You don’t have to be a professional writer to come up with great blog posts week after week. You just have to follow this tried-and-true formula for content marketing success:

 

Start with a timely topic – If you can tie your blog to a current trend or news topic, you’ll have an easier time catching attention and piquing the interest of readers.

 

Create an outline – Writing is hard when you’re starting from scratch, but it gets a lot easier when you have a rough outline in place. Don’t worry about following the rules you learned in high school, just put a few ideas down as a starting point.

 

Do some writing – The same applies to actually writing your blog posts. Set aside a little time and just let your thoughts out. Don’t edit yourself in the beginning — just worry about listing your main points and making them is easy to understand as possible.

 

Clean up your blog post – Eventually, you’ll come up with something that’s starting to look like a great post. Trim redundant ideas, re-word paragraphs that seem unclear, and organize your content in a straightforward way. If you really want to make a great impression, enlist the help of someone else who can proofread your post before it goes live and point out any troublesome sentences or sections.

 

Give it a great title – Let readers know what they’ll learn from reading your post, and try to get them interested in your ideas. Blog post titles with “how-to” or “five tips for…” are always popular, so feel free to use those as a starting point for your own articles.

 

Add an image and links – You might be done writing, but your blog still needs a couple of extra touches. Consider adding an image to the words (or better yet, a bit of stock video) to help it stand out. Also, look for places in your blog where you can link back to your website or social profiles.

 

Keep an ongoing list of blog post ideas – The best blog ideas usually come to you when you aren’t writing. Keep a notebook or computer file with all of your ideas and inspirations so you can come back to them later.

 

Blogging, like most Internet marketing activities, gets a lot easier when you break things down into simple steps. So, follow this roadmap and start filling your blog with great content — it keeps readers coming back again and again.