It starts like this. Something short to set the scene, promise some value, and capture the imagination. Maybe identify a trend.
Increasingly, marketers are using blog posts to react quickly to an industry trend. Depending on how suddenly that trend has arrived (and how long you think it’ll stick around for), you’ll often need to move fast to ensure your blog is relevant and timely.
Then you move on to introduce the challenge, and why it poses a problem.
But frequently, that means you might not have the time to brief a writer. In which case, your poor sales person/marketing manager/intern suddenly has the mantle of blog writer thrust upon them – and must suddenly become a blog-writing expert overnight.
Sometimes it’s good to finish your intro with a summary of what the post will cover – and how it will help the reader.
Whether you are that poor, picked-upon blog writer, or you’re the one handing them a blog idea and want to help them along, this post will go through a catch-all structure you can use to help kickstart your blog and structure it for high impact.
The challenge: here we dig into it in greater detail. (Good place for a subhead.)
So, you have a burning customer trend, question or industry topic to write about. You (hopefully) have between three and five hours to write your blog, and a painfully blank word document taunting you. What do you do?
It’s all too easy to stare in to the white void of your word processor and not know where to begin.
This writer’s block is common for both new and experienced writers alike. And it often doesn’t matter how well you know the topic of the blog. Almost everyone finds it hard to start from scratch.
You can also examine some of the risks – what happens if you don’t solve the challenge?
That’s OK, but only for so long. After all, you have your actual core job responsibilities to return to, so you can’t spend your entire day staring at the flashing cursor of doom.
Now we know the challenge and risks, let’s introduce a solution (and include another subhead)…
It’s at this point a structure can help in a big way. By following a template, you aren’t starting with nothing; you’re just filling in the blanks. If you’ve ever filled in a form (and who hasn’t) this is something you already know how to do – no training required.
Then we can explore the benefits of using this solution.
Far from just kickstarting your blog writing, a strong template can help you keep your blog focussed on the topic at hand – and more engaging to readers as a result.
Finally, you wrap up with a summary of what your blog has talked about (bullet points can be a good idea here). Also include a third subhead – but don’t make it say “conclusion”.
Writing blogs can be tough. Doubly so when you have to fit writing time around other job responsibilities. But with a strong basic structure, you can:
- Hit the ground running, and start writing fast
- Keep your argument focussed
- Spend less time worrying about structure, and spend more time bringing your blog to life
Don’t forget to include a call to action – possibly linking to additional content on the topic.
The last thing you need to do to seal the deal with your blog is give your audience some idea of what they might want to do next. Otherwise they’ll just hit their “back” button and be gone. You might want to put a hyperlink at the end – and maybe to go back through your document and insert a link or two to other content illustrating your point.
Of course, this is just one kind of structure you can use to simplify blog writing; there are many others out there. But it’s a good start. Beyond this, there are many other things you can do to take your blog writing to the next level: if you’d like some more tips, take a look at Radix’s own blog.
