Blogs are a fun way to connect with your audience because you can put the total weight of your brand’s personality in each post while providing your readers with helpful information about your products or services. Your website is your business’s home. When someone goes to your website I imagine them opening the front door to your house. You want visitors to be welcomed, make it easy for them to find what they need, and overall to enjoy their time with you. If your website is your home, then blogs are conversation starters. Follow along, I promise it will start to make more sense.

Your website is your business’s home. When someone goes to your website I imagine them opening the front door to your house. You want visitors to be welcomed, make it easy for them to find what they need, and overall to enjoy their time with you. If your website is your home, then blogs are conversation starters.

Blogs are the conversation between you and your (potential) customers. You want them to learn more about your brand with each blog they read while answering their questions (before they even ask them). That might be the most significant difference between blogs, and an actual conversation. Could you imagine sitting at the table eating and saying, “ I know what you’re going to ask me, so let me just tell you a bit about how I designed the house” that would be soo strange!  But, with blogs, this is precisely what you’re going to do. Without telling them that is. 

Let’s keep this example going with an example of how I write blogs for clients (and for myself)! 

Research is the first step in writing a blog

If blogs are comparable to conversations during a dinner party, then you need to take the time to get to know your guests. Again, the difference of writing blogs and talking to people in person, is that you don’t have the opportunity to ask your audience in real-time the questions that will help you write your blog. This is why you have to do some research before you start writing. 

When I am writing for a new business, especially a new industry, I take my time to research their industry, and brand and compare their ideal audience to their target audience to see if they match up. Of course, depending on the company’s size, they may have definitive data to give me to reduce my search time, but I always do some of my own research so I can better understand the audience for myself. 

On the other hand, if a company is just launching, or is really new, I will ask them what their ideal audience is and then I’ll conduct research on their industry, and see who their closest competitors are targeting. Of course, businesses might have a subgroup of the same target audience, but it gives me a good idea of the type of content that a similar demographic enjoys consuming.

From there, I conduct brand research to determine their unique selling point, how their products or services generally make their customers’ lives better, and to who their currently gaining attention, and practice replicating the brand’s voice. (This process is longer than it sounds here, but that’s a blog for another time)

This gives me a great launching point for all blogs moving forward with the client. If you’re just starting to write blogs (or, haven’t evaluated your target audience in a while) then I suggest you take these steps as well.

Brainstorm potential blog topics

This is probably the quickest part of the blog writing process. Based on the research I did above, I make a quick list of topics I think would be winners. This is where I pretend to be the target audience and consider what their problems are.

Now remember, I have a good idea of their life looks like day in and day out, what they like, and probably have seen some of their actual questions based on the research I did above on social media content, website engagement, and email marketing. With that in mind, I write a list of topics that would be applicable to their interests, the season of life they’re in, and also seasonal topics (such as fall, winter, spring, and summer). 

When I am brainstorming blog topics for retainer clients I try to start with a list of 10 ideas. 

Now, it’s time for a keyword deep-dive.

Searching for keywords

Using the list I created in the last step, I simply go to Google and start searching for exactly what I’ve written down. This is just a starting point to see how many people are searching for that phrase (or related phrases), and adding other related keywords that appear to my list. The goal here is to find keywords that are the most searched and are actually relevant to my topic. Great copywriting does NOT include clickbait. People need to get what they expect to receive when they click on the link for your blog.

While the process is fairly simple, it takes a while, and if you’re not careful you end up in a rabbit hole. I like to keep notes of my brainstormed list, and write down how many people are searching for each word. Then, I write down the “other people are also asking these questions” that Google populates. I use those suggestions to narrow down my keyword search for each topic. 

Sometimes, I find that I am on the right path and I just need to use different words than I originally searched (such as clothes instead of apparel). Other times, I am way off base and I need to reconsider my brainstormed topics and search for keywords for other topics.

The joy of research is

• creating a hypothesis (brainstormed list)
• testing them (keyword search)
• and trying again (new keywords/topics)
• or having a win (yay, definitive list of topics for clients to choose from)! 

Either way, this is one of my favorite parts of research – okay, I love all of it! *silent scream of excitement*

Create a list of blog topics for clients to choose

Once my clients choose their 4-5 topics for the month, I start researching specific topics. Again, I’ve already spent time conducting research on the brand and audience, so this research is topics-specific.

If I am well-versed in a topic then I follow these quick(er) steps:

• Visit my client’s website and read through the copy on a specific product/service I am going to highlight
• Visit my client’s social media to see the language they’ve used for specific product/service (it’s key to replicate the same messaging, and even use some of what they’ve already begun talking about on social media with their audience)

If I am not as familiar then I will these steps (with the possibility of further research):

• Start with the two items listed above
• Google search the topic to see what other people have written about (some of this tells me what people are looking for, and some of this research is so that I don’t replicate what others are saying, and make sure I do it better)
• Possibly visit Facebook groups for specific demographics that would read the blog; if I have access to my client’s social media messages, or emails then I will look at the questions that are being asked about a specific topic, etc. 

Depending on the topic, researching can take a while. When I am researching new medical terms or issues for my functional medicine clients, it takes longer to study compared to when I am writing for a children’s boutique. 

Now, we move into the creative part of writing blogs.

Draft one of the blog

This step is pretty self-explanatory. Now that I’ve taken 60-75% of my time researching, I can get started writing the first draft of the blog. While I am not going to take you through a step-by-step of how I write a blog, here are a few points to remember while write the blog draft, to make sure that you’re writing a blog people will enjoy reading, AND that will convert them into customers:

• Just write the draft, no editing allowed!
• Write the title and headers after you write the draft
• Always use Header 2 and Header 1 in your blog (this helps with search ranking)
• Use compelling hooks when you start a new section
• Rely on storytelling
• Don’t forget these copywriting techniques: provide the benefit to the customer in the first 1 or 2 sentences, write about the customer (not you), and end each section (especially the end of the blog) with clear call to actions (tell them what to do next). 
• Don’t forget to link to your services or products that are relevant to the blog post

If you have any questions about these bullet points then send me a message, and I am happy to answer them! 

I like to separate writing and editing so that I have fresh eyes and can easily fix grammatic issues and verify that I didn’t write gibberish.

During editing, I make sure I’ve added an appropriate number of keywords throughout the blog so it will populate in a search. Note that I don’t try to fit in a specific number of keywords per post, but the keywords do need to appear enough that google picks it up, particularly in the headers. Headers are a must for blogs to be picked up by search engines. 

Now it’s your turn (or, it’s time to hire me to write your blogs for you)

I can’t stress this enough, blogs are for all businesses! Let’s go back to my illustration above about blogs being conversation starters during your dinner party. If you don’t use blogs to connect with your audience by providing them with additional information about your products and services or to get to know you better, then it’s like sitting at a dinner party in silence. Your new friends know enough about you that they were willing to walk through the front door, but now that they’re in your house, you’ve gone radio silent.

Be the business that wants to engage with its audience in multiple ways using blogs, email marketing, and social media! You need it all because your audience wants it all. And, each medium has its own purpose. Connect with your audience on your website, and see your profits increase. 

Now that you see how long it takes to create blogs that are enjoyable for the readers and that will convert them, you may want to consider hiring me to write them for you. Let’s connect with your audience through detailed research and creative blogs that will make your audience come back over and over again, and increase their chance of purchasing.

Message me so we can put your blogs on my schedule. Don’t wait to regularly connect with your audience and start ranking higher on search engine results!