Honestly, every creative asks themselves the same questions right before they begin a new project. Who? What? When? Where? Why? And How? And don’t think blogging is any different. Every blogger asks themselves before putting their fingers to the keyboard, What do you say? How do I get my point across? How many words should I use? Where do I start? Well don’t worry about all of that because I’m gonna break down the art of blogging step by step so that you can start that blog that I KNOW you’ve been sitting on and get the engagement you’ll need to give yourself the dopest blog site the internet has ever seen!

First, you have to have an attention-grabbing title. Period. The very first thing a reader will see is the title of your article and if it’s lame and not something worth clicking on, they won’t. Titles depend on what kind of content you’re creating too and some styles work better than others, like Top 5 Lists, How To’s or quoted titles. Also make sure you’re title can some up the subject matter of your article so that readers have a snapshot of what the full content will include.

The next thing is to have a strong lead paragraph. This is almost as important as the title because it gives slightly more detail about the article, usually breaking down key points that will be covered throughout your blog post. Its important to be short, concise and strong in your lead paragraph because if you take too long to summarize what the article is about, you’re definitely gonna lose their attention.

Next is to add an image (or a few) to your blog post to draw the reader in. Find a picture that relates to your article and make it the dominant portion of the post. Now, that doesn’t mean you can go on google and search for any pic you want because that’s when copyright issues could come and you don’t want those problems. You can get free images for blog posts from sites like iStock have pics without copyright restrictions. Otherwise, if you use celeb pictures or professional pics from professional photographers, make sure you cite the owner of the pic EVERYTIME. They can sue your ass too.

The next step is the most important step in my opinion and that’s putting yourself into your writing. There’s no better way for your readers to get to know you or feel like they can relate to you than telling your own personal story. No matter the topic, find a way to add a little bit about yourself, like a memory or a testimony. People love feeling connected to whoever or whatever they’re giving their attention to. Always make your blog posts a reflection of you!

Now the body, the big part of the blog post. The meat of your article. It MUST be organized and it MUST be eye scannable. What does eye scannable mean? Use numbered lists, bullets, and small headers to allow your reader to quickly scan the article up and down to get an idea of what it’s about. Simple! Nothing turns a reader off more than looking at a page with a bunch of words that seems like it’s gonna take a long time to read. Some easy tips to this is to use short paragraphs (2-3 sentences), write shorter sentences so you don’t end up ranting, use simple words so a reader doesn’t get distracted trying to look up the definition of a word you used, add internal links which makes your blog posts interactive with other blogs or businesses and keep your blog as a whole short; between 4-5 paragraphs, between 500-600 words. Trust me, that’s not a lot once you get your writing juices flowing.

Then finally, to close out your blog post, make sure your conclusion sums up the entire article and includes a question to get your readers engaged. Asking a question will prompt atleast a few people reading to comment their response and that helps traffic to your page and helps your site SEO, which is search engine optimization (the way people can find you on google pretty much). These are a couple of stat examples from this very blog…

So now that you have the basics of how to start a blog post, when will you start yours? Comment below the day you want to start blogging or comment if you have any questions about something I did or did not touch on. And I know, I CLEARLY couldn’t follow my own rules on writing for this particular blog post; I wanted to make sure I shared as much info as possible.

Thanks for learning from me and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel here.