Your Blog Post & Content Marketing: How To Organize Your Thoughts
by Andrew Millar
If your blog post and content marketing seem overwhelming to you, then let’s spend a little time simplifying the process.
A blog is you writing about your business or your interest. It’s a chance to take the subject matter of your website and explain it in much fuller detail than a few eye-catching headlines. There is no great secret to writing a blog; it requires you to put the seat of your pants on the seat of your chair and begin to order your thoughts. An outline is a great help at this point. Consider it to be a map of what you want to say. Aren’t sure of what you want to say?
Grab a friend and consider using the mind-mapping technique: start by having your buddy write in the middle of a blank sheet of paper the title of your subject with a circle around it. Now you are going to free associate any ideas that come to mind about your chosen subject and your buddy just writes them down anywhere on the page running spokes from the initial subject word to the additional topics. Some will be related or subjugated to each other so they will end up as smaller spokes off each other. Take ten minutes or so to do this. It is important not to judge or evaluate these thoughts as they show up; just get them written down. When you feel that you’ve exhausted the topic, take a break and then come back to the page and review this map you have created of a whole random list of topics about the one central subject with which you began. Now all you have to do is take another sheet of paper and decide the order in which you want to write about each of these sub-topics and presto! You have your outline. Check out this description: http://www.mindmapping.com/
The toughest part is done. Now just write a few sentences describing in detail each of your topics and before you know it you have a five or six hundred word blog completed.
Oh, yeah, remember to make it interesting.
You want to educate your reader but you don’t want to bore him or you’ll lose him. It can be helpful to have links to other posts that help to explain your subject. Here’s an example of that: http://weblogs.about.com/od/bloggingtips/tp/TipsBeginnerBloggers.htm
Always keep in mind the purpose of your website and make sure your blog serves that purpose. And, by the way, make sure your website design also serves your purpose. If your website is about outdoor camping, don’t be blogging about the last hockey game you went to, no matter how much you loved it, unless you camped out at a local park and you write about that experience, too.
Finally, if your website is providing services or products make sure you find a way to talk about them. Write about how your product will make your reader’s experience simpler, easier, faster, better, etcetera and then consider making him an offer at the bottom of your blog page. Now your blog gets to inform your reader and perhaps turn him into a user of your services.
Congratulations! You have just created a blog post with content marketing!