One of the most essential features of content marketing is that it is just as much about marketing as it is about writing. In other words, when you are working with content, you can’t purely rely on your marketing abilities – you should also be skilled in writing.
But even if you have never written something before, you can always start at some point. It’s relatively easy to start your own website or blog on WordPress and start publishing posts there. Hence, here’s the beginner’s guide to writing a blog post in WordPress.
1) Create Your WordPress Blog
The first step is, of course, to create your WordPress blog (or website). If you are doing this as a hobby, you probably shouldn’t worry about getting everything perfectly right. But if you are doing it for business, it’s worth spending some time planning your next steps to avoid making mistakes. Here’s how you can create your WordPress blog:
- Choose Your Web Hosting: While WordPress is free, you will still need to pay for the web hosting provider you choose. Find the most popular options and choose out of them (e.g. BlueHost, WP Engine, SiteGround, etc.)
- Come Up with A Domain Name: Along with your web hosting, you will also have to pay for your domain, but you first have to brainstorm ideas and come with a name for it. Try to think of something relevant to your niche. If you are still unsure, use one of the online domain generators to help you find something you like.
- Install WordPress Software: Lastly, install free WordPress software and set up your account after signing up.
2) Set Up Your WordPress Blog
Once you have created your blog or website, you still need to spend some time setting it up. Jennifer Leigh, an expert from the paper writing reviews site Ratedbystudents , explains it this way, “It’s an essential part of running a blog or website. You need to make it look nice and function properly.” Here are your next steps:
- Pick A Theme for Your Blog: To change your design, pick a theme you like. There are thousands if not millions of WordPress themes available on the web. You can either pick a free theme or a paid one.
- Enable Features You Like: Different themes will have different purposes which means their key features may differ. However, you should still take some time to enable and disable all the features you have available to you.
- Install and Set Up Plugins: Another useful thing to do is to find relevant plugins, install them, and set them up. These can help you track different metrics, automatically check texts for mistakes, provide extra features to site visitors, and more.
3) Plan Your Content Strategy
Now that everything is ready for your website to function properly, you can start planning your content strategy. How you plan it out will determine how effective your marketing will ultimately be. That’s exactly why you should spend enough time thinking through every detail of your content marketing strategy.
Start with your budget and resources. Allocating them correctly can help you prioritize certain aspects of maintaining your website over others. For instance, you might want to focus more on the quality of your texts rather than the quantity of your video content. Considering that you want to start with blog posts, it’s better to allocate a larger portion of your budget to writing.
As part of your content guidelines, think about the quality of content you want to produce, the formats you want to work with, the tools you will be using to create the content, and the process of content creation itself. Make a complete list of ideas and topics you want to work with before you start creating any blog posts.
Think about your SEO and your marketing strategy. You need to develop internal linking on your website and get more backlinks to it (e.g. with the help of guest blogging). Perform keyword research and use the right keywords in your blog posts. Consider other ways to market your website or blog (e.g. PPC ads, influencer marketing, etc.)
4) Make A Posting Schedule
Though making a posting schedule is directly related to the point above, it’s still worth discussing this matter separately. Making a posting schedule for your blog posts is crucial for their performance. In fact, having a posting schedule is essential no matter what platform or channel you use for it (e.g. email, social media, blog, website, etc.)
To determine how often you should publish blog posts and when you should do so, it’s best to perform some research into the matter and see what other blogs like yours are doing. Then, you can test out your schedule and make adjustments. For instance, if you see that your blog posts perform better when you post them three times a week in the morning on weekdays, then it’s best to stick to a schedule like that.
If you find that posting on WordPress is not the best option for you, you can always consider a WordPress alternative for internal blogging. That being said, most beginners get used to WordPress fairly quickly as it is a relatively user-friendly platform. Moreover, there are many resources online you can consult to get to know the software better.
5) Always Start with Outlines
Once you have pretty much everything in place, you can start working on your first blog post. However, before writing one, you should first create an outline for it. In fact, make sure to always start with outlines no matter what. If you do this, you will develop an organized writing habit and will help you keep all your posts as high-quality as possible.
After all, it’s not that difficult to outline. Start with your topic and create a catchy title. Then, start your outline with an introduction and follow it up with the sections you want your blog post to have. Write a few key points you want to cover in each section and make important notes where necessary. Wrap it up with a conclusion of some sort and the CTA you want to use at the end of your blog post.
6) Write and Edit Your Posts
You are getting to the finish line now. Use your outline to write your blog post and then edit and proofread it. Here are some tips to help you make the most of your writing:
- Write in a conversational manner, as if you are talking to a friend. This will allow you to connect with your readers easier. You can also incorporate elements of storytelling into your blog posts to show that you are writing from your heart and that you are a real human being.
- Don’t use too much jargon, but don’t avoid using it completely either. Jargon shows that you know the topic well, but overusing it might confuse or irritate your audience, especially if they don’t know all that much about the topic you are covering.
- Break up your blog post into sections with subheadings and format it further with lists and quotes. Don’t make your entire blog post just a single block of text – it won’t look good and it won’t read well.
Once you are done writing, the work isn’t over yet. Editing and proofreading are meant to polish your blog post. Gregory Taylor, an expert from the custom writing reviews site Writing Judge, puts it this way, “Don’t treat editing as an extra option. It’s mandatory. You’ll be surprised how many mistakes and issues your text still has.”
It’s a good idea to read what you wrote out loud. This will help you locate sentences that sound awkward. Run your text through a grammar checker like Grammarly to correct any linguistic issues. You can also use a tool like Hemingway Editor to help you detect stylistic issues and further improve the readability of your text.
7) Track Performance and Improve
Last but not least, track the performance of your blog posts and improve your writing over time. Look at how much traffic your blog or website gets and where the traffic is coming from. Checking everything from views to comments to social sharing (note: enable the social sharing buttons when setting up your blog).
As a writer, it’s important to learn from mistakes and improve your skills over time. Educate yourself on the topics you write about and experiment with your wording (grammar, vocabulary, tone, etc.) Likewise, try out new marketing techniques to promote your blog or website. If something doesn’t work as well as you’d want it to, just don’t use it. Try out different content formats and grow your audience over time.
Final Words
Ultimately, writing engaging and high-performing blog posts for WordPress might be a challenging task for beginners. However, you will definitely see how your content quality improves over time and how you become a better writer. Use the tips above to help you get started and guide you through the process.
