What Makes a Killer Blog Post? – 5 Steps + Examples

This is just a quick little piece for LinkedIn summarising my experiences from the past years. I've written a ton of articles by now, and I'm not proud of all of them. But I'd dare say I'm getting a little better each month. This is my recipe for a blog post that ticks all the boxes and therefore gets shared, listed on Google and converts visitors to leads.

1. Offer Information Nobody Else Has Offered Before

This is probably more important than any other advice, in my opinion.

It usually means offering a unique perspective, including data from a study your team has conducted, interviewing an expert, partner or customer or including images you didn't just pull from Wikipedia or Unsplash.

It might be as simple as putting together the most extensive list of "CFO tools to use in 2020" and might go as far as interviewing a partner about their use case of your product. Some more ideas:

• Create new visual representations of known concepts (Neill Patel does this expertly - his articles are usually packed with screenshots and graphics)
• Put a new spin on an idea by adding your own practical experience, opinion, or examples from your day-to-day.
• Make your blog post the best resource out there by pulling information from numerous other sources and structuring them in a better way. This works best for niche topics, as there's often a lack of really high-quality content.

2. Longer Is Better – Unless...

Google seems to be rewarding longer articles (2k+ words). However, only write long articles if you have a lot to say! Word count should always be proportionate to value. Also, don't throw too many topics into one post (because Google won't get it, and neither will your readers)! Instead, write numerous shorter posts around a topic (each of them optimised for long-tail keywords) and one really long post (also known as a pillar page) touching on and linking to all sub-topics. Google loves that.

3. What's the Goal?

If your blog-post doesn't include any of the following items, it won't do sh*t for your business:

• links to product-pages or decision stage content
• CTAs
• a next logical step for the reader

Know what you want your blog post to do for you. Sure, informative content is great. But what would you like to happen after someone read (and loved!) your content? If the visitor is interested but it's not immediately obvious what their next step should be, they will probably leave your website and never return.

4. Align All Posts With Your Corporate Identity

Please be clear on the following before handing a topic to your writer:

1. How you want to address your readers (formal / informal, singular / plural)
2. What the tone of voice of your brand should be (friendly / professional / funny)
3. What your stance is on certain issues (e.g. if you sell HR-software, you should probably know how you feel about the trend towards part-time leadership positions if you write about "HR trends to watch in 2020")
4. Which keywords do you want to rank for and WHY? (Side note: I've seen the biggest success when my client has their own SEO-agency or SEO-expert on retainer to ask questions and set up a proper SEO-strategy. I think most copywriters don't have the tools available to do this for you, though some might.)

5. Give Your Copywriter a Fair Chance

First of all – don't hire the cheapest copywriter. Don't necessarily hire the most expensive one, either. But make sure you work with competent people who care about delivering good work. And maybe these writers don't hang out in Bali sipping coconut water offering a blog post for $50.

However, give your writers time to understand your company and the topics you'd like them to write about. This usually means that in the beginning, you'll need to spend some extra time on communicating with them.

Maybe give them a demo of your software and products, have them speak to the sales team (my favourite part of getting to know a new client!) and send them a couple of case studies to read up on.

I have one client who sends me YouTube videos of talks and lectures their team gives at different events. That kind of stuff is invaluable.

That's it. What do you think? What did I miss?