How To Write A Brilliant Blog Post (Free Full Guide)

Today, I’ll teach you everything you need to know about how to write a blog post that serves readers with the best content on the web. What gives me the courage to make such a bold remark? Excellent question!

Here’s what: I’ve been blogging and freelance writing for over 10 years. I’ve failed countless times, but I have also succeeded a few times in writing blog posts that have attracted hundreds of thousands of readers.

Much like Thomas Edison, excluding the genius IQ, I have written thousands of articles in my time and figured out the components of evergreen content.

PS: Evergreen content refers to content that will always be relevant, useful, and qualitative.

With the rise of AI, we are on the verge of demanding original, compelling, and human-inspired content. Also, let me say this emphatically: Blogging is not dead!

However, to overcome the obstacles of algorithm updates and AI, we need a compelling reason to be bloggers.

That’s where artistic integrity comes into play.

Let’s be the ones who honor artistic integrity and create original blog posts that are the product of thought, research, experience, and hard work.

I believe that our desire to create art and evergreen content will spur us on when the results from action are still invisible and uncertain.

With that being said, here’s everything I know about writing blog posts.

1. Understanding Your Audience

Identifying Your Target Audience

One of the fundamental principles in sales is to sell what people want. The same can be said for writing content. Study the market or reader to find out what they want. In a more general sense, every reader wants to read a blog post that serves one of the following purposes:

1. To provide an opinion.
2. To give an update on current affairs.
3. To follow instructions.
4. To troubleshoot a problem.
5. To gather research about a specific topic or problem.
6. To be entertained.

The blog post will be structured according to the search intent and the reader’s interest. A quick and easy way to conduct this research is to browse through the first page of Google for a specific topic and read through some of the top results.

You will find blog posts, videos, and forums that can be used to determine what a blog post requires to be relevant and useful to specific readers.

Also, this is a good way to identify gaps in the search results that you can fill with something unique.

2. Choosing the Right Topic

Brainstorming Techniques

Some of the best ways to research and brainstorm ideas include mind mapping, free writing, and topic clustering.

Follow the 5-wives-and-1-husband method of developing detailed ideas: “why, what, when, who, where, and how.”

Utilize AI and create a prompt that provides 5 to 10 topics on a specific subject for you to write about.

Lastly, just place yourself in the shoes of a reader and ask yourself what interests you about a specific subject.

If that fails, use Semrush or Google’s Keyword Planner to find clusters of topics to write about based on several metrics like search volume and competition.

I like to spend a lot of time on forums like Reddit and Quora to gauge what people are interested in. You may also find differing opinions and results, which can be used to illustrate the depth and diversity of your research.

With most informational-based content, the underlying goal is to create content that remains relevant for years to come. Deep research backed by anecdotal or tested evidence will only strengthen the claims you make in your content.

3. Crafting a Compelling Headline

For a headline to be compelling, it must be intriguing, relevant, and relatable. Most headlines possess some degree of shock value, question, statement, opinion, or statistic to entice readers to click on them.

Types of headlines

4. Structuring Your Blog Post

The Introduction

When writing an introduction, I try to include the following 3 components:

1. Hook: Begin with a compelling fact, statistic, or quote about the importance of the topic. You may also start with a question or a relevant problem that would be solved within the article.
2. Purpose: Make promises about what your blog post will deliver and how it will satisfy a user’s search intent.
3. Overview: Briefly mention the key points covered in your blog post.

There isn’t a hard or fast rule when it comes to introductions, but if you can include all 3 components, you should be able to craft an introduction that reads well to users and search engines.

The following article published by Hubspot is the perfect example illustrating how to write a compelling introduction using the hook, promise, and overview formula:

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing

The Main Body

The body of an article serves as a detailed expansion of the introduction. It should include sections, lists, explanations, subheadings, images, and/or videos.

I structure my introductions as an advertisement for what the body contains.

A strong main body answers any relevant questions that may stem from the topic and focuses more on delivering the core message than on enticing readers to do anything.

The Conclusion

A good conclusion includes a summary of the key points with a call to action.

If readers have made it to this point of the article, they often exhibit signs of investment and openness to interact with the writer’s requests.

Generally speaking, I like to ask questions that encourage engagement in the comment section.

But if the topic is interesting enough, readers will naturally be inclined to share their thoughts, opinions, or questions.

You could also use the conclusion to market a product or service relevant to the reader since you’ve established some authority and trust in the article.

5. Writing with Clarity and Style

The tone and style of your writing will be dependent on the topic and audience. By identifying the primary audience and researching the top results of the topic, you will most certainly be able to choose or adapt your style appropriately.

Might I add that maintaining some degree of personality in your work is always a good idea? Objectively speaking, this is what separates man from machine.

And if you have any desire to create or foster a personal connection or relationship with your audience, personality is paramount.

