How you can Write a Blog Post Describe: A Simple Formula to Follow

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What makes a blog post bad?

There are lots of factors a blog post could be less-than-perfect. Poor formatting. Poor grammar. Poor word choice. Bad shareability.  

The most pervasive problem? Poor flow.   The post jumps from one concept to the next to the next and then sectors around again for a split second to the first idea, after that back to the fourth, and so on. Or maybe the post reads like a flow of consciousness — however it wasn’t a stylistic option.  

Luckily, you have a simple solution.   Before scuba diving headfirst into writing your post, you can create a plan.  

I’m not discussing jotting down a few quick bullet points — even experienced writers can go astray with just a few talking points. Now i am talking a fully fleshed-out put together with enough details that make it virtually impossible for your writing to go off the deep finish. And it’s pretty easy to perform.

Below is my way of outlining posts and arranging my thoughts. You may choose to switch up some of the methods depending on your writing design, but your end goal should always become to get an outline detailed sufficient that its result is a cohesive, logical piece. Here is one way you can do that.  

1 . Nail your functioning title.

This is the most important stage of this entire process. You need to have a clear understanding of exactly what you’re going to write before you start outlining.  

My colleague Corey wrote an awesome post about how exactly to pick a great working name. Go read it, now. I won’t go too much to the weeds here (that’s why should you read her post), but a great working title will be specific. It’s “How to utilize Images to Generate Leads on Twitter, ” not ” Twitter lead generation. ”

Spend time getting your working title in order to something specific and easy to tackle in a blog post structure — but don’t spend time getting nitpicky. You can refine your title later. The goal here is to have a name that gives you a very clear concept of what the whole piece is all about. You can make it sound appealing later.  

2 . Write down as many distinct takeaways from the article as you can.

Next, you get to brain dump. Write down all the things you want your readers to obtain out of the article. These is not going to always be the main sections of your article — it’s just all the things you want your readers to know by the end of reading your post.

This is the only time in the whole process you aren’t worried about organization — just let your ideas flow naturally. You need to get out all of your wild and crazy ideas at this point so they won’t muck the post later in the process.

Let’s take a use the previous example to demonstrate you what I mean. If the working title was “How to Use Images to Generate Network marketing leads on Twitter, ” I would probably want readers to find out:

  • What sets a good image apart from a bad one on Twitter
  • Where they can find images to use legally 
  • How they can create images on their own
  • What sizes they need to make images
  • Exactly how often they should tweet images
  • How to actually upload a picture to Twitter
  • How they can create a lead on Tweets
  • How long their tweet ought to be with the image in it
  • Exactly what results they should expect to get 

Observe how these are really unfiltered and all over the place. Absolutely okay. We’ll wrangle everything in in the next step.

three or more. Break up those takeaways into larger sections.

Now, we’re going take that jumble of ideas and place them directly into overarching sections. Think of this like sorting laundry — each thought belongs to another pile. From your brainstorm, you should come up with a few big styles.   Sometimes, one of your idea bullets will be a theme in itself, but usually several principal points will fall under one overarching theme. You may also realize that there’s a theme that you may not have any principal points for, but the post definitely calls for it.  

Many individuals recommend sticking to 3-4 bigger sections, but it really depends on which kind of post you’re writing. If you’re writing something that’s lengthy and comprehensive, you might need a lot more. If it’s a quick post, fewer sections would be ideal. But if you need a benchmark, 3-4 sections are fine.  

When we’re writing that post about generating leads on Twitter using images, we would bucket my ideas in to the following buckets:

  1. Intro
  2. Crafting the Twitter Image Lead Style Strategy
    • How they can create a lead on Tweets
    • How often they should twitter update images
  3. How you can Create the Perfect Lead Gen Tweet
    • How long their own tweet should be with the image in it
    • How to actually add an image to Twitter
    • Exactly what sizes they need to make images
    • How they can create images by themselves
    • Where they can find pictures to use legally 
    • What units a good image apart from a negative one on Twitter
  4. Measuring Your Strategy’s Success
    • What outcomes they should expect to get

4. Add more takeaways to some sections.  

At this point, you should have quite a weird looking outline. Mine is. Some sections possess lots of little bullet points, others have only a few, and the like have nothing.  

Now is the time to fill in the openings. What did you miss in your initial brainstorm? Thinking of what’s missing is always hard, but it will help improve your final post significantly.  

Make sure you beef up your intro here, too. Have a great point you think would set the particular stage for the article? Give a little reminder below that will section so you don’t forget it.  

