Everyone Can Write One Blog Post During Lockdown. Prove Me Wrong.
There are a variety of reasons that people don’t see themselves as writers or bloggers, however, I don’t believe that being inexperienced or ‘not the writing type’ in your mind should hold you back from blogging.
Whether you’ve written content before, you’re starting from a blank page, or you’ve never even thought about writing a blog post, I firmly believe that you have something worth sharing. If you have ideas or opinions to share with your peers (or the whole world!) then there is a format for you to get your first blog post written. Content is an amazing way to connect with the world during these challenging times and I encourage you to consider it.
If you already have experience flexing your literary muscles, then the tips I intend to share as downloadable templates in the following post probably won’t be necessary to get your creative juices flowing. However, if your writing experience is limited, the following formats might be just the springboard you need to get you on your way to your first blog post.
To me, writing isn’t necessarily about the love of flowery prose — although I’m partial to a bit of alliteration myself (and I’m now thinking I should have gone for an alliterative title here like “Best Blogging Tips for Beginners…” or “Simple Steps to Success for Inexperienced Writers…” but I digress). Blogging for me is about relentlessly offering value to people with similar interests; to help solve a problem for a customer, to share what you’ve learned at a conference or to simply make someone’s life easier by sharing a lesson you’ve learned!
I’ve been hosting a series of internal webinars with my team at Version 1 in recent months to encourage our fellow Version 1'ers to find their inner bloggers. The following steps are what I always encourage my colleagues to start with:
1. Overcome the obstacle of just getting started
This sounds obvious but sometimes people jump the gun and get worried about the quality of their writing before they’ve even given themselves a chance to consider what they might write about!
Choose a topic that you know about such as:
- Trends within your profession/industry
- News within your profession/industry
- An area that you have recently upskilled in/ learned about
- An area that you are currently upskilling in/ learning about
Head over to Google and search your topic:
- What is trending in this area now, anything you would like to chime in about?
- Anything missing from what you are seeing that you could add to based on your unique experiences/knowledge?
- What can you add to the conversation, what is your unique angle/perspective?
- Does something spark your interest?
- Does it all annoy you; do you disagree? That’s a valid point too
Choose ANY title:
A terrible one is great to start with, I’ve never stuck to my original title, so don’t get hung up on it, and let the content of the final post inspire you.
2. Select one of my favourite ‘secret sauce’ formats
The Listicle
Don’t ‘X’ out of my blog post when I tell you this…but there is a lot to be learned from those irresistible clickbait articles on Buzzfeed. If you think that 10 Reasons Cats are Smarter Than Humans and 71 Secrets From Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone don’t have any value for your new blogging career, think again.
Now before you go compiling a list of 32 Reasons My Neighbour Is Out to Get Me, I want to make it clear, I’m not advising you to kickstart a career in clickbait here. I’m actually asking you to look at the science behind these articles and why they work so well.
Photo by Alex Kondratiev on The FOMO Checklist Unsplash
The ‘Listicle’ is an article in list form. Humans LOVE lists. Our brains LOVE lists. The list is numbered in order and you scroll down to see what’s next. This predictability allows us to develop what psychologists call “ schemata “ — the mental maps we build up from experience which gives us an idea of what to expect. These mental shortcuts allow us to understand and take in information more easily.
The listicle is a highly popular format as it is a short, snappy and agile way to present learnings in a numbered or bulleted list and I can’t recommend this format highly enough for beginners. Sit down and write five things you’ve learned about a specific topic and the rest of the blog will write itself! I’m going to bundle the template for the Listicle in with the FOMO Checklist down below because while they’re not sisters, they are in fact cousins.
After my glowing endorsement of the listicle format, it will come as no surprise that my second favourite format is the FOMO Checklist! I can feel my colleagues on Version 1’s Marketing team picking up the Listicle jar for me to put a euro into as they read this.
At a glance, there isn’t much between these formats but they serve two very different purposes for me when I’m sharing information. While the listicle generally serves to state information or simply inform the readers of the facts, the FOMO Checklist is much more strategic. Also for anyone in the dark on the meaning of FOMO, I believe Millenials coined the term as an acronym for ‘fear of missing out’. But please don’t tell any Xennials.
Your aim with this format will be to offer a list for the user to use themselves to essentially ‘check off’. You are telling them to make sure they consider the items on your list if they want to be successful in achieving what it is that they are trying to do (the topic of your blog post). Your title should be giving them major FOMO. Nothing is harder to resist than an article telling you to read it or you’ll miss out. Except if it’s one of those odd flashing images about why bananas are bad for you, I’m pretty sure those ones are phishing scams and to be avoided.
Feel free to save the following template for the Listicle & The Fomo Checklist.
If you have visual difficulties with these images you can access the whole bundle of templates from this article as a PDF here instead.
Key Takeaways
This format is great for people who are very involved in industry communities, those who attend conferences or those who consume a lot of content such as new books or films. This format is almost a hybrid of a news story with a review.
With this, you could be covering what you learned at an event such as a conference for example. The key is to take down your notes throughout the conference of what you found interesting, did you learn something interesting, was there an inspiring quote, was there exclusive news released by the speakers?
There is very little thinking to do here — but you have to be on the ball in terms of gathering your info by jotting it down in the notes on your phone for example. This format could be used for sharing your thoughts from events, seminars, webinars, podcasts, films, books, college courses, training days, etc.
The News Article
The news article is a great format for fact fans. If you find yourself naturally keeping up to date with the latest in technology or the best practices in Project Management then writing news articles to ‘break’ news on what’s happening in your industry could suit you.
With this option, we are aiming to be an objective and neutral source of reliable information for your connections. This is about stating what has happened without any distractions — and doing so quickly. If you want to give your opinions and take your time — the Key Takeaways format above would be the format to go for. To build a reputation as someone who can be trusted as a reliable news source there are some things you can do to deliver a strong news article as described in the template below.
3. Upload, format, proofread, spruce and proofread again!
Regardless of the format, here are my tips for ensuring your blog post is looking its best before you go live:
- Install Grammarly on your browser and go through all the areas it highlights as errors or suitable for improvements
- Read the final post out loud — this is a good way to find repeated words or things that a spellchecker won’t alert you to
- Ask someone to read it for you and provide honest (but constructive) feedback — at least for the first time
- Feverishly re-read it several more times and hover a clammy finger over your mouse as you’re about to click ‘Publish’ and hope that you haven’t missed something glaringly obvious. This might sound intense but it is, in fact, the true thrill of writing at its core. Trust me!
My Final Tip
If you are a business wondering how you are going to apply my tips, my love of Content Marketing has taught me one rule; people won’t read pushy sales content. And if they do it certainly won’t endear them to your brand. Put simply by David Beebe, Vice President of Global Creative + Content Marketing, Marriott International:
“Content Marketing is like a first date. If all you do is talk about yourself, there won’t be a second date.”
Thanks for checking out my post today and please feel free to save my templates to get you started!
Róisín Healy is a Content Marketing Manager working at IT Service Provider Version 1, focused on creating content for Version 1’s blog, Bytesize Insights newsletter, Customer Success Stories and the company’s One Zero One podcast.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
