Overview of workshop we have run in the past to help new bloggers get started

1. Blogging Workshop

2. Step 1: Audience
Buyer personas (sometimes referred to as marketing personas) are fictional,
generalized representations of your ideal customers. Personas help us all -- in
marketing, sales, product, and services -- internalize the ideal customer we're
trying to help, and relate to our customers as real humans.
Having a deep understanding of your buyer persona(s) is critical to driving
content creation that is genuinely helpful to existing or potential customers.
Action: Figure out who you want to help!

3. Step 2: The Point
I’m surprised at how many blog articles have nothing to say…they simply
don’t have a point.
When your article has a point, it gives readers something memorable to latch
onto. They are more compelled to share it, comment on it, and engage with
it. An article with a point is an article that accomplishes a mission and is
therefore successful.
Action: Brainstorm and write down 8 – 10 points that you
would want to land with the audience. Pick 1

4. Step 3: Brainstorm
You have something unique to say. A personal view that is a
result of a set of experiences over your lifetime that are as
individual as your finger print. These experience allow you to
share something unique to yourself with the world.
Unique content is more likely to be linked and shared. People are
going to go to your content because it’s one of a kind.
Action: Spend 15 minutes brainstorming 10+ thoughts pulled
from personal experience related to the point selected during
Step 2.

5. Step 4: Structure
This is one of the most-overlooked aspects of an article. In order
to communicate a concept, you need to organize your thoughts.
When you have a structure, it will be reflected in the layout of
the article. An article will have headings, subheadings, paragraph
breaks, and maybe a bullet point or two.
All of these features provide flow for the reader, and make it
easy to skim and digest content.
Action: Time to get organized…look for common themes
across the bullets brainstormed in Step 3 and group!

6. Step 5: The Call
The call to action is the magic ingredient that makes a blog post
worth it all. You have all this wonderful content with an amazing
point, beautiful structure, and referenced internal links. Now
what?
The reader is ready to respond, to do, to click, to engage. What
do you want them to do? Whether it’s capturing an email
address, visiting another page, or downloading an ebook, you
need to have an explicit call to action for each post, every time.
Action: Brainstorm and write down 2 – 3 calls to action that
you think would should HELP them. Pick 1

7. Step 6: Internal linking
A great way to build out the brainstormed content you just
organized is via an internal linking strategy. The goal here is to
reference and link to other, related posts within your blog -- and
can serve to enhance and deepen the overall value of a blog.
Use enough internal links to make it worthwhile. I’d suggest
anywhere from 3 to 10 internal links per post.
Action: List out 3-5 possible resources we would want to
share…think videos, infographics, articles,, etc

8. Step 7: Checking Your Work
Two important parts on the check. Make sure your grammar is tight
and that your content will resonate with the target audience.
Hemingway (www.hemingwayapp.com) is a great site that helps you
reorganize your copy to drive clarity. Simply copy and paste sentences
in and adjust based on the feedback from the automated tool. Second
is to get a “human” review done with your blogging buddy. The goals
is for your partner to assume the role of the target audience and
validate that your “help” is landing clearly.
Action: Run your content through “hemingway” and review
session with your blogging buddy.

9. Step 8: Length
The perennial question: How long should my blog post be?
The short and easy answer is, as long as it takes to say what you need to say.
But -- and this is a significant “but” – right sized is better. We believe that 500
– 750 words is about right. If your post is in the 200 to 400 word range, then
you could probably stand to beef up a bit.
Action: Short on words? Hit the research links again to make
sure you are going deep enough with key points and details.

10. Step 9: Your Image
You won’t see me post without an image, not even sure if you can on
LinkedIn to be honest. But the goal isn’t just to add something for the
sake of adding it, rather it is to leverage a picture that is the correct
tone, appropriate for the targeted audience, and ideally enhances
your content in some way.
Action: Hit up Google to find something that fits the tone of
the post and don’t forget to cite the source!