A 5-Part Blog Post Framework That You Should Steal

August 31, 2015

Writing consistently great blog posts isn’t easy. You have to come up with ideas, do some research, arrange your thoughts in a logical way that others can understand, and your content has to be interesting if you ever hope to keep people as readers. To top it off, do a quick search for blog post tips and you’ll find thousands of suggestions you should be including in your blog posts. Maybe it’s just me, but writing great blog posts that get read and convert can often feel overwhelming — and impossible for us mere mortals.

A Blog Post Framework that Works

Writing great blog posts is easier than you think. All you need is a blog post framework. The framework we're about to share with you will help you grab a reader's attention, push them further into your content, and entice them to convert on your call-to-action. Using the framework below will not only better serve your readers, it will also give you a structure that makes blog writing much easier. Here's the framework we use for every post (and we want you to steal it):

1) Attention Grabbing Headline

According to Brian Clarke from Copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people on average will read the headline copy of your post, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. Think about that — only 20% of people who see your post will actually click through and read it. The reason behind such low click-through rates? Boring headlines. If you want people to click through and read your post, your headline needs to jump off the screen, smack them around, and cause them anxiety if they choose not to read it. That’s a tall order for 150 characters, but it’s possible. In fact, we wrote a post about how to write better headlines. Go check it out to learn how to grab readers’ attention with your headline.

2) Intriguing, Short First Sentence

The first sentence of your blog post is just as important, if not more so, than your headline. [Tweet "If your headline grabs a readers' attention, the first sentence is what keeps them there."] Done right, the first sentence of your blog post stirs up enough intrigue, interest, and promises that your reader simply can’t turn away. Think of it as a drug — your reader has had a taste, and now they need more.

So what constitutes an intriguing first sentence? Here are some suggestions to hook your readers and push them further into your content:

Incorporate an old saying and twist it around
Address a need your readers have (like I did in this post)
Make a bold claim — just make sure your content backs it up
Be funny
Pose a question your reader is asking
Try to explain your post in 1 sentence

To do this well, you should anticipate spending quite a bit of time obsessing over that first sentence. Say it out loud, share it with others, pick it apart like your English teacher did back in high school. It’s that important.

3) Scannable Body Copy

Adam Thompson at Search Engine Journal points out that “your blog post could contain the best content in the world, but if doesn’t look inviting, attractive, and easy-to-read, you’re less likely to earn social shares or natural backlinks.” Failing to use a blog framework that pushes readers further into the content and allows them to digest it in quick, easy bites can cost you a lot. People simply aren’t willing to read massive blocks of unformatted text on a screen. They want content that's easy to read, skimmable, and highlights the main points right away. When they don’t find that, they leave — and your content goes unread and unshared.

Look at this post: we’ve made it easy for you to read and scan the content. You don’t even have to read every word to know how to write a great blog format. How did we do it?

Subheads: our tips are sectioned off with subheads, making them easy to see when you scroll through the page.
Short Paragraphs: James’ number one rule for Sweet Fish writers — paragraphs are not to be over 3 sentences long. Any longer and it feels like too much text on the page.
Bolded Statements: any extremely important information is in bold to make it stand out in the copy.
Pictures: ever wonder why we include pictures in our blog posts? It helps break up the content, highlights the important points, and keeps you reading.

Sectioning off your content this way will make your post easier to read, which will keep people on your post longer.

4) Conclusion

If you’ve ever written an essay for school, you’ve already heard this 100 times or more: you need a conclusion. As great as your content may be, you can’t just end after your last point. It’s like leaving a conversation mid-sentence. Sure, you may have gotten your point across, but people probably won’t want to talk to you again. The conclusion of your post helps tie readers back to the reason they clicked on your headline in the first place. It’s easy to get lost in the nitty-gritty of the content — to be reading a section of the post and forget why it’s important to you in the first place. I mean, do you even remember the main focus of this post after diving deeper into a specific point?

That’s what your conclusion does. Think of it as your “if you only remember one thing, remember this” statement. It’s one last chance to get the information to your reader and entice them to take further action.

5) Call to Action

Speaking of further action, the final component of any great blog framework is a killer call-to-action. At it’s core, a call to action is a prominent, targeted statement, offer, or question that compels your visitors to convert into a lead or a sale. It gives your reader a logical next step to take.

Every blog post should include some kind of call to action. It gets your reader accustomed to expecting a next step and it helps turn your blog into a conversion machine. A call to action can be anything from a newsletter subscription to an ebook download to a question that facilitates discussion. Here are some other great call to action ideas:

30 day free trial
Discount on a product or service
Enticing the reader to check out your services page
Free download (that requires an email address)

Remember: always include a call to action. We do — and it helps us grow our business.

Conclusion

We use the blog post framework above on every post we write. It not only helps us write great content, it also makes sure that content is easy-to-read, enticing, and converts. We’ve done the leg work to develop and test this framework for our own posts and the posts we write for clients — and we’re letting you take it, free of charge. Try this blog post framework on every post you write, and see if it doesn’t increase your readership and the conversions on your posts.