Roughly 4.4 million new blog posts are written daily, with about 77% of internet users reading them. Not only that, but 60% of marketers state their content marketing produces leads, so if you’re a content writer or marketing director, you need to nail your blog posts.
But you may be wondering if it’s worth creating a blog outline. The answer is a definitive yes. Like each building has a roadmap to save it from collapsing, each share-worthy, well-written blog post needs a strong backbone – a well-researched blog post outline.
We here at Embarque believe that if you write a solid outline along with our powerful SEO analysis and backlinks, your content will continue to stay resilient like an immovable building and, ultimately, rank high in Google for years on end.
But how do you construct the perfect blog post outline? Let’s walk you through the steps involved so that you take your blog writing skills to the next level. What’s more, we have a couple of blog template examples to get you started.
Why Writing Blog Outlines is Important
Crafting a blog outline goes beyond merely planning it. You build an idea and generate flow in an organized, logical, persuasive way. Planning your outline will save you heaps of time in terms of actually writing the post and enable you to craft better-quality content. Once you’ve figured out what you want to talk about, you’ll notice it exudes your personality and style, so it’s fun and engaging to read.
On the flip side, if you google the next part of your blog post while writing, you’ll probably write low-value content, neglect your main point, and get side-tracked by other things. Planning your content by creating a blog outline can help train your thought process, preventing your mind from wandering so that you become a better writer. Ultimately, it enables you to beat the blank page syndrome.
Tools to Use
- Frase - Great for researching your content. It allows you to find references for specific sections.
- Notion and Google Docs - Turn your outlines into templates that you can recuse for future content.
- Jarvis AI - You can use this to further optimise your blog posts for search.
- Chat GPT and various AI writing tools - These can help you have something to start with.
- Ahrefs and other keyword research tools - If you’re in SEO, identifying queries with search volumes can help maximize the value of your outlines.
- AI Outline Generator - Best for generating an outline for your blogpost. You can quickly create a well-structured and organized blog post after creating outline.
How to Write a Blog Post Outline
1. Create Clear Article Takeaway
Begin with brainstorming. Jot down a few points you want your audience to take away from your blog post. This doesn’t have to be the main sections of the blog post – just everything you want your readers to get out of the content toward the end of it.
You don’t need to worry too much about being organized. Simply let your ideas loose! Leave your mind to flow – record all your ideas (even if they’re a little wild), so they don’t ruin your content further along in the process.
Let’s say you’re writing a blog post on ‘utilizing imagery to generate leaders on Facebook’. You may notice how unfiltered and haphazard the below points are. Don’t worry. We’ll streamline all of these in step two. You most likely want your readers to know the following:
- Which image platforms can you use to source imagery legitimately?
- What differentiates a standout Facebook image from a poor one?
- How leaders can craft pictures themselves
- What size do the images need to be for Facebook?
- How regularly should they post the images?
- How do they post a picture on Facebook?
- How can they generate a lead on Facebook?
- How many characters does their Facebook post need to be to accompany the image?
- What results can a leader expect to see?
2. Separate the Takeaways into Bigger Sections
Now it’s time to sift through the mishmash of ideas and categorize them into main sections. You can liken this part to arranging the laundry – every idea fits into a specific pile. Using your idea dump, you’ll discover a couple of significant topics.
Occasionally, a few of your brain dump points will become topics themselves. Typically, you’ll be able to place a number of your bullet points under one main topic. Other times, you may discover there's a topic for which you have no bullet points – but that certainly needs one.
Sometimes, you’ll need roughly four sizable sections. Yet, this depends on the subject you’re covering in the post. If you’re creating a short ‘how to’ blog post, you don’t need many sections, but if you’re crafting a comprehensive guide, you’ll probably need more.
Let’s use our example topic above to categorize your ideas into the below buckets:
1. Introduction section
2. Creating a Facebook Image Lead Gen Strategy
- How to trigger a Facebook lead
- How many times to post images on Facebook
3. Ways to Generate the Ultimate Lead Gen Facebook Post
- The required length of their Facebook (with the image in it)
- How to upload an image to Facebook
- Facebook image sizes
- How leaders can create images themselves
- Where to find legitimate images
- What distinguishes a good image from a poor one on Facebook
4. How to Assess the Success of Your Strategy
- What results you can expect to see
3. Complete the Rest of the Sections
By now, your blog outline may still appear a little basic in several areas. Some sections may include numerous bullets, while others have none whatsoever. Don’t worry. You have plenty of time to fill in the bare bits. Ask yourself: what did I miss in my original brain dump? Sure, it can be tricky to ascertain what’s lacking, but this will assist in boosting your completed piece considerably.
