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Most guides on how to write a blog post give you twelve steps, a keyword research tutorial, and a checklist longer than the post itself. No wonder it feels like a bigger job than it should be.
Here’s what I’ve learned after writing well over 200 blog posts: it doesn’t have to be complicated. You just need a process that works for you, and one you can repeat without dreading it.
In this article, I will show you a simple, practical process for writing a blog post for your business. Not for professional bloggers or content marketers. For you, the business owner who has things to say and clients to help, but keeps putting “write that blog post” at the bottom of the to-do list.
Let’s fix that.
Step 1: Decide what you're writing about (and who it's for)
Before you start writing anything, you need two things: a topic and a person.
The topic doesn’t need to be groundbreaking. Think about what you already know. What questions do your clients keep asking you? What do you find yourself explaining on calls, in DMs, or in voice notes? If you’ve said it more than twice, it’s probably a blog post.
A quick side note before we go further: if you just read “what do you find yourself explaining on calls” and thought “I’d rather just record myself saying it,” that might be worth paying attention to.
Blogging is one format, but it’s not the only one. If talking comes more naturally to you than writing, a video or a podcast might serve your business just as well. The thinking in this step still applies either way; you still need a topic and a person. But the format should fit you, not fight you.
If you want to know more about which channels are right for you read “How to Know Which Marketing Channel Is Best for Your Business”
Now, the person. You’re not writing for “everyone.” You’re writing for one specific person who has a specific question or problem. Picture someone you’ve actually worked with. What were they struggling with before they came to you? What did they not know? Write for that person.
This is also a good moment to think about what that person might type into Google. You don’t need keyword research tools for this. Just ask yourself: if my ideal client were searching for help with this topic, what would they actually type? That’s your starting point for making sure people can find your post.
Step 2: Get your thoughts out of your head
Don’t open a blank document and try to write your blog post. That’s the fastest way to stare at a cursor for twenty minutes and then go make another cup of tea.
Instead, just get everything out of your head first. This isn’t writing yet. It’s dumping. Open a notes app, grab a notebook, or record a voice note on your phone. Whatever feels easiest.
Write down everything you know about this topic. The main points you’d make. The things people get wrong. The questions clients ask. The examples you always use. That one thing you wish everyone understood. Don’t worry about order, don’t worry about wording, and definitely don’t worry about paragraphs. You’re not writing a blog post right now. You’re collecting raw material.
If you get stuck, try explaining the topic out loud as if a client just asked you about it. You’ll find you know far more than you think; it’s just harder to access when you’re trying to type polished sentences from the start.
This is also a good moment to bring in AI if you find it helpful. Not to write the post for you, but to think with. You could paste in your messy notes and ask it to pull out the main themes, or tell it your topic and let it ask you questions to draw out what you know. Think of it as a colleague you’re bouncing ideas off of, not a ghostwriter. If you want to go deeper on using AI for content, I’ve written a separate post on how to create content with AI without losing your voice.
By the end of this step, you should have a messy pile of thoughts, and that’s exactly what you want.
Step 3: See what's already out there
Before you start organising anything, take ten minutes to Google your topic. You’re not doing this to copy what other people have written. You’re doing it to get a feel for what’s already out there so your post doesn’t just repeat it.
Read through three or four of the top results and pay attention to two things: what they all cover, and what none of them mention that you have in your braindump.
The things they all cover are things your readers will expect you to address, too, even if briefly. But the things nobody mentions? That’s where your post gets interesting. Your own experience, the way you explain it differently, and/or the angle that’s specific to your audience, that’s what makes your blog post worth reading instead of the ten others that already exist.
This step is also a confidence booster, honestly. You’ll often read what’s out there and think “I actually know more about this than most of these articles cover.” Good. Now you know your post has something to offer.
Step 4: Give it shape
Now take your brain dump from Step 2, your research from Step 3, and start turning it all into a rough structure.
Group the related points together. Decide what comes first and what follows naturally. Turn the main chunks into working headers. You’re creating a map you can write into, not a finished outline.
Something like:
- Header 1: The problem or question
- Header 2: The first thing they need to know
- Header 3: The practical bit
- Header 4: The thing nobody else talks about
Your headers will be more specific than that, obviously. And you’ll want an intro and an ending to the post. But the point is: once you have a structure like this, you’re no longer writing a blog post. You’re just filling in sections. That’s a much smaller job.
Don’t overthink the order either. You might rearrange things once you start writing, and that’s completely normal. The structure is there to help you start, not to lock you in. Believe me, half of the time while I’m writing a blog post, I end up splitting sections, combining them or moving them around. The order gives me a way to get started, the actual writing makes me realise what makes the most sense.
It even happened in this blog post. Step 3 originally was going to be part of another step, but I felt it deserved its own section.
Step 5: Write it, section by section
To make it easier on yourself to write the post from the structure you came up with, we’re going to go section by section. First, write the introduction. Then you pick your first ‘real’ section header and write that section. And so forth. Work through them in order, from top to bottom.
