Whether you are blogging to promote your business or as a hobby, you must already know what an intimidating process writing a blog post can be. A blog post is more than just a medium to get information across, it is also a marketing tool that is building your brand’s image in the mind of your reader. Therefore, it is crucial that you not only come up with great content but also present it in a captivating way on your blog.
Good ideas no longer suffice to capture an audience. If your ideas are fresh, creative and disruptive but are draped in drab clothing, no one will take a second look.
To create an outstanding blog post, you need to focus on two main aspects: the visuals and the content. Fortunately, there are ways to crack both and make your blog post instantly stand out in the eyes of a busy internet user.
How to Create Exceptional Blog Posts
Using captivating visuals
First things first: your blog visuals need to look like a million bucks if you want people to stay and actually read your content. What good is great content if no one wants to look at it? The reader is more likely to read on if the visuals are professional-looking, creative and attention-grabbing.
Don’t worry, you don’t need to hire a graphic designer to beautify your content, neither do you need any specialized tools for it. In fact, you don’t need any design skills at all! A free online editor, PosterMyWall, offers a drag and drop interface that is super easy to use, even for design amateurs. With over 145,000+ ready-made templates, you can use PosterMyWall to make your blog come to life!
Here are some blog graphics you should definitely consider adding:
Blog headers
Make a compelling first impression by using a unique blog header, customized for your blog’s theme. The blog header sets the tone for the blog post and hints at the expertise of the blogger. The reader is much more likely to scroll down if they see a personalized touch in the header than if they spot a stock image being used as a header. You can find customizable blog header templates on PosterMyWall. Play around with the text, fonts, colors, and other elements until you achieve the perfect design for your blog.
Infographics
No one has the time to scan through a lot of text to find information that is relevant to them. Summarize your points nicely in one of these eye-catching infographic templates to make sure the reader misses nothing important.
Videos
If a picture speaks a thousand words, imagine the power a video can hold. Visual Narrative did the math: one minute is about 1.8 million words! According to Oberlo.com, 54% of consumers want to see more video content from brands and businesses they support.
So hop on this trend and start using videos on your blog. With PosterMyWall, it is surprisingly easy. Create personalized videos by customizing the innumerable video templates that are available for a huge variety of themes.
You can also animate your content with relevant gifs, and maybe the occasional meme, to keep the reader engaged. Simply customize and download any video template on PosterMyWall in GIF format.
Screenshots
Use annotated screenshots to convey your message very clearly to the reader. You can do that easily by using clipart in PosterMyWall’s editor as shown in the image.
So far so good! If you follow these suggestions, you will be successful in getting the reader’s attention. But the attention span of an Internet user is fleeting – the next and arguably more difficult step is retaining their interest. To do this, you must make the content of the blog post remarkable. Let’s see how you can do that.
Making content extraordinary
Come up with a great title
The reader absolutely will judge the book by it’s cover. The title has to make the reader want to click on it and see what the blog has to offer. This does not mean writing clickbait titles – that is a death sentence for your blog, especially if you don’t have sensational content to back them up. It means keeping it direct and concise but not dry so the reader knows exactly what they are getting into without feeling like they have been tricked for clicks. Here’s an example:
Create useful content
Content is supreme in a blog post. It has to be interesting, engaging, insightful and many other adjectives. Most importantly though, it has to be original and useful.
If you are churning out the same content as every other blogger, you are not giving the reader a reason to read your blog. Don’t be boring – find an interesting and niche category that no one else is writing about, or find a new way to write about old topics. It is important to keep your approach fresh.
But at the same time, you should write about topics people want to find out more about. A commentary on the difference between a chipmunk and a gopher might be niche (too niche, if you ask us) but if it serves no purpose to your audience, it’s pointless.
We are not saying constantly coming up with ideas for content is in any way easy but there are ways to streamline this exercise by developing a personal process for efficient blog creation.
Make your content credible
There’s a lot of information on the internet and not all of it is trustworthy. Use statistics and quotations from authorities on the topic at hand so that readers find it easier to trust the information you are providing them. Don’t forget to properly cite your sources! An easy way to do this is to add a hyperlink to your text and make it clickable.
Make your content visible
You are fighting for space on the search engine results page with thousands of other blogs – it’s time to get serious about this game. Optimize your content for visibility by using Search Engine Optimization tools like Moz.
Ranking for the right keywords can make or break your blog’s success. Moz Pro’s Keyword Explorer makes it easier for you to discover and prioritize the best keywords that are most searched for by Internet users. By incorporating these keywords into your content where suitable, you are making it easy for search engines to index and rank your content – and making it easy for your readers to find you.
Make your content error-free
On top of everything else, your content has to be clean, concise and grammatically correct to a fault. If you make careless mistakes, people are likely to lose interest because they no longer consider you as an expert. This means constantly reviewing and re-reviewing all your content before publishing to ensure there are no mistakes.
Sounds tough? Grammarly makes it easier. It is one of the most efficient proofing and spellcheck tools available. You can sign up for its free account to enjoy some of its features like grammar checking, contextual spell checking, and vocabulary enhancement.
It also has a premium and business offering that checks for issues like plagiarism, unnatural language structure, difficulty in reading, among other things.
Conclusion
There you go! Your perfect blog post is ready in just a few simple steps. Remember that you want to produce content that is exceptional and easy for your readers to consume – you don’t want them to be confused or overwhelmed but most of all, you don’t want them to be bored.
Armed with these blogging tips and tricks, it is time to put your skills to test. If you hit a slump, remember that learning this skill is a rocky road, one that all great bloggers have traveled, but if you make these tips essentials in your blogging toolkit, you will soon take the blogging world by storm.