Tutorial: How to Put a Blog Post Together
Lesson 22 from: Blogging to Sell Your ProductsMegan Auman
Tutorial: How to Put a Blog Post Together
Lesson 22 from: Blogging to Sell Your ProductsMegan Auman
Lessons
Class Introduction
03:40 2How to Get Traffic to Your Online Store (With One Simple Marketing Action)
16:56 3But I Don't Have Time to Blog
12:36 4Setting Up Your Blog (as Quickly as Possible)
15:35 5Hot Seat: Choose Your Blogging Platform
03:32 6How to Turn a Social Media Post into a Blog Post
19:59 7Challenge: Turn a Social Media Post into a Blog Post
02:17 8The Role of Blogging in Your Business
21:15Creating Ideal Customer Profiles for Your Blog
18:30 10Hot Seat: Ideal Customer Profile
18:16 11Choosing an Angle for Your Blog
16:59 12Hot Seat: Choosing an Angle for Your Blog
05:14 13Challenge: Find Blogs to Inspire Your Content Strategy
02:46 14What Should You Blog About: Content Ideas for Your Blog
21:48 15Choosing Your Content Mix
01:47 16Hot Seat: Choosing Your Content Mix
06:58 17Creating Compelling (and Search-friendly) Post Titles
13:18 18Using Images in Your Blog Posts
22:51 19Tutorial: Creating Product Round-up Images for Your Blog
11:14 20Challenge: Brainstorm Your Next Four Blog Post Ideas
01:44 21Hot Seat: Four Blog Post Ideas
09:48 22Tutorial: How to Put a Blog Post Together
10:21 23Promoting Your Blog Posts
14:57 24Getting the Most Out of Your Blog
10:25 25Hot Seat: Blog Critique
06:22 26Measuring Results and Maintaining Momentum
25:37Lesson Info
Tutorial: How to Put a Blog Post Together
So we kind of already did this, in terms of looking at how to put a blog post together. Because way back in the beginning of this class, it feels like forever ago now, we turned a social media post into a blog post, and I walked you through this. But I want to walk you guys just a little bit in more detail through how to put a blog post together again, so you can see my work flow, but you can also see how quickly this goes. So the first thing that I'm going to do is develop a blog post idea and a tentative post title. And sometimes, for me, develop a blog post idea is going to Polyvore and look for something that catches my eye, and build an outfit around it. It does not have to be crazy. Again, if you think about this idea of develop a blog post idea, as starting with an image, so what do I want to show? What is it I want to show? And we didn't really do that with you, Toni, but I think that can help you too right? What do I want to show? And then, thinking about a tentative post titl...
e. What might my customer look for, type into Google if they were looking for this image? So I'll do that first. Then, I'll create or find images for the post. So if I need to make a roundup I'll go make a roundup. If I need to just wade through my computer and find the product images that I'm gonna use, I figure out what I'm doing. Then, I personally like to draft the text for my post in Evernote. I just find it's a lot less stressful to write when I'm not like in the blogging platform, feels like a lot of pressure. So I like to put a little draft that I could just copy and paste in. And then from there, I create the post so I'll do my title, upload images, make sure I've got my text, make sure I've got my links, and go from there. Alright, so we're gonna go ahead, add new, and we're gonna use this image, that we created in the last segment because why not? Right, we just did it. So I'm gonna let you guys practice. If you were my customer, what would you type into Google or Pinterest to get to this image? What would you say? Fresh outfits for spring maybe? Maybe. Since it's only one outfit, I wouldn't use plural. What do you think? Maybe, spring outfit. I think spring outfit is definitely gonna work. What else can we say in there? Ideas for blush? That's exactly what I'm thinking, right? Blush, blush is the dominant color that sorta popped up there, so let's maybe go with something like, we could go spring outfit inspiration, blush and denim. And then, I'm going to categorize this. So, somewhere I conveniently have a spring style. I'll put it in a few other places too. Then I'm gonna go ahead and add my media. So, upload that file that we created, and you will remember when we saved this we added in a bunch of keywords. Look we've got, casual spring, denim, blush, blouse, necklace, there're some already in there. So I'm gonna go ahead and upload this. So I can go ahead and say, so I might try to make old text a little bit different from my title, if I want. So I might say, like I might even do something like, since I can have a little fun with this and it's gonna show up on Pinterest like, casual spring date night outfit idea, blush, denim, and heels. So I might throw in a few extra keywords in my old text because that will show up as my Pinterest description. I'm going to keep it centered, it's not gonna link to anything and I'm going to insert it. The Polyvore images are a little smaller, so I'm gonna keep this full size, 600 by 950. That's about right anyway. So now I've got that in there. I, personally, tend to work in the text editor, because the visual format just annoys me, but you can see there it is in our visual format. So what I'll do here then is now I'm gonna go ahead and put links so I'm not gonna make you guys watch through this, but I'll say like blush top, you know, cropped denim, et cetera, et cetera. I think the next thing was my, you know, leaf pendant. So I'll go through and I'll do that and then I like to write a little description. Something like, wouldn't, this is not gonna be perfect but you know. Wouldn't this outfit be so fun to wear on a spring date night? This is not really the tone that I would use, personally, so I'd probably change this, but I would do that. What I would probably actually say, and I'm just gonna talk about it instead of typing it is, because I just introduced that necklace, I'd probably say something like, Oh I just released this, you know, leaf necklace, I'm so excited about it. I think it would be so fun to wear with this spring date night outfit. So that way, they get a little bit more understanding that this blog is created by the person who created this product. Does that make sense? And then if I wanted to get really fancy, I would do something like, sometimes I add an add more tag so that extra content doesn't show up when you're just scrolling the blog, but it shows up in the whole post. And I might say something like, you