Here are a few key elements of how to write a blog post with clarity and style:

1. Maintaining a Conversational Tone
   • Write as if you are speaking directly to the reader. 
   • Avoid jargon and overly complex language when the target audience isn’t searching for academic content.
2. Utilizing Storytelling Techniques
   • Engage readers with anecdotes and relatable stories.
   • Begin with a bold claim and overdeliver with the body.
   • Insert personal opinions, jokes, questions, and findings sporadically to engage the reader.
3. Keeping It Concise and Focused
   • Stick to the main points as much as possible.
   • Make the objective or core message abundantly clear.
   • Avoid unnecessary fluff.

6. Enhancing SEO

SEO is crucial for any website/blog owner; however, I would be lying to you if I claimed that SEO isn’t unpredictable and downright chaotic when you least expect it to be.

In 2024, what remains relevant within this space can be found below:

A. Keyword Optimization

• Search terms can be categorized by volume, difficulty, and type. Every article should have a primary search term and secondary keywords related to the primary search term.
• Optimize meta descriptions, titles, and headers to appropriately reflect the search term. Avoid oversaturation of your search terms, as this is no longer necessary.

B. Internal and External Links

• Link to relevant internal content and credible external sources to improve the trustworthiness, authority, and relevance of your content.

C. Image Optimization

• Use descriptive filenames and alt text for images. These descriptions and alt texts should have some relevancy to the primary search term. Avoid keyword-stuffing images.

7. Adding Visual Appeal

Please don’t be like me and neglect visual media. Very few people prefer to read large chunks of text unless it’s a book. My advice would be to insert useful, original, and themed media into your content.

Consider the following:

A. Choosing Relevant Images

• Use high-quality, relevant images that enhance the content. If you can shoot real-life pictures by yourself, please do so because those add a lot of value with respect to authority.

B. Designing Custom Graphics

• Utilize tools like Canva to create unique visuals that lend explanation and depth to the content.

C. Formatting for Readability

• Use white space, short paragraphs, and clear fonts. Place yourself in the eyes of the reader and consider how the article flows. Is it enjoyable, understandable, and attractive? If not, edit and adjust until it is.

D. Create audio or videos

• You may be writing a blog post but include the seeing impaired by recording audio transcripts for them to listen to. Similarly, video illustrations with subtitles can be of great benefit to those who are hearing impaired. It’s also a phenomenal way to display yourself as the face of your brand and to build a connection with your audience.

8. Editing and Proofreading

Poorly formatted content will rub your readers the wrong way. Worst of all, it may sabotage your rankings on search engines. Here are a few guidelines to follow when editing and proofreading blog posts: 

A. Self-Editing Tips

• Read aloud to catch errors.
• Use tools like Grammarly to check grammar and spelling.
• Run your content through an AI with a prompt that suggests optimizing it for readability.

B. Peer Review

• Get feedback from a colleague or friend.
• Cross-reference facts against studies and journal articles.

C. Final Proofread

• Do a final read-through before publishing.
• Remove unnecessary blocks of content, simplify explanations, elaborate on ambiguous ideas, and highlight key facts.

9. Promoting Your Blog Post

If you’re starting a new blog, gaining readers will require active promotion until you’ve built a large enough audience to spread your content. It also takes many months to gain organic visitors from search engines, and social activity is arguably a ranking factor worth exploring.

A. Sharing on Social Media

• Utilize platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Tap into your friends and family to create some momentum on your blog.
• Seek out forums like Reddit and Quora to answer questions and redirect people to your blog organically and sincerely. Please do not spam or overadvertise your content on these sites/apps, as it is frowned upon.
• If you have a budget, consider advertising on social media to attract readers and followers.

B. Engaging with Your Audience

• Respond to comments and questions to build relationships.
• Offer free advice or content to people interested in subscribing to a newsletter.
• Ask readers to suggest content that they would like for you to cover.

C. Email Marketing

• Send the blog post to your email subscribers on a set schedule.
• Entice readers to subscribe to your newsletter by expanding on content from your blog.
• Let your newsletter be a way for readers to interact with you.

10. Analyzing Performance & Optimizing

Track views, engagement, and shares to determine whether your content is popular with readers. Determine characteristics of popular or unpopular content to guide you during the editing process for future content.

Utilize tools like Google Analytics, SemRush, Ahrefs, etc. Find out what articles rank well on search engines and reverse engineer the structure, style, and topic to create more content.

Conclusion

You’ve made it to the end of this guide and I’m greatly impressed by your commitment to blogging.

I won’t bore you with unnecessary details but I will emphasize the following:

• Follow the basic structure of a blog post: introduction, body, and conclusion.
• Conduct deep research on several sites, forums, videos, and books to determine what problems readers are experiencing and present all the solutions you can find.
• Write with purpose, personality, and pizzazz.
• Utilize media that elaborates or visually explains key points or messages in your blog post.
• Craft compelling headlines based on the different types illustrated above.
• Edit your content for readers and optimize for search engines.
• Promote your content on social media and observe the metrics to determine what works and what doesn’t work.

These are the key takeaways from this guide and I hope you’ve learned how to write a blog post that is brilliant and evergreen.

So tell me, what topics are you interested in blogging about?