Unlike creative writing, blog writing isn’t just about having a way with words, but also being articulate with them. Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned writer, it’s always difficult to pack a bunch of information within a set word limit in a comprehensive manner. Blog outlines can prove to be your key to success in this pursuit.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating an effective outline and converting it into a winning blog!
Gather Your Resources
Since blogs are usually information-heavy, you can’t just come up with the content off the top of your mind if you want it to be accurate. So do your research and gather the data that you want to put into your blog. You can either refer to research papers, books, articles, or just other blogs on a similar topic.
Be careful so as to not copy entire texts since plagiarism never sits well with search engines but get a fundamental idea regarding the topic you’re going to be writing about.
Create Broad Points
It’s now time for your blog to start taking a preliminary shape. Type out the title and the headings beneath it. To come up with appropriate headings, all you need to do is segregate the ideas you collected in the previous steps.
For example, if you’re creating a blog titled “The Effects of Lack of Sleep on Anxiety” then you need to narrow down the information you have collected into action points. Looking at other content with similar references can help you build a definite structure as well.
Organize Your Ideas
Now during the initial ideation, you might’ve had a ton of information to insert into the blog but as we start to build a structure, we give each point a space beneath a heading. These can later be converted into subheadings or just remain as normal text.
At this point, it’s extremely important to think from a reader’s perspective. Take a moment to ponder which out of the following points would you truly find useful. A blog that’s unnecessarily long and doesn’t add much value has no readability. So be concise and helpful.
Get Your Facts Right
If you’re writing about highly technical topics, then mere words wouldn’t cause the desired effects. You need to throw in some numbers and link in research papers. A data-first approach builds trust amongst the reader and is great to base your content around too.
Fill In The Gaps
Now that you’ve got all your points ready, you just need to fill in the gaps with more words!
Do not make paragraphs more than 100-200 words long. Readers will invariably skim through them and the hours you spend writing them wouldn’t yield too much. Also, adding in some humor or wit never hurts anybody since blogs are meant to be a more personalized kind of long-form content.
Conclusion
And there you go, with some little tweaks you’ve got yourself the perfect blog in no time. A bonus tip while deciding the order of your headings can be to arrange the points that cause the most intrigue or interest in the first and the last point. This ensures that readers go through your entire content and don’t miss out on any Calls To Action (CTA) that you might’ve added.
