10 Steps for Writing a New Blog Post
Recently I was at a get-together with a group of writers. It was a beautiful June day and the conversation took a sudden, unexpected turned to the topic of gardens. It seemed that everyone except me was an experienced gardener and, not only that, they all had a great love for gardening.
When it became apparent that I wasn’t joining in the conversation, a friend suggested that I tended to my blog the same way others tended to their garden. Hmm, I thought. Interesting. What is the connection between planting a garden and writing a blog post?
I did what I often do in situations like this and turned to Google where I discovered this post by Marie Iannotti, with ten steps for how to start a new garden— and discovered, much to my surprise—there are great similarities. So, with that in mind, I offer you gardening as an analogy for how to write a new blog post:
1. Start Small: Like the backyard gardener's patch, your post doesn’t have to be that big (or long, in this case). A blog post isn’t a white paper, a research report or a treatise. It can be a few lines and possibly a few paragraphs. Some suggest keeping the word count from 250-500. If you decide to write a longer post you can always format so the post will be more readable e.g. chunked content in numbered lists, shorter sentences, utilize “read more” to move to a second page.
2. Evaluate and Choose a Site: This step is akin to choosing your topic. This can be influenced by questions your customers have asked you, conversations you’ve heard discussed in the blogosphere, something you’ve been thinking about writing, a response to another post which inspired your thinking.
3. Check the Soil: I think of this step as being similar to searching the internet to see what else has been written about the topic and coming to the topic with knowledge and your own fresh perspective.
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