The Winning Process for Writing Successful Blog Posts

By Hâfi Martinsdóttir

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes | 1980 words

Do you struggle to produce regular blog content because you feel paralysed every time you open up a blank document? If so then it’s time to put a formula in place to guide your writing. In this post I will share with you the winning process for writing successful blog posts that I use. This method helps me to get out of my own way and start writing without too much of the worrying.

So, without further ado, let’s get stuck into the actual writing process.

(You can download a PDF of The Winning Process for Writing Successful Blog Posts for your future reference at the bottom of this post)

The Promise

First of all start by outlining what you promise to deliver in your blog post. This let’s the reader know immediately what they can expect, and if you understand your target audience well, gives them a reason to continue reading. So be sure to let them know what transformative/entertaining/helpful results they can expect to achieve by the end.

Example: “In this post I am going to teach you about why integrating a subscription plan into your business model is the way to go”.

This is very specific and should tie in nicely with the headline of the post too so that everyone is clear about what is being discussed. Example headline: “The Benefits of Building a Subscription Based Business Model”.

The Problem

Next we want to highlight the problem that your reader might have which has drawn them into clicking on this blog post. Highlighting the problem that your reader is likely struggling with gives the reader something to relate to. Remember that your reader at this point does not know the solution, they just know the problem. They are looking to you for the solution. The problem you outline should be something highly relatable for them and reinforces a reason for them to keep reading.

Example: Do you find yourself struggling to generate steady revenue that you can rely on? Are you so busy working IN your business that you have no time to work ON it to help it grow?

Bust a Myth

To position yourself as someone who really knows what they are talking about, bust a myth that your readers are likely to believe about their problem. It could be an old-fashioned way of thinking that might be holding them back from achieving their goal.

Example Myth: “My customers wouldn’t be interested in subscription services or products, even though adding this option would help my business enormously.”

Example Truth: “Due to the flexibility and easier cost management of subscription based services customers are increasingly seeking subscription solutions over one-off, larger payments.”

Teach Them How

Now it’s time to teach your readers 3 – 7 key points that will transform their problem into a helpful solution with actionable steps or if you are trying to persuade your audience of something, this is where you list the reasons.

Example: “Here are the top reasons why you should start moving towards a mostly subscription based business model:”

Stop trading your time for money
Your customers will have an ongoing relationship with you compared to a once-off transaction. Ensure this continued experience is excellent and your customers are more likely to recommend because they will be constantly reminded about your business and services.
Easier than ever to create recurring revenue thanks to the explosion in the online market and technologies available to us
It allows you to ensure a more predictable cash flow for your business without the feast and famine cycle.
It helps you plan for growth rather than simply hoping and guessing that your sales target will be met.
It allows you to work location independently.
You can automate the entire process from customer on-boarding through to the delivery experience for the client. Through automation comes efficiency and thus more time you’ve got free to work on growing your business itself or simply taking more time off to do what you enjoy.

Do's and Don'ts

Further clarify your expert status on this topic by saving them any costly mistakes by pointing out the rookie mistakes people often make when implementing the solution you have provided. Also suggest some tips for readers who perhaps want a deeper insight into solving this problem.

Example: “The most common reason why some businesses fail at this when starting out generating recurring revenue through subscription services is because it does require work, requires creativity, it requires you to think outside the box and to make brave and bold choices in your business. So prepare to be bold. You can transition slowly and organically through to a mostly subscription based business model and can continue to sell regular one-off products and services to clients too.

It does help if you are already positioned well in your industry as an expert, so continue to or begin to establish yourself as an expert in order to see the best results.”

Next Steps

Give your reader their next steps, perhaps it’s scheduling an appointment with you (insert the link they can use to schedule this). Or perhaps it’s to leave a comment, share the post on social media (you should definitely have social media share buttons on every post) or to download a helpful checklist or worksheet related to their solution that helps them implement it.

Example: “If you’re interested in discussing how to set up a recurring revenue subscription strategy in your business, click the button below to schedule a call with our recurring revenue specialists”.

