How To Write a Blog Post: Style and Format Guide (2021)

If you just took the life-changing leap to start a blog, then you’ll have a lot of ideas waiting to get out.

How do you fill those white screens on your blog with eloquently crafted blog posts that will bring you relevant traffic over time?

In this post we’ll look at:

• How to target relevant blog topics
• Using high-quality conversational writing structures
• 3 blog posts every blog should have
• How to add a touch of style too

Having blogged through several competitive niches and industries over the years like travel, WordPress and personal finance, I’ve seen a thing or two that works.

This is by no means a complete guide on how to write a blog post (because you’ve got to insert your own secret sauce!) but it’ll get you pointed in the right direction. If you’ve got blogging tips to add, drop us those in the comments!

How to find and target relevant blogging topics

By now we can all agree that your blog posts should not cover what you had for lunch.

In fact, WorldOMeter.info indicates that often over 5M blog posts are written each day.

So picking boring topics is pure blog suicide.

How can we find topics people are actually curious about? Well you may just have those topics on your mind already, and if so, great!

If you’re having a bit of writer’s block, try search on Google Trends.

For example, before writing this post I had a few ideas on topics like:

1. Writing style
2. Blogging fonts
3. Google SEO
4. How to start a blog

Putting each of the 4 topics I might write about into Google Trends shows me right away which blog topics are the most popular in terms of number of monthly Google searches.

So clearly if I wanted to write about a blog topic with higher relevance, I’d choose blogging style or maybe Google SEO as topics. Blogging fonts is pretty obsolete (though not a bad topic by any means).

Having a tool like Google Trends in your back pocket can help you make big decisions on how to write your next blog post.

Using high-quality conversational writing structures

There are blog post styles that don’t work.

For example I could write about how to get original Nike Michael Jordan shoes signed by him for $10 a pair but if the blog post looked like one big chunk of text then no one would find that info.

Then there are blog post styles that do work.

One blog I always refer people to is NeilPatel.com because it’s just so conversational.

You can almost hear Neil talking to you through the writing.

There are three things you need to remember to be conversational and write posts that people consistently want to read:

1. Let people know why you’re writing aka what the problem is
2. Offer a solution
3. Offer proof for your own knowledge (like case studies, personal experiences, past successes, jobs you’ve completed)

Then load it up with questions for the reader every few sentences.

This sort of strategy will help you stay away from essay style writing which you probably don’t want to do in the first place.

Lastly, make sure you blog posts leave people wanting a little more. You’re not trying to write a new encyclopedia here, although that can help blog post SEO.

Leaving things a little open-ended with room for discussion is a great way to spark comments.

3 blog posts every blog should have

We all like seeing a few types of blog posts on blogs we read but it’s hard to pinpoint them.

Well here they are:

1. Welcome to the blog post: Tell people who you’re writing for, what they should expect and a little teaser about your own story and goals. Here is our example when this blog launched: Welcome to DearBlogger in a British Accent
2. Ultimate guide: Write an epic, exhaustive guide on your greatest expertise which you think people will need. This is where you can be the encyclopedia. Here is our example when this blog launched: The Ultimate Guide on Where to Blog
3. Controversial piece: Shake things up a bit in your niche with a different approach to a topic people love debating but are perhaps afraid to. Here is our example when this blog launched: The Truth about Premium Themes

The benefits of knowing about these types of blog posts which we’ve been telling our audience who create a blog on YouTube about for years is two fold.

You have a little do-to list when you start off so you won’t get writer’s block.

Then, once you have this solid foundation of blog posts, your ideas should naturally lead you to the next type of post, and the next and so on. You won’t have to worry about where to start!

How to add a touch of style too

The style component of blogging is the trickiest one of all.

You will spend hours upon hours up late tweaking the style of your blog through custom images you make and custom css.

I just hope the edits you try to make eventually work 🙂

The fact that this part of blogging is so tricky is why I put it at the end of this blog post.

There are, however, as per usual with our pieces of advice lately, some good rules you can follow!

1. Less is more. Focus on doing little things like the titles, comments or sidebar of your blog really well and NOT bombarding your blog with tons of widgets that don’t make any sense alongside eachother.
2. Often times what makes or breaks your blog is what you don’t show, not what you do show. For example you don’t need to show that you have zero comments, or not many categories, or not many authors. Delete these items and put your best foot forward.
3. Find an idol. If you can find a blogger who’s blog and messages you love, learning a bit about how they style their blog can go a long way in showing you how to do it too!

You can also get advanced with blog styling and use Google fonts. No guide on how to write a blog post would be complete without this:

youtube.com/watch?v=tQ48rARlWEo

If you’re looking for specific fonts that work:

• Body: Proxima Nova, Helvetica, Arial
• Headers: Arial MT Rounded, Lato, Roboto

These are just a start; common fonts that are great for simple communication.

On top of fonts, knowing how to edit a blog with custom CSS, which is particularly useful for removing parts of your blog, is a key skill:

The combination of Google fonts for your body text or even just your headers plus knowing how to style with custom CSS basically makes you a professional WordPress designer. It’s a pretty badass combination.

Conclusion: You now know how to write a blog post in WordPress

Plus, you’re much further ahead of the pack of hundreds of thousands of beginners out there each week who will have to learn how to write a blog post from scratch on their own.

Good luck! Did we miss any part of how to write a blog post which you’d like to add? Let us know in the comments below because it could really help someone out! Thanks!

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