One of the biggest challenges you face as a new blogger is one of learning how to create content for a blog that people want to read. There’s a lot of content clutter already floating around out there in cyberspace. Consequently, you do have to puzzle out ways to stand out from the crowd.
Early on, you may spend a little too much time staring at a blank screen with nothing but a blinking cursor. But you don’t have to remain stuck there. You’ll quickly become “unstuck” when you shift your focus to what your target audience is trying to achieve.
We know that Internet users conduct billions of searches a day, right?
So, why not use that knowledge to define a robust content marketing strategy? Our blogging mission is to hone in on the specific queries being typed into search boxes by the folks in our niche. Content marketing is consumer-centric and focuses on adding value and building rapport with useful information.
Let’s jump in and describe some helpful tips for creating super content on your blog, shall we?
Searchers Have Questions We Need to Pinpoint
Successful bloggers rely on first anticipating the informational needs of a core group of people and then filling those needs. Our audience may be looking for broad question and answer type posts, how-to tutorials and guides, or product reviews.
Nothing is more powerful than the ability to empathize with your target market. The secret is to get inside a prospective reader’s head and figure out just exactly what they’re seeking. From there, you can research the topic and deliver stellar answers to your searchers’ questions.
So, how do we pinpoint the burning questions?
There are several ways that we can approach ferreting out the right questions. Here are a few suggestions to get you started down the right path:
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Choose a Topic You Love
Blogging about your passions and obsessions makes infinite good sense because you’re personally immersed in the details of the activity. If you’ve been an avid participant for a while, you can share your acquired knowledge, triumphs, or missteps.
New to the pursuit?
That works well also because you have endless questions and a thirst for knowledge. Be the trailblazer, forage for facts and answers, and then disseminate all the fascinating stuff you learn through engaging posts on your blog. Readers will soak up useful tips while you find your content growing and your followers expanding.
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Join a Forum Like Quora or Reddit
Forums are just giant Q & A sessions. If you lurk in the background, you’ll get tons of insights around pressing issues and problems that folks are dealing with in your niche. As you read answers to questions, I bet you’ll often feel like you could provide a better response.
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Locate Books on the Subject Matter of Your Blog
A good book about anything frequently contains dozens of chapters and may address multiple concerns within each individual section. In other words, a book can represent an idea factory where article topics will leap off the page. Perhaps you can provide step-by-step solutions where the book is high level or very conceptual.
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Let Someone Else Inspire You
I can totally relate to the quote above and find it so very relevant for content creators. No matter the niche you’ve chosen, there are lots of competitors already out there in the blogosphere. And, that’s okay! You need to find your own voice and express your own opinions.
But, please do find some of the leading and influential blogs within your field and commit to following them. This practice will help keep you abreast of current events and allow you to address similar issues from a different angle. And, don’t ignore the comment section.
If the competition’s readers have follow-up questions that weren’t addressed, there may be an informational void that you can fill on your blog. Just something to consider!
Do Your Keyword Research
A keyword is nothing more than a query entered into a search box on Google or another search engine. In other words, keywords are the questions that people are asking that we want to answer on our blog. As you follow the 4 tips detailed above for identifying questions that searchers are asking, you’ll uncover tons of ideas.
The next step is to enter the accumulated ideas into a keyword research tool to learn some all-important stats. The thing is that people phrase their questions in different ways and some search terms are longer and far more specific than others. We refer to the longer phrases as long-tail keywords.
I use Jaaxy to find my stats, but many other keyword research tools will perform the same function. Your objective is to find a long-tail keyword that searchers are regularly using each month and that doesn’t yet have a lot of competition. You can then use that exact phrase as your focus keyword in a compelling article.
Low-competition keyword phrases are far easier to rank for in the search engines. As your rankings improve, Google will start to send free organic traffic to your blog. When viewers find engaging and comprehensive content, they are likely to bookmark your site and return.
