Blog posts allow you and your business to publish insights, thoughts, and stories on your website about any topic. They can help you boost brand awareness, credibility, conversions, and revenue. Most importantly, they can help you drive traffic to your website.
But in order to begin making posts for a blog — you have to learn how to start one, first. Let’s dive in.
Understand your audience
Before you start writing your blog post, assure that you have a clear understanding of your target audience.
Ask questions like: What do they want to know about? What will resonate with them?
This is where the process of creating buyer personas comes in handy. Consider what you know about your buyer personas and their interests while you’re coming up with a topic for your blog post.
For instance, if you’re a storage unit Burnaby or storage unit Victoria facility, you want to create content about your facility and staff to build customer trust. If you’re a GA4 consultant or a Vancouver SEO agency, you want to create content about Google Analytics 4 or SEO tips to establish credibility and thought leadership.
Check out your competition
What better way to draw inspiration than to look at your well-established competition?
It’s worth taking a look at popular, highly reviewed blogs because their strategy and execution is what got them to grow in credibility. The purpose of doing this isn’t to copy these elements, but to gain better insight into what readers appreciate in a quality blog.
There are multiple angles you should look at when doing a competitive analysis:
- Visuals: Look at the blog’s branding, color palette, and theme.
- Copy: Analyze the tone and writing style of the competition to see what readers respond well to.
- Topics: See what subject matter their readers enjoy interacting with.
Determine what topics you’ll cover
Before you write anything, pick a topic you’d like to write about. The topic can be pretty general to start as you find your desired niche in blogging.
Some ways to choose topics to cover include asking yourself questions like:
- Who do I want to write to?
- How well do I understand this topic?
- Is this topic relevant?
Identify your unique angle
What perspective do you bring that makes you stand out from the crowd? This is key to determining the trajectory of your blog’s future and there’s many avenues to choose in the process.
- What unique experience makes you a trusted expert or thought leader on the topic?
- What problem will you solve for readers?
- Will you share your opinions on trending debates?
- Teach your readers how to do something?
- Compare or share original research?
- It’s up to you to decide the unique angle you’ll take on topics.
Customize the design of your blog
Once you have your domain name set up, customize the appearance of your blog to reflect the theme of the content you plan on creating and your brand.
For example, if you’re writing about sustainability and the environment, green might be a color to keep in mind while designing your blog.
If you already manage a website and are writing the first post for that existing website, ensure the article is consistent with the website in appearance and subject matter.
