7 Things That Will Help You Write Better Blog Posts
We’ve been writing blog posts for a long time and have picked up quite a few tricks that have helped us write better blog posts along the way. The best news? It’s actually way less work than you might think.
1. Know your audience.
If you want to write a killer blog post, it helps to know who your audience is. This doesn’t just help you define your topic and the angle at which you’ll approach it, it also helps narrow down your tone, word choice, word count, and even the images you use. (Not sure who your audience is? Start by defining your niche.)
Too many people start by picking topics that they want to write about, and then promptly get frustrated when no one ends up reading their stuff. Sure, you should write what you love, but if you’re hoping to use your blog to build your platform and potentially earn revenue that means your audience’s preference matters too.
You don’t have to spend hours stressing about whether or not your audience will like a certain sentence, but — over time — you should develop a good sense of whether or not something will work.
2. Use analytics.
One of the best ways to get to know your audience and what they like is to use analytics. Google Analytics is free and easy-to-use, and it can totally transform your content strategy. Not only can you see how many people are reading your posts, you can also see how long they’re spending on a specific page (shorter duration = probably not reading it), which can tell you if you need to improve that post, headline, or something else entirely.
By seeing what’s popular on your blog, you can use that to learn how to improve your writing in the future. Maybe people respond more to personal stories versus listicles, maybe they want more content about self-care versus productivity.
3. Write a (better) outline.
Not everyone is a fan of in-depth outlining for blog posts, and we don’t blame you. It’s nice to let your writing flow in whatever direction it feels like going, but — when it comes to learning how to write better blog posts faster — outlines are an indispensable tool.
An easy way to get the most out of outlining? Next time you’re brainstorming content for your blog, jot down a few notes for what you think should go into the blog instead of stopping at the topic. If you know you’re going to write a blog post about X Tips for Coping With Professional Stress, go ahead and make a list of all the tips you can think of while your brain is on the subject.
Will you use all of the tips? Probably not. But this helps you jump into writing the actual post faster, and makes it easier for you to keep the flow of the article going.
4. Keep paragraphs short.
One of the biggest mistakes we see on blogs these days is longgggggg paragraphs. Why is that a problem?
Mobile web traffic is at an all-time high (over 50% of all web traffic happens on mobile), and that number keeps climbing. Long paragraphs not only impact SEO and readability, they simply don’t look great on a tiny mobile screen.
Think about the flow of your content, and remember that the visual element matters online just as much as the quality of your writing. You could be the best dang blog writer in the universe, but if your 1,000-word post is broken into 2 paragraphs then there’s a good chance people aren’t going to read it.
5. Prioritize readers over SEO.
When it comes to learning how to write better blog posts, SEO is a critical element. We won’t dive heavily into the details of SEO (we recommend checking out Moz if you need a refresher), but we will remind you not to spend all of your time catering to SEO instead of real people.
Yes, SEO matters, and becoming knowledgeable on the topic can be a HUGE boost to your website traffic. However, it’s important to remember that your target audience is made up of real people — not Google’s web crawlers — and you want to write with them in mind.
Plus, Google is actually getting better at finding quality content, which means readability is more important than ever.
6. Use section headers. (Seriously.)
We’ll admit, we spent a long time fighting the listicle. (Hello, this is a listicle, and we accept it.) We used to lean towards longer essay-style blog posts but quickly realized that they were way too monotonous to keep people’s attention online.
Using section headers in your blog posts can be a quick and easy way to improve the readability of your content. It helps to break up the text (short paragraphs are good, remember?) and allows you to pull out important things you want to highlight.
Even if you aren’t writing a listicle, try placing relevant section headers between paragraphs. Not great at figuring out where these headers should go? Our trick is to make certain sentences “pop” by making them a section header.
This helps keep the flow of the post moving while allowing visual breaks *and* improving the readability and SEO of my posts. Win-win!
7. Batch your content.
Jandra talks about batching a lot. It’s one of her favorite productivity tools, but it’s also a super useful hidden skill for bloggers and creatives. Why? Because context switching is your biggest enemy.
Think about your own personal blogging process. Hers used to be something like this:
Brainstorm a topic
Research + maybe write an outline
Start writing the post
Optimize for SEO + edit
Add images
Fiddle with formatting and prep to post
Hit “submit”
There’s nothing wrong with this process, and it worked pretty well. However, she realized that those first two steps were taking up a LOT of time.
Instead, batch these tasks together. If you’re brainstorming a topic for your blog, try brainstorming 10 ideas. If your brain is already in the ‘idea-generating’ mode, let it keep going. This means you only have to spend the time trying to get into ‘idea-generating mode’ once (let’s be honest, sometimes your brain needs to warm up) versus every single time you sit down to write a blog post.
The goal here is to reduce the amount of context switches your brain makes — jumping from one topic or type of task — so you eliminate the added time it takes for you to get your brain back on task.
Think about it this way: do you start writing the second you open a blank document? If you’re anything like us, it takes you a few minutes to get focused. When we context switch — whether that’s checking email or scrolling through Instagram — we reset that internal “get focused” countdown to zero, so we have to repeat the process. Every. Single. Time.
Batching cuts out those context switches so you reduce the number of “get focused” countdowns as much as possible. Instead of needing them for every blog post — and every interruption — if you write 3 blog posts at once, then you only need one.
Bonus Tip: Switch your font to Comic Sans.
This one’s straight from our founder, Jandra, and it’s a trick she’s used for several years: switching your document’s font to Comic Sans while you’re writing. Here’s what she had to say on the subject:
I’ll be the first to admit that I was a Comic Sans skeptic, but I’m a diehard convert. I don’t know how it came about, but when the writing community on Twitter started mentioning that Comic Sans improved writing speed and helped break through writer’s block, I was skeptical to say the least.
Until I tried it, and I wrote a blog post in half the time. It’s been years since I started using the Comic Sans trick, and my blogging productivity never slowed. I use it for everything — including work — and I’ve seen a major improvement. Is it mental? Maybe. Does it matter? Heck no. What matters is finding what works for you.
What things have helped you write better blog posts? We’d love to hear your tips and tricks, so be sure to drop them in a comment below!