know, The Monstera leaf necklace is available now, that's not how you spell available. Available now, dot, and then perhaps I even, go ahead and add the image of my product in there. So that even though they may have been excited about the post because they liked the jeans or that Chloe bag, but then they're like, oh here's the necklace again, so it's a little bit more of a reminder. And in this case, so I would add my old text here, but in this case since that product is available, now I'm gonna go ahead and also make that image linked to my product. So if they click on the image, they get there, and then I'll put a link in the text as well. So, we'll keep that there. So then, the last, so we've done this, we've added our text, we've added our images, and remember we never want to miss out on linking to things. So even though I put that link in the image, I would also make this sentence be something like, in my online store, and then we make, in my online store, or available now in my online store, also linked to our product. And again I would finish out, just so we're clear about this I would add all of the items in the roundup, and make them all links. Not doing that because that's boring, you don't need to see me put a link in five times. So generally, that's it. And then, I don't usually mess with much else. You may want to just take a minute, and take a look of what it's gonna look like in SEO. So, in this case by putting this list here, this is not the best for SEO. So maybe, I want to edit my meta description here. So instead of starting with like the list of words, I can start with something like, blush and denim are a great combination for a spring date night outfit. So that still sounds conversational, but it's got a lot more keywords in there. Make sense? And you can do, so this in Wordpress, is a plugin that I use called Yoast, but you can actually see if we were in the blog editor in Shopify, down here they have a search engine listing preview as well, and you can edit and do the same thing to the meta description. So that way if you are starting your post really conversationally, you can go back and edit your Meta description with something that still sounds conversational or whatever tone you want, but is a little bit more keyword rich. Make sense? And then from there, I would, this is gonna look a little bit crazy because it's we're obviously like halfway through writing a post. I always like to preview everything before I publish it just in case. So I would take a look, make sure all my links work, maybe make sure my images aren't giant as they are at this moment. And then I would go ahead and hit publish. Make sense? Perfect. And again, so this is just kind of the anatomy of the post that I'm putting together. Any questions about actually putting a blog post together? And you guys saw literally, how fast that was right? We made that image really quick in Polyvore, I pulled it together, I made some stuff up, I threw in some links, and I hit publish. Theoretically. So, anyone have any questions? We have some people who are still a little unsure about the concept of meta data, maybe you can just do a quick overview of that? So I am the most untechy person ever, but basically your meta data is the thing that in your Google search shows up below your post title. So anytime you search for something on Google you have a post title, and then you have a brief description. If you are lazy and don't edit the meta data, that's a hard word to say, if you don't edit that, it's just gonna pull the very beginning of your blog post, it's just gonna take whatever you've written first, which sometimes is helpful and sometimes it's not. So if you know that you tend to write, like I have a hard time, I want my blog post to sound conversational, which means that I don't always have those keywords right up front, so I'll go in and edit those. And Google, when they crawl, they crawl, it's the first 160 characters, or whatever that is, that's what Google crawls. So they crawl the post title, crawl just means, they read it looking for keywords, so they crawl the post title, and then they crawl meta data in the beginning of the post. So that's why we want to edit that.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials
Bonus Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Trang Le
I don't agree with Megan's assessment that writing a how-to process will only attract your peers and competitors, not your ideal customers. I know a lot of graphic designers who post design tutorials frequently and it only helps raising their profiles. Writing a how-to post doesn't have to be like shooting in your foot because: * You don't have to share everything. There's more to great designs than knowing how to draw a certain thing. Composition, color, typography etc all come into play. * Even if you're given a step by step tutorial, it's very likely that you will stumble into a lot of issues or it takes you too much effort and time to complete it and it's better to hire a professional designer. Web building tutorials are everywhere, but web developers and designers still have their places. There's a big difference between knowing and understanding. * Even if you're professional designer, sometimes it's better to buy from your colleague than to make it on your own because no designer is excellent at every aspect of design and for a designer, time is as much valuable as money. For example, web designer may need to purchase custom typefaces from a font designers, and reading a blog which indicates that the writer knew his stuff will inform the web designer to make a rightful decision. Other than that, the course is rich information packed with a lot of actionable strategies and real fact about the blogging landscape.
Varvara Lyalyagina
I went straight to Polyvore and created a blog post. Not as fast as Megan was talking but who cares the blog post created and this is the best result of the training. http://hometocome.com/2017/05/plany-na-leto-2017.html Feeling super motivated. Megan makes it sound easy to complete and absolutely not overwhelming. This training is like a fresh air. Thank you!
a Creativelive Student
Lucky me! I stumbled upon this class and watched in live on air last night. I've now bought it! There is gold in this class and totally recommend it to anyone. Megan is so easy to listen to and I'm looking at her other classes too! Thanks Megan. You just made blogging a lot more fun! x