The next step involves carrying out competitive research to check what other published works have to say about the subject and how readers react to the content. Below, we’ve pulled together how our outline evolves – we’ve italicized and boldened everything we added. You’ll notice how the outline is looking more and more like an actual blog post:
1. Introduction Section
- Why imagery is excellent on Facebook (mention a case study)
- Steps to upload an image to Facebook
2. Creating a Facebook Image Lead Gen Plan
- How to trigger a Facebook lead
- How many times to post images on Facebook
3. Ways to Generate the Ultimate Lead Gen Facebook Post
- The required length of their Facebook (with the image in it)
- How to upload an image to Facebook
- Facebook image sizes
- How leaders can create images themselves
- Where to find legitimate images
- What distinguishes a good image from a poor one on Facebook
- Why do you need to tag people in pictures?
- Why using photo collages is important
- Which colors to use to catch attention
4. How to Assess the Success of Your Strategy
- What results you can expect to see
- Types of metrics to explore
- How to locate them in your analytics
- How to modify your analytics to get improved outcomes
Effectively, you’re going over step two, just in a more concentrated manner.
4. Tweak, Delete, and Reorder the Text in Every Section
Now it's time for the best bit: tweaking your blog outline. You’ve tackled the tricky bit of coming up with your concepts. Now you need to fine-tune your outline so that it solely incorporates the most applicable info, amend the sub-bullets, so they truly make sense, and restructure the sub-bullets so that they communicate a coherent story. Here's what you need to reduce (shown in bold text).
1. Introduction Section
- Why imagery is excellent on Facebook (mention a report)
- Steps to upload a picture to Facebook (a fairly straightforward step that most people would probably already know if they’re reading your post).
2. Creating a Facebook Image Lead Gen Plan
- How to trigger a Facebook lead
- How many times to post images on Facebook
3. Ways to Generate the Ultimate Lead Gen Facebook Post
- The required length of their Facebook (with the image in it)
- How to upload an image to Facebook
- Facebook image sizes
- How leaders can create images themselves
- Where to find legitimate images
- What distinguishes a good image from a poor one on Facebook
- Why do you need to tag people in pictures?
- Why using photo collages is important
- Which colors to use to catch attention (there isn’t factual info on this, just hearsay. So chop it.)
4. How to Assess the Success of Your Strategy
- What results you can expect to see (The report mentioned in the initial section should talk about this bullet point.)
- Types of metrics to explore
- How to locate them in your analytics
Now, let’s rearrange the rest of the sub-bullets, so they’re reorganized to sound like real-life takeaways. We’ll also change one or two of the sub-bullets, so they become sub-sub-bullets. Your outline will look a little like this:
1. Introduction Section
- Why imagery is excellent on Facebook (mention a report)
2. Creating a Facebook Image Lead Gen Plan
- How to trigger a Facebook lead
- How many times to post images on Facebook
3. Ways to Generate the Ultimate Lead Gen Facebook Post
- The required length of their Facebook (with the image in it)
- How to upload an image to Facebook
- Facebook image sizes
- How leaders can create images themselves
- Where to find legitimate images
- What distinguishes a good image from a poor one on Facebook
- Why do you need to tag people in pictures?
- Why using photo collages is important
4. How to Assess the Success of Your Strategy
- Types of metrics to explore
- How to locate them in your analytics
And voila. Now you have a much more inclusive outline which will hopefully make the writing part a walk in the park.
5. Insert Valid Links in Your Data and Examples
Including links in your blog outline is for time-saving purposes. Once you’ve fleshed out and edited your outline, search for templates and information to back up your arguments. Once you’ve unearthed a source to back up your claims, insert them as a note below the section. Thus, when you're crafting your content, you won’t have to do any research.
6. Create a Stellar Headline
So, you’ve padded out your outline. Great. Now it’s time to finalize your working headline to ensure it encapsulates the aim of your blog post. Make it attention-grabbing and action-driven. Here are a few features that make up an excellent headline:
- Action verbs
- Numbers and statistics
- Descriptive adjectives
Your objective? To create a headline that captures what the entire blog post covers. Make it catchier later. Evaluate our final outline below. If you’re struggling to produce an effective blog post, we here at Embarque offer a first-class SEO content writing service to grow your customer base. Our SEO writing services have helped start-ups transform into multimillion-dollar companies!
The Takeaway
Crafting outlines, especially for long-form blog posts, is instrumental in the blog creation process. Writing blog outlines won't take up a lot of your time. When you get used to creating them before writing your blog posts and begin seeing the advantages of doing so, you’ll never look back.
The team here at Embarque can help you with your SEO blog posts, so they work with your branding and convert your target customers. Our affordable, thorough content writing services will provide you with consistent, user-centric, SEO blog posts that please search engine algorithms and engage your audience. Get started now.
