A blog isn’t just a creative outlet, it’s a powerful marketing tool that can build brand authority, generate leads, and drive organic traffic.
Whether you’re a freelancer, or part of a marketing team, starting a blog can help you connect with and understand your audience, establish thought leadership, and improve SEO rankings.
But with so much content out there and so much change happening in the world of search marketing as to how content is ranked (e.g. Google’s AI Overviews), blogging is getting harder.
So it’s not enough to just set up a blog and start writing. You need to be more strategic and think about who your audience is, what they want to know, and how to leverage your blog to attract, engage, and nurture.
In this article, we’ll explore the nuts and bolts of blogging, provide some tips on how to get your blog noticed, and highlight some great blog examples.
This blog will cover:
- What is a blog?
- Why write a blog?
- How do I start blogging?
- How to use AI for your blog
- How frequently should I blog?
- What are good topics to blog about?
- How should I promote my blog?
- 4 great blog examples
- 11 tips for writing an effective blog
What is a blog?
A blog is a regularly updated website or webpage that can be used to promote an individual or a company.
The most successful blogs focus on niche topics to capture the attention of their audience. The four highest traffic generating blog niches are food, lifestyle, travel, and arts/crafts - according to RankIQ - making up 74% of all high traffic blogs.
Marketers use blogs, in addition to social media channels, to communicate with their audience and build communities. Businesses often incorporate blogs into their main websites to provide information and drive data capture.
There are also many blog types to consider. For example, according to Orbit Media research 74% of bloggers post how-to articles followed by 50% posting lists and 46% creating guides or books.
This is because these content types provide valuable information that can solve a problem or provide a solution.
Why write a blog?
A blog should not be used to aggressively sell or market a product. Instead, its main purpose is to provide information and value to the reader.
You should aim to produce useful, relevant, and high-quality content that people want to read and share. Use your defined buyer personas to inform your content so you can create blog content that your audience wants to read and will engage with!
A blog can also help marketers to:
- Establish authority in the marketplace
- Build a relationship with customers
- Drive awareness of a brand, product, or service
- Boost traffic to a website or landing page
- Attract potential customers
" 52% of bloggers say that driving traffic is the number one challenge while 49% say finding time to create and promote content is difficult "
When you’re thinking about setting up a blog for yourself or a company, keep in mind that blogging takes effort and time.
It’s also worth noting that there are some great AI tools for copywriting to help research, generate, and manage content that can save time (more on that later…)
To have a successful blog, you need to set aside time and resources for a number of tasks such as:
- Researching, writing, and editing
- Sourcing images and videos
- Replying to reader comments or questions
- Promoting your blog across channels
- Connecting and interacting with other bloggers
- Sourcing and posting guest blogs
- Outreach to generate high-quality backlinks
So before you start a blog, make sure you’re up for the challenge of maintaining one – and that you have the time, commitment, and energy needed to devote to the task.
How do I start blogging?
Whether this is your first blog or a new start after other attempts, the best approach is to make the process as simple as possible and just get started one step at a time.
You can start your blog in just 5 simple steps:
- Choose a topic
- Name your domain
- Choose a blogging platform
- Choose your hosting and theme
- Plan and write content
Read on for more detailed information about what is involved in each step.
Step 1: Choose a topic
A good approach to choosing a topic or niche is to think about what you are most passionate about.
What are you constantly reading or talking about? What excites you enough for you to want to write about it day after day without getting bored?
In the case of a business, what’s the USP of the company, what questions do consumers commonly ask, or what are people searching for online in your industry or area that you can tap into?
If you choose a topic that’s very broad, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to compete with bigger websites that cover the same topic. So, you may need to narrow it down to a specialty.
For example, you are likely to have more success blogging about losing belly fat than weight loss in general, or blogging about cultivating roses rather than just gardening.
Choosing a topic can be a challenge if you don’t have a clear direction but don’t get hung up on this step for too long. If you start with a topic and find it’s going nowhere, you can always change direction or adapt. The important thing is to get started.
