4.2 The Title, Meta, Keywords and Skeleton

Soooo you’ve put your blog title down and you’re ready to drop some literary gold on that Google Doc. But all of a sudden you find yourself stuck. 

Where do you begin? What do you cover? How long should the blog be? How meaty or light?

In case you kids needed any more creative ways to trigger an existential crisis, writer’s block is the way to go!

But there are ways to ensure you don’t break your computer every time you write a blog and one of those ways is to put down a skeleton. 

A skeleton is basically the structure of a blog without the actual content, or the meat. Much like….you know….a skeleton. 

This helps because if you try to write your post in one sitting without a skeleton, odds are that you’re gonna write the way you speak. And guess what happens when we speak? We go where our brains take us. 

Think about how we humans have conversations. We often start off at one place, and end up somewhere completely different. Even if we do stick to one topic, odds are we are going to make deviations in our speech. 

That's because while you go down one thought lane, your brain picks up another topic connected or triggered by what you were already saying and goes down that path.

And unless your intended outcome is that your readers get severe migraines every time they read one of your blogs, we want to take a different approach. 

Hence the Skeleton! 

Writing a skeleton basically helps you put down all your thoughts and then tie them together in one cohesive narrative. That way once you get to writing your blog, it’s a piece of cake. 

Okay maybe not a piece of cake but it definitely makes things easier. 

So, what are the steps to building a great skeleton?

1. Put down all your points.
2. Build that intro.
3. Tailor your information architecture.

Putting down all your points.

This is simple. Before you get started, just put down everything you might want to talk about in this blog post. Take your time, because we can almost guarantee you that halfway through the blog, you'll have new ideas you want to add. So it's best to have all your points down before you get writing

Let's go over an example. Imagine you’re working on the blog post: How to search for your perfect university.

Let’s put down some of the points we might want to talk about.

1. Be sure about what you want to study.
   
   
2. Create a shortlist of sure-shots, doables and dream universities.
   
   
3. Have a budget you want to work with.
   
   
4. Make a list of all the universities that are known for that field of study.
   
   
5. Make a list of countries where living would come within the budget.
   
   
6. Filter your university based on countries you can afford.
   
   
7. Research your current list and find out cost, basic scores, points and % of foreign student intakes.

There you go. We just put down everything we felt that needed to go into the blog. It’s going to make the actual writing so much easier. 

Step 2: Build that intro

The introductory paragraph of your blog will play a big role in how users explore your blog. It determines whether your user is actually going to be engaged or if they’ll just skim through before leaving the page. 

Here are some tips on how you can build a great introduction:

Treat it like a conversation:

Your blog post is basically you having a conversation with your reader. Imagine you’re sitting across a person you don't know and the conversation abruptly starts with -

So Greece is a great place for a honeymoon – the food is amazing and the architecture is just brilliant. Would you consider going there for your honeymoon?

Internally, you would go - Excuse me? We haven't even exchanged names yet and you want to know about my honeymoon plans?

Engaging with someone over a blog is quite similar. You need to bring them into the conversation. 

Obviously, you don't have to start with My name is Bob... but you do need to keep in mind that you all your blog articles and posts need to guide the readers into the conversation you want to have

Here’s an example of an intro that could work: 

College hunting can be a daunting task. Especially if you’re trying to find a university abroad and the only resources you have are the internet and a bunch of photos taken by students. You’d much rather be able to visit each university in person and see how you feel about it.

But there is a way that you can make your college hunt easier and more effective. No, we’re not offering to teleport you to each of the locations but we do have the next best thing: a formula to help you find your dream university!

Notice how we set context to the blog post? Once the user has read this, they are ready to take the plunge with you. You’ve built a rapport  and gotten them interested in what you want to share.

Forge a genuine connection:

Following from that last point–the intro of your blog post needs to connect with the user. Now, this is a crucial step for multiple reasons including establishing trust, building credibility, getting the reader fully invested in engaging with the post and even taking an action you would want them to take.

The easiest way to build a connection is to step into their shoes and speak at the reader’s level. You can see this in the example we just went over. 

By talking as though we’re in their position, we were able to make the reader feel seen and understood. Now the feel comfortable knowing that the content is written to help them.

The final tip to build that great intro is to lure them in:

This is the most important role of the intro. It HAS to get users to scroll down and read further. It has to tease but not satisfy.

Take a look at what we did here:

We raised the curiosity of the reader by telling them we have a formula! Something that is going to make their lives easier and better!

This is how you can find ways to make your introduction more inviting so there’s no chance they’ll be gone without scrolling down.

Step 3: Tailor your information architecture.

Once you’re done building your intro, it's time to put together your narrative.

Remember Step 1, where we put down all the elements that we want to talk about in this blog? Now all you have to do is put them in a coherent order. 

1. Be sure about what you want to study.
   
   
2. Make a list of all the universities that are known for that field of study.
   
   
3. Have a budget you want to work with.
   
   
4. Make a list of countries where living would come within the budget.
   
   
5. Filter your university list based on countries you can afford.
   
   
6. Research your current list and find out cost, basic scores, points and % of foreign student intakes.
   
   
7. Create a shortlist of sure-shots, doables and dream universities.

And with that, you have a skeleton that’s going to make the blog writing process SO much easier. In the next episode we’ll get down to actually writing the blog so I’ll see you there.