Writing a blog post or marketing email doesn’t have to be daunting. Sometimes all it takes is one small idea and 30 minutes to write it.
No doubt there will be people who are horrified at the thought of writing an important piece of marketing content for their business in just half an hour.
But I promise you, when you have the knowledge it truly is that easy.
All you have to do is create a little template for yourself that you fill in every time you want to write one.
Here are 6 things you should include in most list based blog posts:
- Concept
In order to decide what you are going to write about you need to be thinking from the point of view of your potential customer rather than with your business head on. Ask yourself what kind of problems do your customers come up against? And how can you help them with some of these problems.
- Headline
Before you even begin to shape your content think about your headline, what kind of content is your customer base already reading. Are the informative top tips articles like this, educational based articles with more technical information contained in them or are they articles that inspire or entertain them. If it’s all or some of the above, simply decide which style you want to tackle.
Now it’s time to cheat….for example, pretend you are a hairdresser and you’ve decided you want to talk about frizzy hair.
Next think about what your customer wants – to not have frizzy hair. You may have seen an article last week you really liked called 5 Top Tips For Cooking The Perfect Steak. Then you need to apply that headline to your concept. You could change it to 7 Top Tips For Taming Your Frizzy Hair for example.
- Introduction
I’m a great fan of list posts with an introduction between 3 and 6 paragraphs. Mostly, those paragraphs are 1 or 2 shirt lines too. Keeping it nice and snappy.
In your introduction all you have to do is outline the problem, explain why it’s a problem and identify a possible solution (your tips).
- Your List
Take each point you want to make and give it a 1-3 word sub heading. Then in a short paragraph or two tell people what you want to say. Don’t give too much away because each item on this list could be a follow up blog post on its own!
- Call To Action
There always needs to be a point to your blog post. Maybe you have a special treatment you offer in your salon for frizzy hair and this is one of the points in your top tips, if so, be clear about what the offer is and how people can get it.
Then, reinforce it at the end of your blog post by reminding people what you can offer and how they can contact you.
- Conclusion
Not all blog posts need a conclusion but sometimes it’s a nice way to round up your message and add some further information about you or your company before your call to action. However, be aware that too much self promotion can put people off reading your blog posts in the first place.
Of course you don’t have to do your blog posts alone, my team at Excalibur Press can create bespoke blog posts for your business with a strong call to action to save you time and energy.
Call Excalibur Press today for your first consultation FREE – 07982628911 / [email protected]