Step 2: Choose a domain name
This is essentially the title for your blog, so make it something that’s easy to remember and easy to spell. It’s usually better to leave hyphens out of your domain name.
If possible, use a keyword that you are targeting in your domain name. To do this, conduct keyword research to find out what words or phrases people use to find your topic and audience on search engines or social media like TikTok.
You can purchase a domain name from several sites, including NameCheap, Wix, Bluehost, and GoDaddy.
Step 3: Choose a blogging platform
There are a variety of different blogging platforms and AI website tools you can use to create your blog, some of which are free.
However, if you choose a free platform, ads will be run on your site and you never actually have full ownership of it. On the positive side, you won’t have to purchase a domain name or hosting.
For a business, choosing a paid platform in which you host your own blog is recommended.
There are several different blogging platforms to choose from, and they vary in the amount of experience required to use them effectively. It’s a good idea to choose one that’s flexible and will allow for any future changes you may want to make.
Many of the platforms out there include AI integration:
- WordPress.org – This is a self-hosted blogging platform that offers plenty of functionality, themes, plugins, and community support.
- WordPress.com – This is a free blogging platform that is a great choice for beginners because it is easy to learn while you are first getting started. Like other free platforms, it will run ads on your site, and you never actually own your site.
- Blogger – This is another free platform that can get you started if you have no blogging experience. Like WordPress.com, your blog isn’t actually owned by you and has limited options for tools or support.
- Squarespace – This is a user-friendly platform offering drag-and-drop website building for beginners.
- Wix – This is another platform that uses drag and drop tools to simplify the process of building a website.
- Joomla – This is an open-source content management system. Like WordPress.org, it’s a self-hosted option with plenty of templates but not as much community support as WordPress.
- Medium - This platform is known as the best one for writers but can also help companies build a community. It’s easy to use and has a reader recommendation engine that can generate an audience.
- Drupal - Drupal is a flexible open-source CMS that's best suited for advanced users and companies. It supports many content types, page templates, blocks, and more for creating and managing content.
If you choose a free platform so you can get started and get some experience, remember that there will be ads on your site that will detract from your message.
For a professional site, choosing a platform where you can host your own blog is probably your best bet.
Step 4: Choose your blog host and theme
Once you have chosen your domain name and hosting, you will be able to make your blog live and install a theme. A theme is a template that can enhance the appearance of your blog.
Your blog will come with access to some free themes. You can choose one of them, or you may wish to purchase a premium theme.
If you have chosen WordPress as your blogging platform, there are plenty of tutorials available to help you go through the process of installing a theme, and there is also an active and supportive community to help with any confusion you may have.
If you choose a different blogging platform, both your web hosting provider and your blogging platform should offer support to walk you through the technical part of installing a theme.
There are many different plugins that can help improve the functionality of a WordPress blog. Some enhance the experiences of those who are visiting your blog while others help you manage it behind the scenes. Within the WordPress dashboard, you can search for the type of plugins you are looking for, such as a contact form, photo dropper, or editorial calendar.
Two plugins that are recommended for just about every WordPress blog are Akismet, which prevents comment spam from overtaking your blog, and Yoast SEO, which helps you optimize your blog for search engines.
Check out this blog ‘5 Crucial Steps to Boost Your Wordpress SEO’ for more information.
Step 5: Create your content
Once you have set up your blog, it’s time to get writing. An editorial or content calendar can help you plan ahead.
Think about your target audience and what they want to read about, and then write content that is relevant to your niche. Whatever you post, keep the content focused and relevant, or your audience will lose interest.
It can help to use a content pillar approach with your content. These are the core themes around which all of your content will cluster.
For example, let’s say you write about restaurants. You could create a topic cluster with the pillar page being “10 of the Best Restaurants in the World”. You could then create supporting content that focuses on each of the different locations such as New York, London, Berlin, etc. which all link to each other and the pillar page.
While it isn’t necessary to write a blog post every day, it’s a good idea to blog regularly. People who are interested in your topic will want to see new content on a regular basis and it will help you build up a following more quickly.
