Neil Patel 
Neil Patel is a New York Times bestselling author. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations. He has helped Amazon, Microsoft, Airbnb, Google, Thomson Reuters, Viacom, NBC, Intuit, Zappos, American Greetings, General Motors, and SalesForce grow through marketing. His marketing blog generates over 4 million visitors per month (51% of them spend money on paid ads), his Marketing School podcast generates over 1 million listens per month, his YouTube channel about marketing has over 31 million views and 765,000 subscribers, he has 1 million Facebook fans, and 372,000 Twitter followers. He has spoken at over 310 conferences and companies around the world. He started his own first website at age of 16, and is currently 36 years old, so has above 20 years of experience in - SEO (Search engine optimization), target-based marketing, SEM (Search engine marketing), etc.
What is Blogging?
Blogging refers to writing, photography, and other media that’s self-published online. So, in other words, it is putting out and uploading self-generated information and media on the internet. Through this blog, we have listed blogging tips and tricks, a guide to achieving maximum engagement, layout tips suggested by the all-famous and renowned digital marketing pioneer Neil Patel. So! stay tuned and read till the end for Neil’s foolproof guide to how to write the best blog, cause you’re in for a ride!
Start with a Title
Whenever you search for a blog, and multiple recommendations pop up, what attracts you towards one blog more than others? It is its title! After a viewer searches for keywords and lands on multiple choices, he gauges how engaging, informative, and entertaining a blog will be as compared to others. After making sure through the title that the reader’s time will be well spent reading a piece of content. Out of 10 people being presented with your title and link to your blog, only 8 will read the title. And again, out of those 8, only 2 are likely to read your article, given that it piques their interest, hence highlighting the importance of an engaging title. Out of those 8 people, 6 did not click through, so they form an impression of your content through the title only, hence if you have an interesting title, then people are likely to remember your brand in the back of their heads. The success of your blog depends heavily on the title for no matter how mind-blowing your article might be, people will only get to read it if the topic is interesting enough. So, before starting to write the blog finalize the title. If you ever need the inspiration to write a headline, always seek guidance through magazines. They use creative ways to write an engaging headline that attracts viewers to read through the content. Neil prefers to stick to the basics such as “How to write a blog” or “Blogging for Beginners” or “Blogging 101” or “Everything you need to remember to write an amazing blog”Leverage the Skyscraper Technique
So, by now you have written the title and have a good idea in mind as to what content you’re going to write in the blog. Next step, which gains you extra profit will be to read competitors’ successful blogs on the same topic, analyze their content and then polish your content to be multiple times better than theirs. It makes you one step ahead of your competitors on the reader’s leader board and also establishes readers’ trust in you and by proxy, your credibility.A good Introduction is essential
Till this point, you have caught readers’ eyes and have landed them on your page. Given their word limit, blogs can get a little boring especially if they are visually dense. But the reader will still read it through if you keep them hooked with a good and informative introduction. Keep the introduction to the point, concise and informative to give the audience the lay of the land. For example, this blog was referenced from multiple of Neil’s YouTube videos, one of which had this introduction – “Hey! Do you want to get the formula that breaks down how to get at least 37k visitors per blogpost?” This introduction keeps the audience eager to keep engaging.Body Writing Tips
Now that you have given the audience a good idea of what’s coming their way, you can finally start writing the blog. A few tips that help to keep the blog interesting throughout are: Segregate the information into multiple subheadings and paragraphs. This allows the content to look visually clean and so keeps the audience hooked. Make content easily skimmable. Subheadings allow the reader to selectively read content for their benefit and allows them to get information more conveniently, which builds their liking and trust in your content and will keep the audience coming back to your site. Paragraph length shouldn’t exceed 5-6 sentences. Long paragraphs tend to get monotonous and boring.
Add Links Abundantly
Of course, your content will have multiple sources, and multiple references so do not be shy in linking all those references in the blog wherever appropriate. You can add links to other websites and your website too. Adding links builds your credibility manifolds as it shows that you are accountable for what you have written and you are ready to give credit where it’s due. It makes you look like an expert as you aren’t trying to steal anyone’s thoughts, you are open about your sources, and you appreciate others’ work. Linking to others gains you brownie points too, as their content will receive more traffic through the link, and backlinks flatter content creators. Remember, whenever you backlink someone, make sure to mail them informing them the same, and subtly asking them to share it. Since their content is linked in your blog, they are more likely to share it on social channels as it builds their credibility too.Wrap up with a conclusion
Till this point, you have completed your blog content and you are planning to wrap it up. Always wrap up with a conclusion. Do not get creative here, write the word conclusion for its subheading. Many people after clicking on the article scroll down to and read the conclusion first, and if they find it to be impressive enough, then only will they read the rest of the blog. Give an informative summary of what was discussed in the blog as the conclusion.Extra Tip! – End with a Question
This was one of Neil’s very insightful tips that increase engagement exponentially through minimal efforts. End with a short question related to the topic – which will urge readers to think about the topic, be more involved in it, and they are more likely to comment on your post with the answer to the question, resulting in increased audience interaction. Not only you but they will benefit from it by actually exercising their knowledge. This will make the blog feel like a 2-way conversation again leading to building the audience’s liking towards you.Blog Post Layout
Along with content, the presentation of it holds equal importance to keep readers interested throughout. Following is the sequence of parts of the blog to keep the audience hooked:- Start with a bold title
- Add a relevant image
- Link out to subsections of the blog
- Introduction
- Start with Content (add multiple subheadings)
- Make abundant use of images, links, videos, etc. throughout the article wherever appropriate
- Wrap up with a conclusion
- End with a Question
Blog Promotion
After you write and publish a blog, the time comes to promote it and share it to increase the audience flow. Following are some of Neil’s tactics to conquer the promotion game:- Alert the audience through emails and push notifications from the subscribers’ list about the new and informative piece of content uploaded on your site.
- Check which influencers are promoting and sharing your competitors’ blogs on the same topic. You can do it using multiple websites such as Buzzsumo. Email those influencers letting them know about your blog and politely asking them to share it, reminding them how yours is better than the blog they’ve promoted previously.
- Add posts about it and share it on social media channels.
- As mentioned earlier, ask people whom you have linked to promoting your blog.
Website Layout Tips
The layout of your website plays an immensely important role in the interaction of your audience. Following are some Layout tips to achieve a highly professional style of the website:- Keep Layout visually simple. People won’t stick around to read other of your blogs if they find the workspace to look cluttered and unorganized.
- Add a top bar that stays at its place when you scroll and add a hello bar on it. The Hello bar can be used to collect input from viewers such as emails for the mailing list, push notification subscriptions, leads, etc. or it can be used to display information such as discounts, offers, etc.
- Add your social media channels linked on the top bar and make sure they don’t scroll away. This will increase the likelihood of people sharing your content more on social channels.
- Always have a sidebar.
- On the top right corner add the first call to action, and on regular intervals keep adding a call to action with different layouts to visually appeal to the audience while asking them to interact. Remember if the blog post is longer than the sidebar, make sure that the last call to action sicks along.
- In the sidebar, link your best and most famous blogs posted to date, this will attract viewers to stay on your website for more time and become more familiar and comfortable with it.
- Add the About section in the sidebar, describing yourself or your website, this adds to your platform’s credibility.
- Add an easily accessible search bar for people to efficiently search for content.
- For extra brownie points, add accessibility that allows impaired and differently-abled people to listen, read, interact with and understand your content better.