Rinse and repeat that process over time, and your traffic will start to snowball. Do remember that the title of your article functions as an invitation to readers. Hence, we want to make sure it includes our targeted keyword, but it’s equally important to enhance your keyword and ensure your headline is more enticing than similar choices in the SERPs.
Anticipate Follow-Up Needs of Searchers
Once you’ve found a few seed questions, developing new skills around how to create content for a blog becomes steadily easier, That’s true because each new piece of information your readers discover leads to ancillary questions. So, in most situations, you will want to create a series of posts.
We can often anticipate the next logical step in the process, and that anticipation leads to filling your editorial calendar. To clarify, I’ll use my blog as an example. I help people interested in making money online to supplement their income, and my favorite formula is affiliate marketing.
Initially, readers need to understand what affiliate marketing is, how it works, and that it’s a legitimate business model. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Once people grasp the basics and realize that affiliate marketing is something they can actually do, the questions start coming fast and furiously.
Immediately folks want to know the next steps like how to select an affiliate marketing niche, how to start a blog, the best place to host a blog, where they can get affiliate marketing and SEO training, how to create content, and so on. I could keep going, but you get the picture, right?
Once you decide to help people in their pursuit of information and solutions to problems, ongoing needs tend to balloon. Our ideal is to create a one-stop shop where people keep returning for the next segment until one day we have a blog that sees a steady stream of visitors.
I’m not going to pull any punches here. Nurturing traffic with a comprehensive content marketing strategy requires some significant “butt-in-the-chair” time. You need to write consistently and with purpose but it’s also rewarding on many levels.
Don’t Give Readers a Reason to Bail
As a final caveat, most readers arrive at your site with particular problems that they’re seeking to resolve. If you can’t deliver a solution, they’re unlikely to stick around. So, make sure your content is comprehensive and on point, But, just to make things a little more challenging, you also have to make it enjoyable and easy to read.
You see, searchers demand a positive user experience. Therefore, as you create content, it’s critical that you format text in ways that are easily digestible and scannable with subheadings and short paragraphs. Don’t intimidate people with walls of text and don’t forget the pictures.
We loved picture books as kids, and most of us haven’t changed all that much. Okay, so that might be a bit of an exaggeration. 🙂 But images do add visual appeal, and they break up a long article making it seem far less intense.
We have seconds to make an excellent first impression when visitors arrive at the doorstep of our blog. So. put your best foot forward!
Summing Up
Learning how to create content for a blog that attracts an interested audience is a process that’s not always easy at first. But, like most things, content creation improves dramatically with practice. The key is to find something you relish writing about. If you enjoy the process and the journey, readers will recognize your enthusiasm and trust your intent.
Blog on and build your authority one post at a time!
Over to You
Do you have a content writing tip to share? Please dive right into the comments below.
Like It? Please Share It!
Thanks for writing this article on how to create content for a blog, I must say I am really impressed with all I read in this article. I am in the process of creating my first blog post and am having some problems with it because I don’t want to create poor content that people will not like or find useful. Because that is what makes many new bloggers quit. I find this article useful and am going to use this to help with every part of my first website.
Being new to blogging, I don’t know enough about keywords yet. I see that you use Jaaxy to do research. Is this a tool that you would recommend for people just getting started?
Hi Afolabi,
Congratulations on taking steps to create your first blog post. What an exciting time for any new blogger. Of course, I also know it can feel a little scary 🙂 But, I’m sure you’ll do fine if you focus on helping people. I suggest you dive right in because as with most things your writing will improve with experience. Here’s something else to keep in mind. Just because you’ve published a blog post doesn’t mean you can’t go back and improve it later. Updates are easy.
As for your question about Jaaxy, yes it’s perfect for newbies. The tool is intuitive, easy to use, and can provide you with an invaluable competitive edge. New users can experiment with 30 free keyword trials with no obligation to purchase a membership, so you really owe it to yourself to check it out. You don’t need a credit card and it won’t cost you a dime, so there’s no need to take my word for it.