You can also write posts ahead of time and schedule content to be posted on the date and time that you want or that you know people are most active.
The more you blog, the more your writing will improve and the better you will get at knowing what to write about. Make sure you track performance on your platform to see what people are responding to and see if you can replicate it or double down on the topics that drive traffic or generate leads.
How to use AI for your blog
There are now a wealth of AI marketing tools that can help with many elements of your blog from content creation to SEO optimization to engagement to promotion.
The benefit of AI is that it can do some of the heavy lifting so that you can focus on being more creative or strategic in your content creation and promotion.
If you’re looking to create content, consider writing assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity, or use Google Notebook LM to check what’s missing in the piece or what could be improved.
Here’s a great walkthrough video on how to use Google Notebook LM.
If you want to optimize blogs for SEO, AI-powered tools like SurferSEO or Clearscope can analyze top-ranking content and suggest keywords, create meta descriptions and titles and structure content.
You can personalize content using chatbots, use AI to suggest related posts based on user behavior and generate dynamic content. While visuals and multimedia can be created using Midjourney or DALL·E.
AI tools like Grammarly or Hemingway can help edit and proofread content and detect plagiarism using Copyscape or Turnitin.
If you don’t already use some AI tools, give one of a few of these a try. It’s worth knowing how to use AI as it can enhance your day-to-day marketing activities and help advance your career.
How frequently should I blog?
The short answer to this question is: as often as possible! However, you should always focus on quality over quantity.
The average blog post takes three hours and 48 minutes to write and comes in at around 1,400 words according to Orbit Media.
Blog length is holding steady graphThis length is the ‘sweet spot’ as it can do a ‘deep dive’ into a subject. Aim to cover topics in as much depth as you can, so the blog really offers value to readers.
Remember, it’s better to produce one well-researched blog piece fortnightly or even monthly, rather than several short blogs every week that are of inferior quality.
If your blog doesn’t help your reader in some way, it will be instantly forgotten and is unlikely to be shared.
It’s also worth reviewing old content, especially blogs that have performed well. Conduct a content audit and see what needs updating or refreshing. It could be as simple as updating out-of-date statistics or links, adding a new image or video, or adding new sections that cover new trends or developments.
“Just because you've created content doesn't mean it will always succeed. You have to constantly revitalize pieces either with new information into the space, keeping a freshness to it, or in a bigger stage, adding elements as the web's behavior matures,” said Luke O’Leary, Vice President of Media Strategy & Operations at NP Digital on our 2025 trends blog.
What are good topics to blog about?
When it comes to topics to blog about, the list is endless. When choosing one, try to put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think about what they would want to read, what they react to, and what they are interested in.
The blogs that are the most successful:
- Provide useful information
- Demonstrate a unique angle
- Demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about
- Tap into search intent on search engines or social media
- Show you care about your readers
Good topics for a blog include:
- A success story you’d like to share
- Answering a customer question in detail
- Explaining how someone used your product or service in a humorous way
- A case study related to your industry or a customer testimonial
- An interview with an expert in your industry
- How-to guides or listicles
- A walkthrough video with accompanying copy
- Emerging and future trends in an industry or area
- Taps into personal development or growth
How should I promote my blog?
At the end of the day, you want your blog to be read by as many people as possible.
The best way of achieving this is to create high-quality, original content on a consistent basis that readers look forward to reading, find extremely useful – and are keen to share.
But just because you create great content doesn’t mean anyone cares! You need to do the work to share and promote it. Luckily, there are several channels that can help you do that including:
- Post a link to your blog on social media channels (you could also repurpose it and turn it into a carousel)
- Send it out to your email contacts or even better, subscribers if you have them
- Create a newsletter so you can build a captive list and share your content
- Consider a partnership with influencers
- Host guest writers
- Use paid media such as Google Ads or social media ads
- Turn your content into video content and post it on YouTube
- Share it with a community or post to a forum like Reddit
Promoting your blog should never be an after-thought. After all, it’s important that you get the best return from all the time you spend creating your content.
