Create your blog post in less than 2-hours using our illustrated blog template explained here.
The original customer story published on the HubSpot Academy focussed on our tips to optimise your blog in 45-minutes. We now go one stage further, with a template to help you write and optimise your post in under 2-hours. We have used WordPress in this example.
You can refer back here to the original HubSpot Academy customer story post or read down to see it in practice using our blog template. You can view the result at the end of this post, about the charity NSPCC Childline.
HOW TO OPTIMIZE A BLOG POST IN 45 MINUTES
First lines
Body copy
Sub-headings
Links to further information
Call to Action
Post sign off and credits
Optimising the post
While above we have now defined our core content, we still need to optimise the post. These SEO elements may be a starting point of the article plan, and you can revisit after the post is written.
Quality control
We are half way there.
We recommend many rounds of edits for the flow of the story and using free tools such as Hemingway Editor and Grammarly. We would be as bold to say you should not publish anything unless you have run them through these two tools or equivalent ones.
There is a recommendation in journalism to spend 50% of your time on the title. In our online world, this appears to be ever more important.
One of the fabulous things about blog posts is that you can forever go back to re-edit them to improve the flow and readability as well as for SEO.
Practice…lots
Try using this template to help get you started or as a guide. Publish as much as you can manage across many platforms, your personal blog, Medium, LinkedIn, and business blog. While you may not start off as proficient and authoritative, over time, you will be able to publish articulate, high-quality content in an hour or so.
VIEW THE RESULTING CHILDLINE POST EXAMPLE
You can download a PDF of this article as mobile viewing is not optimal and as a quick reference guide. The content from the original NSPCC Childline post appears in blue in the PDF with abbreviated coding or as screenshots with captions above.
Featured image courtesy of HubSpot
