Peter DeCaprio: The Complete Guide to Writing a Persuasive Blog Post for SaaS Founders

Here’s the full guide to help your startup get more blog subscribers. My goal with this article is to provide you with an easy-to-follow and actionable process for creating a persuasive blog post that will connect with new readers and encourage them to subscribe to your company’s email list. First, we’ll review each of the nine steps of my blogging process below. Then I’ll show you how one recent blog post performed in terms of traffic and social shares — so you can get some context on what it takes (and what kind of results you should expect) if you want to write a truly successful post yourself.

Here are these steps: Peter DeCaprio

Step 1: Choose Your Topic Carefully

You might think that any topic related to your business would work. You’d be wrong. If you’re going to write a successful blog post, the topic needs to be well-researched. Your company can’t offer much in the way of expertise related to your chosen topic (and if it does, that’s awesome!), so you need to find an outside source. That means conducting research on what other authority figures have written about the topic. And because people are inherently lazy (yep, even you), each piece of content should link back to one or more other posts on the same topic. After all, why would anyone spend time reading multiple blog posts when they could just read one? That shows up in Google Search, too… Make sure your content exist in a vacuum by linking back to other authority blogs.

Step 2: Find an Interesting Hook sometimes it’s easy to pick a topic.

Other times, you might have trouble finding something that’ll engage your readers and keep them coming back for more. Before you even begin writing, be sure to review each piece of content you plan on producing. Does it offer any inspiring quotes or unique insights? Is there anything that makes it especially unique compared with the competition (even if only in title)? Chances are good that our blog post will sound like every other blog post out there if we don’t try hard enough to make our titles stand out.

Step 3: Structure Your Post Using Headings

No one wants to read long blog posts anymore. At least not without some kind of incentive. You have to give your readers a good reason to keep scrolling, so you need to align your content with the way people actually think. That’s why I use headings (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) that break up my post into digestible parts. Those are great for skimmers who are scanning for something specific or present new topics in an easy-to-follow order for people who prefer linear storytelling. At the end of each section, ask yourself whether you’ve answered all possible questions related to that topic? If not, it probably means your content is lacking sufficient depth and should be split into multiple blog posts.

Step 4: Write Engaging Introductions

Remember when I said how important it was to hook people in? That starts in your introduction. You need to pique people’s interest by painting a vivid picture of the benefits they’ll enjoy once they start reading. Here are two examples that show off my writing style:

“No one wants to be sold anything — they want to buy things.”

It sounds like an obvious point, but I’ve seen too many entrepreneurs ignore it their online marketing efforts by trying to sell their products on every social network and blog post. The problem is when you sell without understanding what motivates your customers, you run into problems. For example, maybe they’re most comfortable with purchasing via email or phone — have you ever considered that? What I’m saying here is that people don’t really want to buy things from you (or anyone else, for that matter). They want to buy things that make their lives easier/better/happier.

“Why did I write this blog post? Because it’s something I wish someone had told me years ago.”

It’s not enough to offer an explanation for why you’re writing the content (even if everyone on your team is producing it). You need to show some humility by letting people know what you’d like your audience to take away from the blog post. That resembles the benefits of reading closely and paying attention until the end.

Step 5: Make Your Content Actionable

This one might seem nitpicky at first glance, but it’s actually pretty important if you want people to read your content in its entirety. You need to create a list of actionable items that people can take away from your blog post. Sure, you might be able to write something very informative without doing so, but it’s hard to remember critical details unless they’re written down. So what am I talking about here? In my case, each blog post is broken up into bullets or numbers with descriptive titles next to them.

Conclusion by Peter DeCaprio:

The more you practice producing good content, the easier it’ll be to attract attention from your target audience. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start writing!