So promote it far and wide – and on a continuous basis. That way, you’ve got the best chance of reaching the widest possible audience, increasing traffic to your site, and attracting potential new customers.
4 Great Blog Examples
When you’re starting a blog, it’s important to have some examples to explore so you can get inspiration or just see what layout or headings can work. Here are four blogs that can help you design and plan your blog.
1) Not Another Cooking Show
Screenshot of Stephen Cusato’s food blog ‘Not Another Cooking Show' Stephen Cusato’s food blog ‘Not Another Cooking Show’ aims to encourage people to ‘cook with confidence’ using video content.
He posts videos to YouTube every week showing people how to make dishes and uses his blog to provide recipes and resources such as a video on how to stock a pantry and also has a shop section to monetize his blog by offering a recipe book and merchandise.
Stephen Cusato’s food blog ‘Not Another Cooking Show’ aims to encourage people to ‘cook with confidence’ using video content.
He posts videos to YouTube every week showing people how to make dishes and uses his blog to provide recipes and resources such as a video on how to stock a pantry and also has a shop section to monetize his blog by offering a recipe book and merchandise.
2) MarTech
Screenshot of MarTech's blog MarTech focuses on the world of marketing and its technology and the blog’s content falls under six main topics related to marketing – transformation, data, operations, experience, performance, and management.
There are also a number of other resources available to bring visitors through the marketing funnel such as whitepapers, newsletters, webinars, intelligence reports, and events.
Each blog includes several social sharing buttons at the top, an indication of reading time, and the option to talk to a chatbot.
MarTech focuses on the world of marketing and its technology and the blog’s content falls under six main topics related to marketing – transformation, data, operations, experience, performance, and management.
There are also a number of other resources available to bring visitors through the marketing funnel such as whitepapers, newsletters, webinars, intelligence reports, and events.
Each blog includes several social sharing buttons at the top, an indication of reading time, and the option to talk to a chatbot.
3. The Good Trade
Screenshot of 'The Good Trade' blog Lifestyle media brand ‘The Good Trade’ has a blog that creates editorials on sustainability, slow living, and self-care.
It frequently uses listicle articles and question headings to provide guidance and solutions. The images used are relevant to the blog content and often feature women to attract its target audience.
The blog has over 100 million readers and promotes its content through a daily newsletter to 250,000 subscribers.
Lifestyle media brand ‘The Good Trade’ has a blog that creates editorials on sustainability, slow living, and self-care.
It frequently uses listicle articles and question headings to provide guidance and solutions. The images used are relevant to the blog content and often feature women to attract its target audience.
The blog has over 100 million readers and promotes its content through a daily newsletter to 250,000 subscribers.
4) The Digital Marketing Institute
Screenshot of Bestroi's blog We couldn’t talk about blogs without mentioning our own! Created to be a hub of all things digital marketing for the marketing community, DMI’s blog Content can be viewed by category to help with navigation and aligning with our readers’ job roles, such as content marketing, PPC and paid search, social media marketing, AI digital marketing, etc.
The hundreds of resources include ebooks, toolkits, on-demand webinars, case studies, and podcasts are intended to support the learning of students currently on our certification courses as well as marketers .. The inclusion of a ‘Trending’ showcases popular content from all formats and promotes upcoming events for marketers.
We couldn’t talk about blogs without mentioning our own! Created to be a hub of all things digital marketing for the marketing community, DMI’s blog Content can be viewed by category to help with navigation and aligning with our readers’ job roles, such as content marketing, PPC and paid search, social media marketing, AI digital marketing, etc.
The hundreds of resources include ebooks, toolkits, on-demand webinars, case studies, and podcasts are intended to support the learning of students currently on our certification courses as well as marketers .. The inclusion of a ‘Trending’ showcases popular content from all formats and promotes upcoming events for marketers.
11 tips for writing an effective blog
Here are some simple tips you can use to write well crafted, interesting, and engaging blog posts to ensure that people turn up and read your blog!
- Create an outline before you begin, to help plan what you’re going to say in your blog post.
- When you write a blog, include a beginning, middle, and end. This way you are introducing your topic and setting the scene, stating your main points in the body, and summarizing your argument in the conclusion.