Below shows just how my outline’s evolved. I italicized all the things I additional, and the outline is becoming closer and closer to being a write-up:

  1. Intro
    • Images function really well on Twitter (find study)
  2. Crafting a Twitter Picture Lead Gen Strategy
    • How they can generate a prospect on Twitter
    • How often they should tweet images
  3. How to Create the ideal Lead Gen Tweet
    • How long their tweet needs to be with the image in it
    • Tips on how to actually upload an image to Twitter
    • What sizes they have to make images
    • How they can generate images on their own
    • Where they can find images to use legally 
    • What sets a good picture apart from a bad one upon Twitter
    • Should you label people in images
    • Should you use photo collages
    • What colors you should use to stick out
  4. Measuring Your Strategy’s Success
    • What results they should be prepared to get
    • Which metrics to look at
    • Where to find them in your analytics
    • How to adjust the above mentioned to get better results

Essentially, you’re re-doing the second step, but in a more controlled, organized manner.

5. Revise, remove, and reorganize information in each section.

Now comes the fun part: editing your outline. Might already done the hard element of actually thinking of your ideas. Now, you’re tightening up your outline to include only the most relevant info, revising the sub-bullets to actually make sense, and reorganizing the particular sub-bullets to tell the most logical story.

First, let me show you what I’d cut — shown in bold.  

  1. Introduction
    • Images work really well on Twitter (find study)
  2. Crafting a Twitter Image Lead Gen Strategy
    • How to create a lead on Twitter
    • How often they should twitter update images
  3. Ways to Create the Perfect Lead Style Tweet
    • How long their own tweet should be with the image in it
    • How to actually upload an image to Twitter (This is a pretty simple step that someone might already know if they’re looking over this post. )
    • Exactly what sizes they need to make images
    • How they can create images by themselves
    • Where they can find images to use legally 
    • What units a good image apart from a negative one on Twitter
    • Should you tag people in pictures
    • Should you use photo collages
    • What colors you should use to stand out (Don’t believe there’s hard data on this, just speculation. Let’s reduce it. )
  4. Measuring Your Strategy’s Success
    • What results they should expect to get (The study in the initial part should cover this bullet point. )
    • Which metrics to look at
    • How to get them in your analytics
    • The way to adjust the above to get better results

I cut details usually because the sub-bullet failed to add value to the write-up or the reader would already know it. That’s a pretty good benchmark to remember if you’re not sure regardless of whether to cut something.  

Following, we’ll reorganize the remainder of the sub-bullets and rework them to sound like actual takeaways. We will also turn some of the sub-bullets into sub-sub-bullets. Here’s what this outline looks like now:

  1. Intro
    • Images tend to work really well on Twitter (find study)
  2. Crafting a Twitter Image Lead Style Strategy
    • How to produce a lead on Tweets
    • How lead generation fits in with all the rest of your Twitter technique
  3. How to Make the Perfect Lead Gen Twitter update
    • How to choose the right image
      • Creating it on your own own 
      • Finding images to utilize legally
    • Customization the image for Twitter
      • Sizing images for Tweets
      • Tagging people in images
      • Using Photo Collages
    • Optimizing the rest of your twitter update
      • How long the tweet should be with the image within
  4. Measuring Your Strategy’s Achievement
    • Which metrics to look at
    • How to find them in your analytics
    • How to adjust your strategy to get better results

Ta-da! A much more comprehensive outline which makes your post easy to create.

6. Include links for your examples and/or data.

This really is purely a time-saving trick. After you’ve fully fleshed out there and then trimmed your summarize, you should look for examples and information to support these claims. Yourself a source to support your arguments, just add them being a note underneath the section — that way, when you go to write this, it’s all organized for you.  

7. If any kind of details come to you that you don’t wish to forget, add them in.  

Last, but certainly not really least, spruce up the summarize with anything you don’t wish to forget while writing. Maybe you’re writing the submit right away — or maybe you will not have time to actually begin for a few more days. Irrespective, having these details in your summarize will make sure you’re not missing anything. I do this often easily think of a terrible pun or even pop culture reference whilst outlining… and trust me, which something I definitely didn’t want to forget.; )

This my final outline:  

And that’s it! Feel free to take that will methodology and apply it to types of posts. Once you have a solid outline, writing the actual posting should be a breeze. It’s even easier if you work from a template.  

Editor’s note: This post was initially published in May 2014 and it has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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