Writing in order matters more than you might think. Each section builds on what came before, and you’ll naturally create bridges between ideas without having to force them. If you jump around, you’ll spend twice as long trying to make everything connect afterwards.
And now, because you’re only writing about a small section of the blog post, it will feel a lot easier. You know that section’s topic. You have things to say; you can do this.
A few things that help:
Write like you talk. Aim to make it sound like you’d explain this to a client. If it sounds like you’re writing an academic textbook, loosen up. Yes, you want it to be professional, but it should fit you and your clients.
Don’t edit as you go. As my VA explained it: “Give your first draft permission to suck.” Get the words down first. You’ll clean everything up in the next step. Trying to write and edit at the same time is like trying to drive with the handbrake on.
Give yourself permission to write rough. If a section isn’t coming together, don’t let it hold the rest of the post hostage. Write a rough version, even if it’s just a few sentences that capture the general idea, and move on. You can come back and improve it once the rest of the post exists. Sometimes seeing the finished draft as a whole makes the tricky section much easier to write.
And as I said, as you write, you’ll notice things shifting. You might get halfway through a section and realise the point you’re making actually belongs in the previous one. Or you might find that two sections are really saying the same thing and work better combined.
That’s not a mistake. That’s the writing process doing what it’s supposed to do.
Move things around, merge sections, split one into two. Your structure from Step 4 got you started. Now the writing is making it better.
Step 6: Read it back and clean it up
You’ve got a full draft. Well done, that’s the hardest part behind you.
Now step away from it. Make a cup of tea, go for a walk, sleep on it if you can. You need a bit of distance before you can read your own writing with fresh eyes.
When you come back, read the whole thing from top to bottom as if you’re one of your clients seeing it for the first time. Don’t fix things yet.
Just read and notice:
Does it flow? Can you follow the thread from one section to the next, or are there jumps that feel abrupt? Are there places where you’ve repeated yourself without adding anything new? Is there anything you’ve assumed your reader already knows that they might not?
Now go through it again, and this time, tidy. Tighten sentences that ramble. Cut anything that doesn’t earn its place. Smooth the transitions between sections. Read tricky paragraphs out loud. If you stumble over a sentence when you say it, your reader will stumble over it too.
This is also a good moment to check: does it still sound like you? It’s easy to slip into a more formal voice when you’re writing, especially if you’ve been reading other people’s blog posts for research. If a sentence sounds like it belongs in someone else’s blog, rewrite it in your words.
You don’t need to do this ten times. One good read-through to notice, one to tidy. That’s enough.
Step 7: Get it ready to publish
Your post is written and polished. Now it needs the finishing touches before it goes live.
Add it to your blog platform. I didn’t mention it before but I recommend writing your blog posts in a document, like Google Docs. So now is the time to add it into your blog platform.
Find or create your images. Most blog posts need at least a feature image, the one that shows up when people share your post on social media or see it on your blog page. However, if you write a longer blog post I recommend adding images within the post itself too. It helps break up the text, can help show what you’re saying and can be good for SEO.
Write your meta description. This is the short text that appears under your title in Google search results. Keep it to one or two sentences that tell someone what they’ll get from reading your post. Think of it as the reason someone clicks.
Check your links. If you’ve mentioned other posts on your site, tools, or resources, make sure the links actually work. A broken link is a missed opportunity at best and a frustrating experience at worst.
Schedule it or hit publish. You don’t have to publish the moment it’s ready. If you like to batch your work, schedule it for a day and time that works for your audience. If you’ve been sitting on this post for long enough already, just press the button. Writing a blog post for your business doesn’t require perfection, and a published post is infinitely more useful than a draft that lives in your documents forever.
After the post: what to do with it next
You’ve published a blog post. Take a moment to appreciate that, because most people who say “I should blog more” never get here.
But the work you’ve just done is worth more than one blog post.
What you’ve written is a piece of informative content. That’s one of six content types I use in my framework, and it’s good to know that blog posts will almost always fall into this category. Why? Because it means a blog post is one format of one content type. It’s not the whole picture. And once you see it that way, you start to realise just how much you can do with what you’ve already created.
You could rewrite your blog post as a newsletter with a completely different angle. Maybe the blog covers the “how,” but the newsletter shares the story behind why you know this. You could pull out individual points and turn them into social media posts. You could use the structure as the basis for a video or a podcast episode. One blog post can become five or six pieces of content across different channels, without starting from scratch each time. I’ve written more about this in my post on repurposing content.
If you’re curious about the six content types and how they fit together, take my free content quiz to find out which types you naturally gravitate towards. It might change how you think about your content, not just your blog posts.
Hey, you! Does 6 content types sound like a lot? I promise it’s not!
Now click the button and take the quiz! It’s worth it.
And if you’ve read this whole post and the thought of writing your first (or next) blog post feels a little less daunting than it did at the top, then this post has done its job. You don’t need a complicated system. You need a topic, a person, and seven steps. You’ve got all three now. Go write something. 😊