- Use a conversational, informal tone. Imagine you are having a friendly chat with the reader. Avoid jargon, clichés, and overly technical language.
- Address the reader directly. Use words like “you”, “we”, and “I”.
- Use contractions like “I’m” instead of “I am” and “don’t” instead of “do not”.
- Include a catchy headline that generates curiosity or an emotional response. Headlines that pose a question can be particularly effective, for example: “Would you like to double your turnover in a week?” As a rule of thumb, limit your headline to eight words or less. Try to incorporate a keyword into your headline to boost SEO. As a rule of thumb, aim to limit your headline to eight words or less.
- Use subheadings and lists to break up your content as they make it easy for readers to scan. Subheadings as headers 2 or 3 can act as signposts to guide readers through your blog.
- Incorporate images and videos, if possible. Videos are very popular with readers and increase user engagement. Consider summarizing your main points in a video, and then expanding on them in the written content.
- Include a call-to-action at the start and end of your blog. This could be a link to connect with your company on social media, download a brochure, or take another action that feeds into your KPIs. Also include links to other people’s sites, and hashtags.
- Invite readers to comment about your blog, ask a question, or share their views. Be aware that this can take up a lot of time, so if you’re time-poor, you can disable comments. Then be sure to respond to them.
- Proofread! Edit your content carefully, before it is published. A platform like Grammarly can be very helpful for this to ensure there are no typos or grammatical errors, and that the content is structured appropriately.
Here are some simple tips you can use to write well crafted, interesting, and engaging blog posts to ensure that people turn up and read your blog!
- Create an outline before you begin, to help plan what you’re going to say in your blog post.
- When you write a blog, include a beginning, middle, and end. This way you are introducing your topic and setting the scene, stating your main points in the body, and summarizing your argument in the conclusion.
- Use a conversational, informal tone. Imagine you are having a friendly chat with the reader. Avoid jargon, clichés, and overly technical language.
- Address the reader directly. Use words like “you”, “we”, and “I”.
- Use contractions like “I’m” instead of “I am” and “don’t” instead of “do not”.
- Include a catchy headline that generates curiosity or an emotional response. Headlines that pose a question can be particularly effective, for example: “Would you like to double your turnover in a week?” As a rule of thumb, limit your headline to eight words or less. Try to incorporate a keyword into your headline to boost SEO. As a rule of thumb, aim to limit your headline to eight words or less.
- Use subheadings and lists to break up your content as they make it easy for readers to scan. Subheadings as headers 2 or 3 can act as signposts to guide readers through your blog.
- Incorporate images and videos, if possible. Videos are very popular with readers and increase user engagement. Consider summarizing your main points in a video, and then expanding on them in the written content.
- Include a call-to-action at the start and end of your blog. This could be a link to connect with your company on social media, download a brochure, or take another action that feeds into your KPIs. Also include links to other people’s sites, and hashtags.
- Invite readers to comment about your blog, ask a question, or share their views. Be aware that this can take up a lot of time, so if you’re time-poor, you can disable comments. Then be sure to respond to them.
- Proofread! Edit your content carefully, before it is published. A platform like Grammarly can be very helpful for this to ensure there are no typos or grammatical errors, and that the content is structured appropriately.
Supercharge your digital marketing career
There’s no better or faster way to break into the digital industry than with a digital marketing certification. DMI’s certified and industry aligned Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing will teach you the fundamentals of digital marketing, show you how to leverage AI in your marketing activities and simple ways to cultivate soft skills. You’ll also explore key channels such as content marketing, email marketing, social media, SEO, and display and video advertising to execute successful marketing campaigns in any industry.
There’s no better or faster way to break into the digital industry than with a digital marketing certification. DMI’s certified and industry aligned Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing will teach you the fundamentals of digital marketing, show you how to leverage AI in your marketing activities and simple ways to cultivate soft skills. You’ll also explore key channels such as content marketing, email marketing, social media, SEO, and display and video advertising to execute successful marketing campaigns in any industry.
