WHAT ARE THE COMPONENTS OF A GOOD BLOG POST?

Like the perfect Chardonnay, you need a few different components – especially butter!

At its core, a significant aspect of organic marketing stems from content marketing. The very basis of content marketing is to produce relevant, enticing content to engage both your existing audience and to attract new audience members. That being said, sometimes content marketing is easier said than done. 

Content marketing is more than posting your latest thirst trap or vacay pic to your Instagram. It should be well thought out and tailored to meet the needs of your audience. A significant aspect of content marketing for many brands includes blogging. 

Creating a blog offers your brand a unique platform to publish ongoing copy that can reach a variety of audiences both targeted and organically. That being said, the development of a blog and continued blog posts should not be taken lightly. There are critical aspects that should be included in each blog post to ensure that it is best optimized to entice your readers. Read on for 8 boxes that you should check off before publishing a blog post. 

HEADLINE 

Think of the headline of your blog article like your personal elevator pitch. You have a quick opportunity to make an impression on the person you’re talking to intending to spark their interest to learn more. The same goes for your blog headline. 

The goal of a headline is to interest readers to click it and read more. Your headline should give a reader an idea of what the article is about but be vague enough to make them wonder what more you have to say. 

Some easy ways to transform your title to catch attention from viewers include the following:

• Include a list (Top 5 tips for …, 8 ways to …, etc.)
• Ask a question (Why does …, Who are …, etc.)
• Make a guide (Beginners Guide to SEO)

COMPELLING LEAD 

In addition to needing an eyecatching heading to draw readers into your article, you also need a compelling lead. Your first paragraph should continue to entice your readers to continue throughout the entirety of your piece. The ultimate goal is for them to read as far through your article as possible before clicking out of it to a different site. If you start with a boring intro, they’re unlikely to stay on the page for very long. 

RELEVANT SUBHEADINGS 

Subheadings are helpful to break up and organize your writing for readers to more easily understand. On top of simplifying your text for a reader, they also help readers navigate your copy and boost the SEO of the article. 

Subheadings can be understood as a table of contents for your readers. Each subheading should be a threshold for a change in the topic in a given section of your writing. For example, if a reader is looking for information on former US President Barack Obama, they might reference an article that discusses all former presidents where each subheading is a different president. This example would enable your reader to easily find the segment of the article that they’re looking for. 

INFORMATIVE AND ENGAGING BODY 

Once you’ve identified your compelling headline, overall topic, and subheadings, your next step is to fill in. The body of a good blog post should be informative and answer the readers’ questions. In the example mentioned above, making sure to include general information about each of the presidents is important to meet your readers’ needs. 

While the body of your blog post should be informative and answer the questions and the needs that your readers have come looking for, it should continue to be engaging and compelling. The goal is for your reader to read through your post in its entirety. If your content is considered boring or fails to maintain their attention, there is little hope in doing so. 

APPEALING GRAPHICS 

The addition of graphics within your blog content has the power to make a significant impact on the amount of engagement your post receives. The incorporation of visuals increases a viewer’s desire to read content by 80%. 

Visuals can be incorporated in a variety of ways. Whether it be starting your article with a relevant header image, incorporating images throughout your copy, or creating a compatible infographic, being able to see visuals throughout a body of copy can help break up text for a reader to more easily digest. 

Visuals increase the desire to read content by 80%

CLEAR CALL TO ACTION 

Making sure that your blog post has a clear call to action is an essential aspect of a blog post. A call to action ensures that your reader understands what to do next. Whether it be signing up for a newsletter or webinar, accessing a downloadable file, or contacting the business, etc, your best opportunity to encourage them to follow through is to make your CTA as clear as possible. 

While many blogs wait to include CTAs until the end of an article, placing a link or button towards the beginning of your article may end up earning you more clicks. When readers view your article, they’ll first see your title and decide whether or not they want to keep reading. 

Then they’ll likely start from the beginning and read their way through the article. Many will stop reading half or partway through, never making it to the very end. For this reason, if your CTA is at the very bottom of your page, your readers might be missing it. 

Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users will scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold. 

RELEVANT LINKS 

The inclusion of relevant links is helpful to readers for multiple reasons. First, it can provide them with resources and sources to find additional information on the topic that your article covers. Second, backlinking supports SEO both for your site, and those that you’re linking to. 

Included links should include both internal and external links. Internal links are those that lead a reader to another page within your site. External links point your reader to an outside source such as if you were to site a quote or statistic that you found online. 

STRONG META DESCRIPTION

A meta description is the snippet of your article that Google uses as a preview. Writing a relevant meta description helps your blog post reach peak optimization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps search engines like Google determine which sites to show a searcher based on the correlation between their search and your content. 

While your site health, authority, keywords, etc. are largely responsible for which site pages will populate first in a Google search, your meta description is what is most likely to get them interested in reading your article. 

A meta description is best suited between 50-160 characters, which is the length at which they’re trimmed on a search engine results page (SERP). Like your compelling lead, mentioned above, your meta description should provide your readers with a brief overview of the information that you can expect out of your blog post while also enticing them to read on. 

The addition of a blog to your site can be instrumental in creating relevant content for existing customers and followers while also attracting new organic leads. Not only are blog posts excellent content for your internal site, but they serve as strong content to share with your diverse networks across all social platforms. 

Content marketing, including blogging, is at the core of successful organic marketing strategies. For more information or to get your business’s organic growth optimized, reach out to our team of experts at Digital Storyteller. 

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