Blog template to publish in under 2 hours

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

Opencity Inc., blog template, Childline, content marketing, how to illustration — The first sentence of any article should be one with which the reader agrees. We use 1-2 introductory sentences using heading 3 <h3> and should contain your focus keyword. We continue in 1-2 sentences of paragraph text to explore what the reader should expect in the post, before the *more* tag.

Body copy

Opencity Inc., blog template, content marketing, how to illustration — Try to grab the reader’s attention with the use of a quote, image, video or heading at the start of our body content after the more tag. Here we choose a quote followed by a video. The earlier the video appears in the post, the more views it will receive, and the inclusion of video enhances the number of shares. We use this HTML code to embed the videos.

Sub-headings

Opencity Inc., content marketing, blog template, how to illustration — The use of sub-headings both connects with the way we scan content and is valuable in optimising your post. We use heading 2 <h2>. You can add a relevant image, video or quote to go with your heading(s).

Links to further information

Opencity Inc., blog template, how to illustration, content marketing, blogging — Our posts offer readers links to the various online and offsite channels of the organisation we are featuring. It uses outbound links which open in a separate window.

Call to Action

Opencity Inc, blog template, blogging, how to illustration, content marketing — Every blog post should contain a clear Call-To-Action (CTA). You can use a button the same colour as your brand.

Post sign off and credits

Opencity Inc, blog template, blogging, content marketing, How to illustration — We finish our post content with a second CTA to the related series. Here we encourage readers to nominate a charity of their choice for us to feature in the future. Finally, we always credit the photography with an appropriate link.

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.

Opencity Inc., blogging, SEO, Blog template — These are all important. If you are using WordPress, then Yoast SEO is a big help. The excerpt text and featured image is will appear in your MailChimp RSS feed automated email notification.

Opencity Inc., blogging, featured image, SEO, Blog template — Featured image – The image file names and alt text, containing the focus keyword is important.

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.

Opencity Inc, Hemingway, blog template, blogging, content marketing, How to illustration — Hemingway Editor. Grade 8-9 is regarded as plain English.

Opencity Inc, blog template, blogging, content marketing, How to illustration, Grammarly — Using Grammarly content quality control on this post.

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