Thanks for commenting and I wish you every success!
Hey Linda,
I’ve really enjoyed reading this article as you’ve provided us with lots of valuable information. From my perspective, I tend to think that the number one priority is to do the necessary Keyword Research. Interesting titles and headers is what catches the eye of the audience. As a blogger, you need to pull your audience into the blog. One must learn to acquire this skill and it can only be learnt by constantly exposing yourself to Keyword Research.
Thanks a lot for taking your precious time in writing this detailed blog post. Keep up the good work Linda!
Hi AV,
Yes, you’re absolutely right. SEO all hinges around performing proper keyword research. We want to attract the folks in our niche who are “Googling” stuff by typing in queries (aka keywords). It’s true that keyword research is a skill but one that you can definitely learn. Wealthy Affiliate offers excellent training and webinars on the subject.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts!
Hi, I just joined affiliate marketing not too long ago and I’ve been trying to build my website to a certain standard. Initially I had a little problem about my niche which I’m still working on. Thank you for this site because I am yet to create my first blog, I believe this will serve as a guide to that.
Hi Destiny,
I’m thrilled to learn you’ve decided to try your hand at affiliate marketing. I’ve found it to be an excellent way to challenge myself and to supplement income. That said, most people need some training to get started and it’s very helpful to belong to a community of people where you can ask questions and get answers.
I strongly recommend that you at least try out a free Starter Membership at Wealthy Affiliate. If nothing else, they will help you get your niche sorted out.
Good luck with your venture!
Hi Linda,
This is a great write-up, and I like the way you communicate your idea. Writing contents for blogs is a big deal for most bloggers, but your article has presented it very clearly to help many aspiring or new bloggers. I like the way you created simple steps explaining how to write good content for blogs and the way you incorporate links in between your article.
I’m pretty new to this, and I’m just starting to understand keywords a little better. I feel like my next step is learning to write better headlines that stand out and make people curious. Do you have a tool that you can recommend for writing better blog post titles?
Thank you for your great effort.
Hi Bolaji,
Thanks for the kind words. Yes, I do have a tool that I can recommend that’s very helpful for creating more clickable blog headlines. You want to use your target keyword in your title but you should expand upon it. I use a free tool called Headline Analyzer that helps you find a good balance of emotional and power words that create interest.
Here’s a link to a post I wrote on how to write headlines that engage. I hope it helps and I wish you luck as you move forward!
Linda, you filled my head with some great ideas in the post. As a fellow blogger and internet marketer. I found you bring very valuable points on the mindset folks should use while creating content. It does that time and practice to become good within a niche. Whether you are learning as you go or creating content from experiences.
The key to sharing your background knowledge with others becomes valuable when people are looking for information. The days of grabbing a book at the library are not totally gone. Our internet and the world web along with things like YouTube has changed the way we obtain information.
People “Bail” in my opinion because our society has changed so much so fast we have become lazy and creatures of habit. If we are not comfortable, we revert back to what makes us comfortable. Then we bail on what could become a successful journey.
As a former member of the corporate world, do you feel people are relying more on education or experience?
I only ask because I have been finding more people succeeding online blogging with less education and more experience. I don’t mean they are stupid or undereducated. I see they have lost jobs due to their lack of a college diploma.
However, thousands of more successful people have never been to college. They have just learned a business or profession while gaining experience.
Hi Ken,
Your question as to whether bloggers rely more heavily on education or life experiences is an intriguing one that I had never given much thought to before. I suspect it may depend on the niche and how technical the subject matter is. But truthfully, the majority of bloggers probably rely on hands-on experience or perhaps very focused training programs rather than formal degree programs.
As you’ve stated, many people achieve success without ever attending college. Anyone can become a blogger if they have the willingness and ability to perform research and communicate with fellow enthusiasts within their niche.
I see you’ve chosen the Internet marketing path yourself. I wish you great success in your efforts and I appreciate your comments!