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Choose a topic that resonates with you and your target audience
This is your Issue. Pick something you and your reader both care about.
Have you ever thought of a fascinating topic you could not wait to share, only to watch the post fall flat? No matter how many times you hit refresh, the analytics do not measure up. It happens to the best of us. The blog writing tips below are the practical, proven steps we use to keep our own content engaging and relevant: choose a resonant topic, research it properly, open strong, follow the rules of marketing copy, and optimize for search.
Writing is hard. If I think back to my law school days, I remember the rigorous writing convention they taught us: IRAC, which stands for Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion. It was the key tool that kept me focused through every writing assignment. A lot has changed over the years, including my hair and clothes, but IRAC is still the starting point I rely on to guide my content.
As a startup entrepreneur, I have written a ton of marketing-related content throughout my career. Company blog posts are a far cry from legal briefs. Even so, IRAC with some minor modifications still gets the job done. Hopefully this post adheres to its own rules. Let us know what you think.
Here are the highlights. Keep scrolling for the details on each.
This is your Issue. Pick something you and your reader both care about.
This is your Analysis. Gather facts, cite sources, and show your work.
Earn the reader’s next minute in the first few sentences.
This is your Rule. Be interesting, authentic, informative, and valuable.
Make sure the people searching for your topic can actually find it.
The first step to an engaging blog post is determining a topic that resonates with you and your target audience. This is your Issue. Consider the interests, pain points, and needs your company is trying to solve with your product and service. A topic that is relevant to both you and your customer has a far better chance of capturing attention and holding it through the whole post. Sharing your own insights and experience is what makes your audience see you as a trusted subject matter expert.
Relevance is not optional. There are an estimated 600 million blogs globally and about a million blog posts published daily (FirstSiteGuide blogging statistics, retrieved Nov. 27, 2023). Relevant, engaging content is the only way to get eyes on your site in that crowd.
Most topics are easy to surface if you ask yourself a few crucial questions. What industry are you in? What service do you provide? What problem are you solving? Keywords from each of those pillars can evolve into a great blog topic.
For example, we serve the multifamily industry. We provide data standardization and business intelligence. We solve the problem of greater visibility into issues and opportunities. Pull a keyword from each pillar, so multifamily data, standardization, and visibility, and add current events. Regulations under consideration, the impact of inflation on multifamily cap rates, or privacy concerns around big data all qualify. That is how posts like our guide to apartment data standardization and our deeper dive into big data and privacy concerns in multifamily real estate came to be. The same method produced our piece on whether the Fed’s efforts to curb inflation could be good for multifamily, and our look at the White House’s Renter’s Bill of Rights white paper.
You can also identify topics that resonate by conducting market research, analyzing customer feedback, and staying up to date on industry trends. Each of those tells you what your audience is looking for and what kind of information they find valuable. Of all the blog writing tips here, this one does the most to decide whether a post gets read.
Once you have nailed down your topic, it is time for the Analysis portion of IRAC. This means conducting thorough research to gather the facts and information you need to assemble your findings. It is where you share why and how you reached your conclusions, and where you present counter viewpoints for balance when relevant. Research ensures your blog posts are accurate and reliable. It also lets you offer readers insights and perspectives they could not get elsewhere.
It will come as no surprise that we love data at Revolution RE. That is why we start each article by collecting data, statistics, and facts related to the topic. A few habits make the difference between research that supports a post and research that decorates it.
Among the blog writing tips in this post, research is the one that separates a subject matter expert from someone repeating what they read last week.
The introduction plays a crucial role in capturing a reader’s attention. It should be compelling and intriguing, and it should clearly communicate the value the reader will gain by reading further. If the first paragraph does not answer “why should I keep going,” most readers will not.
Visuals help too. We like to use gifs as a visual way to draw the reader in and stay true to a brand that does not take itself too seriously and is willing to take chances. Giphy.com is a great resource for sourcing gifs that tie into your content and brand. Whichever opening you choose, the goal is the same: grab attention immediately and make the reader curious to learn more.
When writing for the law, the Rule portion of IRAC generally refers to a law, statute, or some other form of precedent that supports the analysis and conclusion. The rules for marketing writing are different, and perhaps a bit more subjective. Ours are simple: be interesting, be authentic, be informative, and provide value. Our most successful posts adhere to all four.
Storytelling is a powerful tool to engage readers and make your writing more enjoyable. Incorporate personal anecdotes, case studies, or success stories that are relevant to your topic. Stories make content more relatable, and they help readers connect with the information on a deeper level.
Consider using descriptive language, vivid imagery, and a conversational tone. The post should read the way you would explain the topic to a smart colleague. Then break the content into smaller sections and use subheadings. Readers scan before they commit, and subheadings make it easier to navigate and digest the information.
To ensure your blog posts reach a wider audience, optimize them for search engines. This involves using relevant keywords, writing meta tags, and organizing your content structure so both readers and search engines can follow it. SEO blogging basics are not complicated, but they have to be done on every post.
Research and identify keywords that are relevant to your topic. Then incorporate them naturally throughout the post: in the title, in the opening paragraph, in a few subheadings, and in the body where they belong. This helps search engines understand what your content is about and rank it higher in search results. Forcing the phrase into every sentence does the opposite, because readers leave and search engines notice.
If you want to see these blog writing tips applied to real posts, our multifamily data blog is where we practice them, imperfectly and in public.
You already know how much I love data. I am also a big fan of checklists. Whether it is confirming I have hit every requirement of Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion for legal writing, or our company checklist for blog posts, a checklist encourages the critical goal of any company blog: purposeful and consistent communication with your user community.
Use it to guide your next post, and let us know if you find it helpful.
Start with a topic that resonates with both you and your target audience, drawn from your industry, your service, and the problem you solve. Research it thoroughly with reputable sources, open with a question, statistic, or anecdote that states the value of reading on, and follow four rules: be interesting, authentic, informative, and valuable. These blog writing tips work because they put the reader’s question ahead of the writer’s.
Identify keywords relevant to the topic and use them naturally in the title, introduction, subheadings, and body. Write a compelling title tag and meta description so search engine users want to click. Organize the post with clear subheadings and short sections so search engines can understand what the content is about and rank it accordingly.
IRAC stands for Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion, a writing convention taught in law school. Applied to blog writing, the Issue is your topic, the Rule is the standard your marketing copy must meet, the Analysis is your research, and the Conclusion is the takeaway for the reader. With minor modifications it works as well for company blog posts as it does for legal briefs.
A checklist turns good intentions into a repeatable process. It confirms each post has a resonant topic, cited research, a strong introduction, marketing copy that follows the rules, and search optimization before it goes live. Most importantly, it keeps a company blog doing its real job: purposeful and consistent communication with your user community.
Good posts start with good research. Good research on a multifamily portfolio starts with standardized data from every property management system.
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