Many people underestimate the power a good plan and structure can have when it comes to blog posts. Aimlessly writing about topics that may, or may not, interest your audience could leave you with less traffic than you had hoped for. Luckily there are a few steps you can take to writing a successful blog post.

Plan the Post

Planning is an essential step in writing a blog post. Making sure you have everything structured will help you a great deal when it comes to writing the post.

One of the first things you want to do is make sure you’re aware of your target audience, who they are and what they would be interested in seeing in this particular post. Researching into who will be reading the post will ensure users find it informative and interesting, hopefully bringing them back to your website for future posts.

Once you’re aware of your target audience the next step would be to plan a topic to write on. When initially choosing your topic you don’t need to be too precise, knowing the topic you want to cover is a great start. Some people benefit from choosing their topic and thinking of a few areas around the subject they would like to write about. Giving yourself different options is great if you’re still at this point not entirely sure what you want to post or have a few different ideas floating around and want to see which would work best.

Eventually, when you’ve chosen your specific topic you’ll need to title it. Remember, you can always edit a title so if it isn’t exactly how you want it to be in the beginning, that’s not a problem. Your first title is a starting point for yourself, a general round up of what this post is about. For example, my first title for this post was ‘How to Write a Good Blog Post’. As you get deeper into the post and it’s more structured you can change the title accordingly.

An extra part of planning is the visual aspect of your blog post. Before you start writing make a short list of any graphics or images you want to use in your post. Even if you don’t have the specific post to hand, planning the placement and theme of the images could save you scrambling around for fitting visuals once you’ve finished.

Structuring the Post

When it comes to structuring your blog post you need to have a very clear idea of what you’re writing about, this is why you need to have a set topic first. As you already have your rough title, the first thing you’d want to do is set out an intro.

Your introduction paragraph is the first paragraph your visitors will read so you want to make it captivating and informative. In this paragraph, you should ensure you’re telling the reader what they are going to gain from reading this post, what they will learn. The more you draw them in the more likely they are to read your entire post.
After you have your intro done it’s a good idea to start planning your subheadings. Subheadings break your post down making it easier to read. People would rather ready 4-6 smaller broken up sections of writing than one long post. It also makes it easier for them to find a specific piece of information they’re looking for as they can search for it under the relevant subheading. Once you have these planned out, you can start writing the bulk of your post.

Lastly, your conclusion. Here you want to round up the post and sum up your key message. Your conclusion doesn’t have to be long but it should still be informative. You should include a CTA in your conclusion to encourage engagement with your posts. A call to action is when you ask the reader to do something, for example, ‘share this post if you found it useful’ or ‘comment if this post helped you out’. Encouraging the reader to take part in engagement is an important step to growing your blog.

Adding Visuals

It’s a proven fact that people prefer to read articles with something else to look at, not just writing. You could include diagrams, charts, images, graphics… Anything to make the post look a little more interesting. Your readers will appreciate the post more. Visitors are more likely to stay on the page and read the entire post if they aren’t just faced with 3000 words. Visual aspects break the post up, just like subheadings. Make it interesting.

Add your images or graphics in after you’re done writing. This way you can find the place they fit best. Refer back to your plan but if you need to change the placement of something you can do so.

Editing and Proofreading

You’re not done when you finish your conclusion. A crucial step in writing a blog post is your proofread. You wouldn’t want to write a top quality, informative post and publish it with spelling mistakes and errors. Leaving in mistakes can damage the quality of the post so reading through two to three times is imperative.

Check for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and any information in your post that may need tweaking. Here you may find parts of the post you’d like to remove and even space to add information in. When you’ve highlighted all the aspects that may need changing you can edit your post accordingly. One of the things you should look for is the flow in the post, make sure each section leads on from the other and it isn’t extremely choppy. Everything should be in your post for a reason. Remember to give it a final proofread to make sure everything makes sense and you didn’t miss anything.

SEO

Search engine optimisation is the name given to the action of trying to improve your websites ranking on search engines.

