For people who are trying to break into the world of internet blogging, it can be hard to know how to write a professional and money-making blog post. It seems overwhelming and complicated, and if you just want to be a writer, learning about search engine optimization, code, links, and other technology-focused parts of blogging can be enough to make you quit before you start. If you are ready to start a money making blog, the first thing you need to know is how to write better blog posts.

Target Your Niche

Your blog should have a niche, and probably already does. But do your posts always target that niche? Remember that your customers are people who are following you because you add value to their lives. If you have a business blog, posts about training pets and traveling won’t appeal to your audience or add much value to your followers. One of the best ways to do this is to imagine your ideal follower, write down exactly who they are, and write your posts to that

person.

Answer the Right Questions

Your posts need to be relevant. You don’t have to focus on everything that is trendy and write about that, but you do need to answer the questions your followers are asking. One of the best ways to do this, of course, is to read your follower’s comments, write down the questions you are getting, and write blog posts that provide answers. Another option is to imagine what your ideal customer is asking and answer those questions.

Edit, Edit, Edit

Edit ruthlessly. Edit for grammatical errors, typos, and misspellings, of course. But also edit for length, wordiness, and irrelevance. Read your post and reread your post until you are happy with it. Blog posts have become a genre of their own, and like any genre, they have specific style rules and expectations that you should follow and the most important of these is to avoid wordiness and flowery prose.

Format Correctly

Blog posts are formatted to fit our decreased attention spans and the way we read online. Most people read online by scanning the article compared with the deeper, more attentive way we read books. Your blog posts need to be formatted to work well with this style of reading. This means short paragraphs and a lot of headings. Your posts will usually be formatted in a list style, which allows people to see what you are writing about, skim your article for the relevant information, read in spurts, and if they like what they see, they will often go back for another more focused read.

Use Bullet Points and List Formats

Bullet points break up the blocks of text visually and provide instant value without taking a lot of reading time or space. Readers who are skimming can get a lot of value from bullet points. If you are writing a long article, consider having a bullet-point list of your article topics at the beginning, and then go through the list in more detail underneath. This allows your reader to see at a glance what topics your article will cover.

Stick to Your Topic

Blog posts are not newspaper articles, short books, or stories. They are blog posts, which have a certain style and feel to them and need to follow a specific outline and plan. Blog posts need to tell the reader the answer to the question proposed in the title, and nothing (or little) more.

While it’s fine to give examples and the occasional anecdote, remember to focus on the topic that your title or headline promised.

Tell a Story

Even though your blog post shouldn’t be written like a story, remember that you are telling a story of sorts, just in a different format from the usual. If you are writing “10 Easy Ways to Keep Your Office Clean” the story is about your customer having a clean office. You don’t want to start with “once upon a time” or write in a fictional, imaginative way, but the process that is happening in your reader’s head is them picturing their office always clean and tidy. Don’t forget that all writing is telling a story.

Use an Outline

Start each blog post with an outline. You will write your main idea at the top, in the form of an early-draft title (this may change later), and then jot down all the topics you want to address, points that you are making, or tips that you have. Once you have this done, filling in a few sentences or paragraphs under each one is easy.

Use Keywords

Use keywords correctly in your blog posts, and you will drive traffic and gain followers and readers much faster. You should learn about basic SEO and keyword technology and how to use it. Develop a strategy for which keywords to use and keep a record of which ones drive the most traffic to your site or get you the most clicks or purchases. At the very least, you should have keywords in your title and your first sentence.

Keep a Notepad Nearby

Do you often struggle to come up with a topic? Does it seem like you’ve already said everything that can be said about your niche? Do you receive your inspiration while falling asleep, in the shower, or driving down the road? Keep a notepad handy so you can jot down ideas, questions, and anything that you think could be developed into a blog post. Also, keep a record of the comments and questions you receive on your blog. If you can’t find enough material there, follow similar blogs that have more traffic and write down their comments and questions! Either way, you are answering the questions your ideal follower is asking, and you are providing the value that will bring them to your site and keep them coming back.