Before you write your first blog post as a spiritual entrepreneur, there are a few things you need to know…
Creating a blog post may seem easy, but writing a GOOD blog post can be difficult.
For starters, it’s important to know what your readers are looking for. It’s also important to understand what you’re going to write about. By understanding these two factors, you’re more likely to come up with a post that’s relevant and has value to your audience.
For example, you might write a blog post on the tarot. But, if you are not a skilled tarot practitioner yourself that will show in your writing, and you’re unlikely to attract many readers. That’s why it’s best to look for a more focused topic, that’s within your ‘wheelhouse’.
Then, you can write about what you know, which will help to establish a genuine authority and built trust with your audience..
What Your Audience is Looking For
Three simple letters, but so important – SEO. Search Engine Optimisation.
There are a whole of tools that are designed to help you optimise what you write and how you write it, so that the search engines pick it up and rank it high. (If you want a great one, try Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest.)
However, we can keep it really simple if this is your first blog post, and you’re only starting out.
- Open a Google Doc (or word, or notepad, or the notes app on your phone, or a fresh journal page!)
- In the Chrome browser, open an incognito tab.
- Type in the first word or two of your general topic, and see what drops down (auto suggests).
- Pick the first one that appeals to you – but you can also take note of the others and use them as subheadings within the post, if you like.
- Start writing on that topic.
Basically, doing this in an incognito window ensures your own search history or previous searches don’t factor in. So what you’re seeing is Google’s top searches on this topic.
And now you know what your readers are looking for.
What to Write Your First Blog Post About?
Staring at a blank page and a blinking cursor is one of the top ways to give yourself writers block.
You begin with a blog post outline. The outline should include a title, an example or two, a brief description of the post, and links to other relevant blog posts. You may also want to include links to your social media profiles. Linking is a key component of the world wide web, and a great way to boost your SEO.
Within the outline you’ll need headings and subheadings.
- To get things going, go back to those other suggestions that google made. Would that give you two or three headings under the main topic, to get some structure going?
- If you can’t make something of that, it’s ok to open the wiki page for the topic and see what the headings within the article are there. PLEASE do not copy any text from the article itself. That is plagiarism, and besides the obvious (I hope) ethical issues, search engines are smarter than you about this. It won’t do you any good.
- You could also have a little brainstorm with a mind map, by doing some free form auto writing, or jotting down ideas and questions on post it notes, then rearranging them into an order that makes sense.
Now you have a structure, simply fill in the words to go between the headings.
Once you have a rough draft, you can use tools such as Grammarly to make sure your writing is up to par. This is particularly important for a blog, since grammatical errors can make your post look unprofessional.
A blog post should also include a call to action. A good call to action is one that’s both relevant and enticing. You want to make sure that your readers are interested enough in your content to act on it. Adding images can also help.
Remember the old newspaper adage: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” This is particularly true for blog posts, since images break up pages and engage readers.
You’ll also want to include a link to other pages on your website or blog in the body of your post. This can be done through embedded media, hyperlinks, or keyword-based metadata. If your readers can easily find what they’re looking for, you’re more likely to see a higher clickthrough rate, and internal links are great for SEO too.
The most important thing to remember is to keep your audience in mind when writing. The best blog post is one that will appeal to a targeted audience.
If you’ve been following my spiritual business model, your audience is your community. The best way to write your first blog post will be to genuinely serve them.
