21 Tops on How to Write a Successful Blog

Hubspot and General Assembly came together to offer a 10 week planner for successful blog. The type of blog discussed in this plan are corporate blogs used to bring people to the site and explore what the company is doing, potentially generate a lead.

• Identify Your Target Persona: talk to sales team and research contract data

• Start Building Evergreen Content: start with evergreen contents that stay relevant though time; do keyword search to see what people are searching

• Choose the Right Content Management Tool: a good tool is easy to use and allow users to track metrics such as conversion rate, page view, and where traffic come from

• Design Your Blog: consistent layout; 

• Focus on Your Content Strategy: basically it is depending on what you want

• Set Subscriber Path: there needs to be a workflow for emailing the subscriber, a subscription form and an unsubscribe form. Hubspot is towards the "don’t email your subscribers too often” group while I also heard UI Breakfast Jane Portman talked about why you should email your subscribers on a daily basis (because the fact they subscribe to your newsletter means they are interested in your content and you should send contents to them whenever you have it).

• Plan for Logistics: plan how you convert visitors or get subscribers to interact with you elsewhere; adding social sharing button to encourage sharing and respond to comments to encourage interaction;

• Decide on Internal Editorial Strategy: decide on who the content will be written and who will review the contents, 

• SEO and Promotional Guideline: do keyword research and plan your content around it; promote your blog on different channels to reach more audience;

• Write Your First Post: a good article should be skimmable using image, bullet, lists and short paragraphs t achieve this goal; using more graphs and images, that makes the article more appealing; and link them to other resources on the site;

• Metrics to Analyze: 4 important metrics to track: page view; click-through rate; source of traffic and leads gained from the blog;

• Something to Avoid: forget to do keyword research; reply on organic traffic;

What I learnt as I read through the planning are very important 4 things:

Don’t Write Long Articles: articles from the hubspot are about 800-1,000 words long; and I feel it is just the right  length, it also makes it easier for the editors to write; I have been writing blog for 1 month and I have been writing average 2,000 words article, it takes a lot of time for me and my audience, I did a short research online and found short articles seems to be in favor, so I will be working on making it short;

Make Article Skimmable with Color and Font: the Hubspot blog planner is visual and easy to read also for the different but consistent color and font it is using, while up to now I had not seriously looked at my articles, and the blogger software I have been using is quite terrible, I’ll see if there are ways to improve it;

Say Your Name, Again and Again: at least 3 times, Hubspot was referring to its own product, once in building evergreen content, once when talking about content management, and once internal editorial strategy. If seems like whenever I start to pay attention solely into the content, Hubspot’s name will split in. Personally, this is very annoy, actually, it annoyed me so much that I went to search for best  content management tool online and I swear I will definitely not choose hubspot even if it is listed on the top. Nevertheless, if it is a business product or service and the content is very useful, I may be curious to check it out.

Small Errors Create Big Negative Effect: it can be that this article is about blog planning, and I thus assume these are editors that have a rigorous attitude towards writing articles. But throughout the article, I have found at least 3 errors, the first place where there are 2 “for” while there should be only one; the second and third where they mentioned “checkout this video” or “see this article” but forget to add the link to them. These three errors made me feel they are very sloppy and thus lose respect. While I reflect back to my own blog and suddenly realized how important a piece of errorless content is.

Bwesides Pinola’s article about how to write a blog that people like. She suggested the following 5 points:

• Find a Niche; get a specific topic to write on, this help increase traffic and improve blog quality:

• Write Great Content: answer a question, solve a problem, make readers laugh, or make them cry (in a good way) is the best article; 

• Head with a Great Title: meaningful title that align with the concept and catch people’s attention increase traffic;

• Join a Blog Community: link back to article you cited; list “blog I also like”,

• Learn from Existing Audience: know your customer and make sure your contents are great for them; 

Time wise, Pinola’s article follows Hotspot’s article on the blog’s life cycle. Both of them talked about content and how important it is (of course… blog has nothing but contents). 
These two articles brought me to think about my blog’s content quality; I’ve been writing regularly but the content I wrote is not targeted. I’m not much involved in the community and my posts are very long. I would like to use sometime next week to explore how to improve my blog, say:

• Separate articles with similar contents to different blogs;

• Refine on key search words

• Use colors and sizes to make it easier to read

Writing blog is a long-term exercise, it helps logical thinking and storytelling skills but it also rewards us well with recognition and connection.



Reference:

How to Start a Successful Blog in 2017https://offers.hubspot.com/how-to-start-a-successful-blog


How Can I Write a Successful Blog and Get More People to Read It
http://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-write-a-successful-blog-and-get-more-people-t-1257476541