If you are new to blogging it can be a challenge coming up with topics, ideas and interesting material to write about. Here are 5 basic tips on how to write a blog post. Yeah I know, this is a blog about blogging, but why not? 

1. Basic Guidelines 

• Headlines should be concise and keyword rich. Get to the point already, what is your blog post about. 

• 1 idea per post. Stay focused on one idea, save multiple ideas for other blog posts or write a series.   

• Lists are great, how to’s are great, best of/worst of & reviews are also good attention grabbers. 

• 200-800 words. 

• Always use a photo, video or graphic. 

2. Identify your target audience. 

Know your audience and then tailor blog posts to what they want to know. 
Consider your ideal customer/client/buyer/visitor/reader. What kind of people visit your website, what are they looking for and how can you provide them with the resources they want? I’ve already authored a blog post about creating SEO friendly content. 

3. Use Keywords.

Identify the exact keywords people use to access your website. I use the Keyword Tool in Google AdWords for this. Understand which keywords have high search volume...and use those keywords again and again and again. Blog content that is rich in keywords will rank higher on search engines and help your blog get found in the mix. 

Oftentimes we find that the terms we use to describe our own business (i.e. Web development agency) are different from the terms our visitors might use to find us (i.e. website development firm). Knowing these simple variations is very important when creating content for your website. 

Link back to other blog posts and related content on your website. Also link to other websites and blog posts that your readers may find valuable. The best kept secret in blogging is that there are no secrets. Spread the good stuff you find by linking to it in your posts and hopefully others will link back to you too. 

Warning: Don’t add links for the sake of adding links, this will actually decrease your page rank in Google. Only add links that add value to your article. 

Post links to your blog posts on all of your social media accounts, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+. If your blog posts are primarily visual, Pinterest may be a good social media platform as well. 

After you’ve promoted your blog post on social media, track which posts perform best and write more blog posts in the same fashion. I use Crowdbooster to track my tweets and also schedule tweets when I am going out of town or for the weekends. Crowdbooster is free. 

For example, one our highest performing blogs is a Twitter design template. This tells us that our readers want downloadable resources. After realizing how popular this one was, we went on and made a Twitter cheat sheet download.

Now what is your next blog post going to be? Post an idea or a link to your blog below.