How to write a blog in less time
If you’re a small business owner or manager with a website, you’ve probably heard that having a blog on your site is good for SEO and getting more traffic to your site via Google.
Over the years I’ve worked on hundreds of blogs for various businesses and I can confirm it can be a time-consuming task!
Some people seem to be naturally gifted when it comes to creative writing with words just pouring out on to the page. Others sit staring at a blank Word doc or piece of paper for an hour before they end up putting it aside for another day.
The one thing you need to do before you start writing a blog
Those who write easily and those who struggle do have one thing in common though: writing a blog brief ahead of writing the actual blog improves the final outcome.
Sitting down with aspiring bloggers and helping them to produce a detailed blog brief has been my most successful method in helping people to write their own content.
I’m going to share that method with you here and provide a blog brief template for you to take away and use ahead of writing your next (maybe your first!) blog.
What is a blog brief?
The blog brief is a marketer’s best friend when it comes to creative writing with a purpose. After all, what are you writing a blog for, if not to promote you and your business in some way? Blogs aren’t a hard sell, but they should have a defined marketing objective.
Before we start writing… we fill out the blog brief template
Over the years I’ve crafted the perfect blog brief template and I’m sharing it with you here as a freebie! I’ve found that filling this in ahead of sitting down to write the blog helps as it forms the skeleton of the blog. You just have to fill in the gaps.
So, what does the blog brief contain?
1. Working title for your blog
You know you want to write a blog providing some advice to your potential customers (much like this one!) but maybe you aren’t set on the final title yet – that’s fine! Write here what the general topic of your blog is. You can come back to it later and refine it into the perfect title for your blog.
2. Key stakeholders of the blog
If you work for yourself, you might be the only person who needs to approve this blog before it goes live. However, most people blogging for a small business have colleagues who need to check a blog over before it’s posted. These are your key stakeholders for the blog, and they should be listed here.
If you are collaborating with an external company or expert, they will also be a stakeholder who needs to confirm they are happy with the blog before it’s posted.
3. Establish goals for your blog
What’s your marketing objective for the blog? It probably isn’t as direct as “sell X, Y or Z” straight off the back of one blog, more likely it’s to help get some prospects into your marketing funnel. Perhaps you will be aiming to grow your email subscriber list, generate downloads of some your content or keep contacts engaged with you so that your business is front of mind when it comes to making a purchase decision.
4. Why are you writing this blog now?
Don’t write for the sake of writing! It’s always good to think about the topic you plan to cover in a blog and question why you’ve chosen that topic. Maybe it’s newsworthy or you’ve recently been to an event and want to write the blog as a follow up to capitalise on the noise around the event.
If you have a list of blog topics that you are working through, it’s a good idea to update the list and move topics around in order to prioritise based on what’s happening in your business and the outside world.
5. Who is your blog audience?
The answer to this question might not be the same for every blog article. If you have more than one customer persona that you’re marketing to, which one is this blog addressing?
Audience attributes to consider:
Market sector.
The number of employees your target organisation has.
If they are an existing customer or a prospect.
What level within the organisation is the desired reader?
If your target audience is Gen Z, check out this article on 15 tips for marketing to Gen Z.
6. What is the offer/call to action at the end of the blog?
No blog is complete without an instruction to the reader on what to do next. Even if you are simply signposting them to a related blog, don’t let them drift away from your site too easily. Blogs are the ideal opportunity to invite the reader to subscribe to your email list so that they can receive related content straight to their inbox. Feel free to link to product pages on your website if you’ve mentioned a specific problem that your product or service can solve.
7. What are the key messages to include in this blog?
This is my favourite section! Here you should create a list of everything you want to cover off in your blog. When you decided to blog about this particular topic, you must have had an idea about what you wanted to cover. Note it down here and information you can include to further make your point.
When it comes to writing the blog, these points form the skeleton that you write around. Once your first draft is complete, go back and tick everything off in this list to make sure it’s included.
8. What facts support these messages?
Referring back to everything you’ve listed in the key messages section, start gathering any evidence, examples and statistics that you can include in your blog to prove your point. Maybe you have a client case study that’s a great example of your ideas in action. If there are stats from third parties or industry bodies that you can reference, great!
9. How will you measure success of the blog post?
After all the effort of writing and posting your blog, you’ll surely want to know how it’s performing. Useful measures for blog performance include:
Blog page views
Comments
Engagement (shares/likes etc) on social media.
Keep a record of this for each blog and start to set KPIs (key performance indicators) for your blogging. As your audience grows with regular posting, you’ll begin to smash your targets which gives you a boost to carry on blogging!
10. How will leads generated by the blog be followed up?
If you are capturing a reader’s information via your blog, perhaps in the form of mailing list subscriptions or form completions to download your gated content, what happens next?
If you’re a small team (or team of one!) you still need to decide who picks up the baton and what the next point of contact looks like. Perhaps it’s enough that the reader gets the next piece of content delivered to them as per your email schedule but if you have a CRM system in place and you notice that this person has been an avid reader for a while now, it might be appropriate to reach out and ask if they’d like to have a meeting. Document here who does what regarding lead generation from your blogs.
11. Budget for your blog
I’ve included this here in case there are expenses such as hiring an external copywriter. Perhaps you are using this brief template to instruct them what to cover in your blog. If you are writing the blog yourself then clearly the cost to you is your time. I’m not saying you need to record that here, rather that you might want to set aside some budget to give your blog post a sponsored push on social media.
12. Approval process for the blog post
If you’re a sole trader, then it’s probably just down to you to check that the blog is good to go. If you are part of a larger organisation, then make a note here of who needs to see the blog and approve it before it goes live. If you’ve partnered with someone to write the blog, then they may also have stakeholders who need to give the nod before it’s posted.
13. Deadline for posting the blog online
I use this to give myself a deadline for getting the first draft written and then for the final draft. If you have others who need to approve the blog before go-live, note here when is realistic for them to read it and give approval. The idea of a deadline is you have something to work towards which will help you get a move on! If a blog is linked to something happening in current affairs you might want to set a tighter deadline than you usually would.
Conclusion
A blog brief is essential planning ahead of sitting down to write the final article. Time invested in thinking through your marketing objectives for the blog and why you have chosen a particular topic will ensure you aren’t writing for the sake of blogging.
Going through the steps in my blog brief template will mean you’ve done the groundwork which makes it easier to write the blog. You will have a framework to complete that gets the creative juices flowing and ensures your final piece of work covers everything that it needs to.
It’s time to start writing your blog!
I hope breaking down the blog briefing process like this helps to get you started on your journey as a blogger or helps you to spend less time staring at a blank page.
I’d love to hear if this process has helped you with blog writing - please leave me a message in the comments if it has.
