”, then link to some articles or blog posts that support your point. A quick Google search for the name or information is all you should need.
Bonus SEO Tip: Make sure that the link to the other site is set to open in a New Window. This way your site doesn’t get lost if they click the link. Click here to learn how to do this on our platform.
Let’s take a look at my example:
Camilya’s Mediterranean Cafe
Bonjour
Ninhja Sushi
Empire Slice House
Fuzzy’s Tacos
Write a short paragraph after each of the numbered entries.
Two to four sentences should do fine. If you want to go longer, that’s good as well. There are no hard and fast rules! Here’s my example for Camilya’s:
Camiya’s Mediterranean Cafe – This hidden gem has some of the best Mediterranean food I’ve ever had, and I’ve had home-cooked food from little old Greek Yiayias. They make everything fresh and I haven’t ever had anything I didn’t absolutely love from there. I would suggest the falafel appetizer and lamb kabob sandwich with the hot mint tea. You can’t forget the homemade baklava!
Bonus Tip: Make the article skimmer friendly. Make your numbered points bold with the short paragraph in normal text.
Write a short intro to the post to draw the reader in.
Here’s my example:
One of my favorite things about Oklahoma City is how many amazing (and diverse) places we have hidden all over the city to eat. I don’t know about you, but I love a good meal. Here are some of the best kept (and not so well kept) secrets of the Oklahoma City restaurant scene.
Camiya’s Medditeranian Cafe – This hidden gem has some of the best Medditeranian food I’ve ever had, and I’ve had home cooked food from little old Greek Yiayias. They make everything fresh and I honestly haven’t ever had anything I didn’t absolutely love from there. I would suggest the falafel and lamb kabob sandwich with the hot mint tea. You can’t forget the homemade baklava!
Save what you’ve written as a draft.
I would wait a day or two and then go back and re-read it to check for spelling errors, etc. You can also have a colleague, friend, or family member read it over to check for similar errors before posting.
Editing and proofreading before you publish is a good idea because you want to draw your customers in, not jar them with a typo or missing word that leaves them guessing. There’s a reason you had that step in every English or writing class. It’s important!
(Optional, but recommended) – Use Canva or similar service to create a great graphic for your blog post.
Posts that have images that go with them get shared more across social media and are more noticed in people’s busy feeds. That’s why having an image to go with your blog post is important. It adds visual interest and can be a great opportunity for visual branding of your business.
If you look back through some of our past blog posts , you’ll notice that we use an image template and just change the text, color, and image, but the placement of everything and font is the same. This saves us time since we don’t have to recreate from scratch every time, and it keeps our brand visually cohesive.
Not sure where to get safe to use images? You can use freeforcommercialuse.net to find free-to-use commercially images for your posts and graphics. (Because we all know that stealing images from Google searches is bad and a nice way to get slapped down for copyright violations.)