How to Write a Perfect Blog Post [INFOGRAPHIC]

Once upon a time, not too long ago, I wanted to write the perfect blog post. I wanted to write the most shareable, clickable, readable, memorable post that I could. But how? The first stop in my quest? An infographic from Salesforce Canada. (To see the infographic itself, please check out the end of this post. It's down there.) One of its suggestions was to start the post with a story.

But before I could even write the post, I needed to come up with the best headline ever. According to Salesforce Canada "your traffic can vary by as much as 500% based on your headline. There's a science to writing the title of your post, and ignoring best practices will ensure your post gets largely ignored."

Writing the Best Headline Ever

Readers tend to only absorb the first 3 and the last 3 words of a title so I had to keep that in mind. Including numbers is a good idea. And strong adjectives and trigger words and keywords. Including a promise is a good idea, too. The infographic told me to try a formula:

Numbers + Adjective + Target Keyword + Rationale + Promise

So here goes:

10 Infallible Social Media Hacks That Will Allow You to Write Best Blog Post Ever

Hmm. How about this instead?

How to Write a Perfect Blog Post

I'm going to try that one, I think.

Answer Readers Questions Upfront

Readers want to know what a post is about, if they should read it and what they will get out of it. And they want to know those things early in a blog posts. Is this early enough? The infographic also suggests using lists and bullet points so I'm going to try that too.

This post follows my quest to write a perfect blog post.You should read it.Through witnessing my misadventure, you may learn from my mistakes and you may learn how to write a perfect blog post yourself.

Use Subheads in Social Media Marketing Blog Posts

Subheads help guide your reader through your text. Sometimes people will just skip through your blog post and only read the text under the subhead that interests them or answers their question. Subheads are also a great opportunity to include keywords, see my very sneaky insertion of "social media marketing" into my subhead just now.

Keep Your Main Text Short and Sweet

Most readers will only read 28% of it anyway. An article of 1600 words is considered a good length and takes about 7 minutes to read. (Oh no, I think this blog post is going to be too short unless I think of some great ideas in short order. How many minutes have you been reading it? One? Half a minute? Darn it.) Break up the text as much as you can with things such as lists.

6 things to include in your post to break up the text:

ListsSubheadsChartsBullet pointsPull quotesVisuals

Include Great Visuals

We remember visuals 6 times more easily than text. Blog posts with more images attract more backlinks, which is important for SEO. Images should be beautiful, relevant and you should include information about where you got them. I got this image from Shutterstock when I looked up "stunning image" and it was taken by Andrey Armyagov.

I guess that this imagine isn't that relevant, thought it is beautiful and memorable. This image is also from Shutterstock and I found it when I looked up the word "relevant."

This image thing is harder than I thought. The infographic tells me to include one image per every 350 words, and at least I've done that. 

Include a Call-to-Action

Now it looks like I've included all the tips that the infographic gave me, so I'm almost done, except for a call-to-action. Why are we writing these blog posts anyway if not to inspire people to action? Include one in the sidebar, head or footer. Don't ask for too much. Let me see, what do I want you to do? I want you to write a great blog post. Do it! Do it now! 

Click To Enlarge

Via Salesforce

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