Search engines, like Google, rank pages based on relevant useful content that has been linked back to by other pages. Essentially, creating content that others find useful and interesting or something they learn from means people will want to share it with others. A lot of people do this by posting a link to the page on their website.

How to Incorporate SEO into your Posts

The most important thing is to write relevant, useful content that uses keywords used by people searching for information. Choosing your keywords is an important part of SEO. You need to make your page easy to find. When choosing your keywords think about what potential visitors would type into a search engine to find the information. You also want to make the blog post appealing to the reader.

Make sure your content is easy to share and easy to link to. You want people to be able to quickly and easily share your content. The easier it is for a visitor to do, the more likely they are going to do it. This is where share buttons are useful, many blogs have them at the bottom of posts. This makes sharing that specific page on to social media very easy and extremely quick. Including a CTA at the end of the post, like we talked about doing in your conclusion, reminds people they are able to share your content. Make sure you lead them to these share buttons or tell them exactly how they can do it.

When focusing on SEO it’s important to remember that the quality of your link backs is far more important than the quantity. Great websites won’t link to poor content and this is why it’s essential that you are focusing on making your posts the best that they can be.

Keywords

As mentioned earlier, keywords are what enable people to find your post. They are the words and phrases people will use when searching on engines like Google. Keyword research is the best way you’ll find what words and phrases you should be using. Researching how people are looking for the information you have or the product you’re writing about. Looking at similar websites or posts that rank highly in search engines is beneficial as you can see what keywords and phrases they have used in their quality posts.

Developing a list of keywords to use throughout your posts and website should be one of your priorities when it comes to SEO. Keywords that are relevant to your content and what the reader is looking for are going to really help when trying to rank higher on search engines. You can use your editing stage to add in more keywords if you feel your post is lacking. It’s also a good idea to use a keyword in your post title.

Meta Description

Another large part of SEO is your page’s meta description. The meta description is the small excerpt below the page title that shows on a search engine. It should be a descriptive piece of text around 160 characters that lets the reader know what the post is about. If you look at quality pages that rank highly on search engines you’ll see that their meta descriptions often start with a verb such as learn, master and discover. Let the reader know they’re going to take something away from the post.

Keep going! Upping your rank on search engines won’t happen overnight. Be consistent with uploading content to your website and continue to make sure they are all of a steady quality. Creating posts using a structure and planning is something that will become more natural the more you do it. You should use a structure for every post you write. It ensures all your posts will be the same sort of quality which is imperative for ranking higher on search engines. Practice makes perfect and there is always room for improvement so take your time looking into ways you can write your posts and research into what you should include.

Instagram is a great social platform to share some of your favourite photographs or videos but it’s also a fantastic marketing tool. In one day, 400 million people use Instagram and around 4.2 billion posts are liked. The power Instagram could have on your website’s traffic is unquestionable but there are a few steps you should take to make the most of it.

Have your website link in your bio.

Instagram haven’t made it particularly easy to drive traffic to your website as the only place they allow a clickable link is in your bio. One of the most effective actions you can take to generate website traffic through Instagram is making use of the space in your bio and add your website’s URL. A great tip is to include a caption in your bio, directing users to the link that appears below it.

You are able to change the link as many times as you wish, meaning you can direct traffic to a specific page whenever you like. This is particularly handy when promoting new blog posts or new products. It’s always a good idea to track traffic coming from social media channels, you can do this by using a Bitly link. Bitly allows you to shorten links and measure clicks so you know exactly where your traffic is coming from.

Using Call’s to Action

With Instagram only allowing you one clickable link in your bio, you need to be clever with calls to action. Every time you upload a new post you are able to write a caption, this is where you can include your CTA’s. You need to encourage users who are seeing your posts to go to your account and click the link in your bio. There are many clever ways you can include CTA’s in your caption’s such as ‘click the link in our bio for more information’ or if you’re selling something you could use ‘order through the link on our profile’. You’re also able to leave a CTA in your bio for new followers.

The main thing to remember when using calls to action is to keep them as simple as possible. You want your audience to be able to follow the CTA with very little effort, making them more likely to complete the action.

