“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.”
While preparation is important in teaching, how you present it to the audience is more important as it will be the basis of whether you will be able to relay the information well or not.
When it comes to creating blog posts, how you sort out the layout, the imagery, the color, the videos, and other content will have a big impact on the entire blog’s engagement. They are all important factors in getting the attention of your readers.
Especially with how-to blogs that need an in-depth explanation, it is important to present it in a way that your readers will certainly understand.
Now, how-to blogs are proven ways to get more views. But the question is, are you doing it the right way?
If you jump on to Google Trends and look for the term “How-To”, you will see that since 2004, there’s been an upward slope for the term which means that there’s been a lot of people searching for it until now.
And that's typically where your opportunity comes into, to improve your own web traffic with how-to blog posts. More importantly, reach out to those new customers as you start your journey.
So today, we will look at what is a how-to blog, why it is important, and the steps on how to write one effectively.
And of course, we will look at some of the tools that we use here in Crocodile Marketing to create interactive images and videos to support our blog posts.
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What is a How-To Blog?
“How-To” Blog provides your readers with a step-by-step guide to doing anything. How-To blog posts give you an amazing opportunity to position your company as a customer-focused and selfless organization as you’re laying out a tactical approach to fixing a problem or addressing a need without asking for anything in return.
This helps to make your brand synonymous with trust because you’re basically sharing what it is that you guys do the best.
But how do you write an effective How-To blog post that gets you more views or traffic?
How-To Blog Elements
To be able to write effective blog posts, there are proven and tested steps of writing an amazing how-to blog.
1. Introduction
When writing a how-to blog post, it is best to really start with an introduction where you address the problem that you’re about to undertake and teach the person, share your tactics, and experiences.
In your introduction, highlight the reason why the topic is important, what industry it applies to, and what you will be covering.
2. What is [Term], and Why Does it Matter?
After your introduction, the next step would be to discuss the term or the topic and why it matters as some readers may not have an idea about the topic you are trying to explain how to do.
Your readers may not also understand the importance of the topic unless you introduce it to them and explain how it benefits them if they know how to do a certain thing.
3. Tips and Reminders for [Term] (Optional)
After laying out the coverage of your topics and explaining the terms, you can choose to add tips and reminders to further help your readers understand the topic.
If you are tackling down a difficult task, your readers might feel overwhelmed. You can recommend them some tips on how to best approach the concept.
4. Closing
To make your how-to blog post more compelling, wrap up your post with a great closing. Remind your readers about the key details of your topic.
In this part, you can also point your readers to other resources you may have on your website.
5. Call-to-Action
Another thing that you should not miss on your how-to blog is the Call-to-Action (CTA).
It's very important to have a call-to-action on your blog so when somebody comes to your blog to learn or to follow the steps forward, you have an opportunity to take them to the next step.
Your CTA might be to download a PDF, to make a phone call, to send a message, or to make a purchase, anything that creates an opportunity to increase engagement.
To give you more idea on how to write blog posts the right way, you can download free blog post templates from HubSpot. It does include the how-to blog, but it also includes some other types of blog structure that you can also utilize for your website.
Now, while it is important to know how to write a how-to blog post, it is likewise important to get very clear on the targeted keyword that you want to focus on because there's no point in writing a how-to on a topic that there is no search volume.
Image Tools
As mentioned earlier, everything that you include in your blog posts has a great impact on the entire blog or website.
Embedding images, videos, and other interactive elements on your blog posts help boost the engagement of your blog. Short GIFS or videos help with social media posts when promoting your blog article.
To give you some tips on how you can create interactive imagery that you can use to support your how-to blog posts, we will introduce two of the best tools that we use here in Crocodile Marketing.
1. Awesome Screenshot & Screen Recorder
Awesome Screenshot & Screen Recorder is an annotation tool that you can use to create high-quality screenshots and screen recordings. It is an app that you can add to your Chrome as an extension. You will then see its icon in line with the search bar allowing you to easily capture your screen anytime.
2. Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform that allows you to create modern images, documents, and other visual content with ready-made templates that you can easily edit and download.
Now the advantage of Canva when creating videos or GIF is that it allows you to do little snippets that we can also join together.
What makes Canva a really powerful tool in graphic design is its ability to download files in numerous formats. With Canva, you can download interactive imagery as either a GIF file or an MP4 file.
What’s more, is that Canva has a drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste functions which helps you to create your visual content easily.
Conclusion
“How-To” Blogs give you an opportunity to position your organisation as an expert in your field. By writing more how-to blog posts, you are helping your website gain more engagement, and eventually, more traffic.