Extra Tips

Create a “Blogging ideas/headlines” document, using Google Docs or Evernote, that you can access on all of your devices at any time and make it just for adding ideas down for potential blog posts + headlines. Any time I get an idea of what my readers might find useful or informative I write it down as a note. Then when the time comes to write up a post, I read over my ideas, pick the one that resonates with me the most at that particular time and begin writing using the formula outlined above. Once your headlines have been written out it makes it so much easier for the ideas to start flowing in and avoid the horrors of a blank page staring at you. Throughout the writing process I continuously refer back to the headline to make sure I am staying on track.

Research the best keyword phrase to use in your post’s title (what someone searching for a post like yours might type into Google, ie. “tips to travel with young kids” so your post’s title might be “top 5 tips for travel with kids aged 5 and under”). Use this keyword phrase somewhere within the first few sentences of your post and dotted naturally throughout your post. Naturally is important, you don’t want to cram your keyword phrase throughout the text as the search engines see right through this and will penalise your site.

Research your LSI Keywords too, though they should naturally be occurring throughout your writing anyway if your post is well researched.

Studies have shown that people prefer titles that include a number and their problem, such as “7 ways to help your 5 year old enjoy travel” and “Send your child to sleep easily in unfamiliar places while travelling in 3 easy steps”.

Have your reader’s avatar printed out and placed nearby for reference so you’re clear on who you’re writing for. Click the following link if you need help defining your target audience; Ideal Customer Avatar Worksheet.

As you are planning the blog post, take into consideration what you want your post to achieve. Do you want the reader to sign up for something, to learn something, is it to sell something, attract a new audience to your business, to entertain? This helps to keep your post on track with its objective.

When you know the goal for this particular post and who it’s aimed at, then you can set a metric for its success. If you want to sell something, what percentage of readers need to click the link to purchase the product in the post for it to be considered successful? When you have your goal and set your metric, it makes it easier to track and make necessary changes. to experiment until you find your conversion sweet spot.

Make sure your keywords are in the meta descriptions of your post along with your post’s key image. Don’t forget to set a meta description and title for when your post is shared on social media too. The free Yoast plugin is great at helping you set these.

Instead of writing for the search engines (robots) write for people first. The old way of doing SEO where you cram your post with your keywords making it a nightmare to read for humans are long gone. Your text needs to be easy for humans to read. An example of cramming if the keyword is “travel”: “Travel with young kids is easy because travel is a great way to show them the world. Travel creates wonderful memories and to be able to travel is a luxury. To travel with kids is…, travel, travel, etc. etc.” No human wants to read such dull writing and as such the search engines will lower your rankings significantly if they detect you’re keyword cramming. Instead just write normally as you would to another human, using variations of the word “travel”, such as “adventures”, “holiday”, “sight-seeing”, “excursion”, etc. Using a diverse vocabulary makes it a more pleasant read and is easy thanks to Google because if you’re struggling to find variations on your keyword, just type “travel synonyms” into Google and it will give you a list of alternatives. Also the search engines recognise the linked words such as “traveller”, “travelling” and also recognises the word whether you spell it with one ‘l’ or with two.

Use headlines and bullet points to break up the blocks to keep your post easy to read (as you’ll see I have done in this post). Most people will scan a post and read one or two headlines or bullet points within to see whether the post is worth reading. If they decide that it is, then they will scroll back to the top and start reading. So make it easy for them to see the main points of your post (headlines + bullet points) so that they are more likely to commit to reading.

Use a tool such as Read-o-Meter to calculate the estimated reading time of your post. People are busy and might be put off by a long post. By writing the estimated reading time at the top of the post, it reassures people of how much time they need to invest into reading it. Studies have shown this to increase the chance of people reading and then sharing your post. You can experiment with this too via your website analytics. If you look you’ll see that I do this at the very top of every one of my posts.

A word count of 1,600 (approx. 7 minutes reading time) is the optimum length of a blog post for favorable SEO.

How are you going to “launch” your post? Where will you share it? On which social media channels? In a newsletter to your subscribers? To a particular forum where your target audience hang out?

Some people are more comfortable talking than writing. Consider using the Rev Online Voice Recorder tool where you make a voice recording and within minutes you can receive it transcribed (depending on which option you go for). Simply tweak this transcription and you’re ready to post. This might change the process from being 1 hour of writing to a 3 minute voice recording and 10 minutes of tweaking. 3 minutes of voice recording could easily become 1,600 words, (7 minutes of reading time) the optimum for good post SEO.