Use Relevant Hashtag’s

Hashtags are the best way to achieve exposure on Instagram. It’s important to use hashtag’s relevant to your brand so like-minded users or potential customers can find your posts.

Researching the most used hashtag’s in your niche is the best place to start. Don’t be afraid to try different hashtag’s in different posts to see how they work for you.

91% of top brands use seven or less hashtag’s in their posts, quality of your hashtag’s is much more important than the quantity. It isn’t recommended you use over 10 hashtag’s per post. Using the best high-quality hashtags for your niche will bring you more exposure than using less relevant ones.

Engage with your Community

Building a relationship between you and your audience can be a simple but highly effective step in driving traffic to your website. Instagram really do it best when it comes to community, it’s so easy to connect with like-minded users.

There are many different ways you can engage with your followers on Instagram. One of the best thing’s you can do is encourage conversation on posts, you can do this by including a CTA in the caption. Something like ‘comment your favourite products from our brand’ or even just asking how their week is going so far works really well. Once your followers are commenting on your posts it’s important to try and reply, this can add some personality and helps build trust with your audience.

Another great way to engage with you community is re-posting their posts. If someone has posted about a product or service they purchased from you and has a positive caption, it is a good idea to re-post this on to your page. This can benefit both of you as well as help to create extra content for your page.

Instagram Ad’s

Ad’s are a brilliant way of reaching new users and potential customers. You are able to set a specific target audience, or you can let Instagram show users it feels are appropriate based on gender, age group and interests. There are a few different types of ad’s you can display on Instagram:

Carousel Adverts – Users are able to swipe through a number of photo’s, or video’s in one advert. These adverts are highly beneficial to advertisers as it allows brands to showcase more than one product or service at the same time.
Video Adverts – You are able to advertise through a 3 – 60-second long video, with or without sound. Many potential customers find video’s more engaging than picture’s which is why this is a great option.
Picture Adverts – adverts will appear in the form of whichever image you choose to promote. As with any of the above options, these include a space for you to add a caption which could include a
CTA.
Stories Adverts – In August 2016 Instagram introduced stories. Here you are able to place a video advert. These ads will appear after, or during, someone Instagram story. Anyone who views that account’s story will be able to see your advert.

All four types of adverts have multiple benefits but all include a direct link to a web page you would like to drive traffic to.

Use Influencers

In the last few years, social media influencers have become a huge marketing tool on most platforms but especially Instagram. The power an influencer has to bring you new website traffic is huge but you want to choose your promoters wisely.

Each influencer is different. Some require payment for promoting a product whereas some will show and review a product or service if you are willing to give that product to them for free to test themselves.

When it comes to choosing influencers, bigger isn’t always better. For example, it would be more beneficial to select an influencer who has 10,000 followers with great engagement over an influencer with 50,000 followers and low engagement. People with higher engagement are more likely to have a good relationship with their audience, meaning their followers would trust their reviews more.

Create Exciting, Relevant Content

Your content is what most users see first on Instagram. You want to create inviting, intriguing content that is exciting to the eye and makes your audience want to see more. Users are going to see your pictures or video’s before they read the caption, so you want to make sure it’s gripping for them.

Some great ways to make your content more exciting are mixing between video’s and pictures, incorporating bright colours and even having a theme. Themes have become a big trend on Instagram, they make sure all of your content matches in some way to make it flow nicely on your page. A lot of accounts go for a white theme with pops of colour and some use a certain filter on all their content. Themes aren’t everyone’s first choice, they’re very hard to keep up with, especially if you are re-posting other users content.

Your audience is following you because you create content that interests them. Keep your content relevant to your niche as this is what your followers are most likely to interact with. Over time you will be able to gather information on what type of posts do best with your audience and will be able to post more of what they like to see.

You are able to generate good website traffic through Instagram as long as you are aware of your analytics and what your audience want to see. By following these 7 steps, whether you are just starting out on Instagram or have been there a while, you should see an increase in your traffic very quickly.