One of the first steps to becoming a successful wellness authorpreneur is to have an author platform. For many wellness authorpreneurs, the base of that author platform is your blog.

I’ve been doing my Author Jam Sessions (get your FREE 30 min session through September 30, 2014) since this summer and I have noticed a trend. Many of you want to write better blog posts, however you really don’t know how. Writing has always been very easy to me, so I want to share with you a formula that you can use every time you sit down to write. I worked as a writing instructor to adult learners for many years and I likened writing essays — or even blog posts — to building a hamburger. What does a hamburger have to do with blogging? Read on to find out.

1) Define Your Blog Post Topic

Many health and wellness bloggers try to accomplish too much in one blog post. Let’s bring back the hamburger analogy. The main part of your burger is the meat itself (or perhaps a black bean burger for my vegetarians…). Without the meat, your burger has no substance. The same thing with your blog post. If your blog post has no main topic, your blog post has no substance: it becomes difficult to read and understand. Decide on one topic and stick to it.

When choosing a topic, it may be difficult to narrow your topic down to something that is manageable. Check out this example of a health topic that may be too large to attack in one simple blog post:

• “How to Find Healthy Recipes on Social Media” — While this may seem simple and to the point, the topic is simply too broad. Using our burger analogy, it’s like trying to eat the a ten pound burger — it’s just too much. When people go online, they are seeking very specific information that speaks to their problem. Do you focus on paleo recipes, recipes for diabetics, or maybe healthy eating tips for people with gluten sensitivity? Tell us that in the title. Also, you may want to focus on a particular kind of social media as tackling social media as a whole may leave you with enough material to write several books.

Here’s how you can hone in on a more specific topic for your blog post:

• “Top 5 Gluten Free Recipe Bloggers on Pinterest” — This title is more like a slider when compared to a burger — it’s bite sized that is much more manageable to eat. This title is very specific about the kind of recipes it will feature in the blog post. This title will immediately grab those who are specifically looking for information on gluten free recipes. It also specifies where in social media you will be pulling your bloggers from. Try to be as specific as possible about what you want to share with your readers from the very beginning so that you can stay on topic.

2) Decide How Your Blog Post will Help readers

You always want your blog posts to help your readers in a way that only you can. Using the burger analogy, you know that every restaurant that serves burgers does it in their own unique way. A burger served to you from a drive-thru window will be much different from a burger served at a sit-down restaurant that makes burgers using grass fed beef. The same thing applies to your blog post topic. You have to know what it is your readers are looking for when they come to you. Even if you are writing about a topic that has been written about a million times, what angle can you take on the topic to make it useful for your readers? When you are helpful, readers will mark your site as a helpful space so that when they need you, they will return for more. You are also using your blog posts to build trust and familiarity so that they will buy your books, ebooks, consulting services, etc. If they believe that your free information is great, then they will LOVE the stuff that they pay for.

3) Create an Outline

Now that we have established what we want to write about and understand how it will help our readers, we can get to work! The next step is to write an outline of the points you want to make in your blog post. To avoid overwhelm in your writing, try to stick to 3 to 5 main points. In the case of the above example of the top 5 gluten free recipe bloggers on Pinterest, you will have 5 short paragraphs discussing each blogger.

4) Write Your Blog Post Details

Now that you know the 3 to 5 points you want to cover, you can now go back and fill in your details in each point.  What are details?  Using the burger analogy once again, your blog post details are like your burger condiments. Not many people want to eat a dry burger. They may want lettuce, ketchup, jalapenos, etc. This is the stuff that makes the burger more interesting. The same thing with your details. Give the reader a few more thoughts that demonstrate your unique approach to the topic.

5) Write Your Introduction and Conclusion Last

Once you have completed your details, you may now write your introduction and your conclusion. Your introduction should be simple and to the point. Tell us who you are speaking to and what they should expect to learn from reading your post. One thing that many health bloggers forget is that every time you write a new post, you are not only speaking to readers that know and love you, but you are also introducing yourself to new readers. Don’t assume that the reader knows who you are and what your blog is about. You can use this very blog post as an example. I mentioned the fact that I write for wellness authorpreneurs who want to build a blog as part of their author platform — very specific. I’m not speaking to all entrepreneurs under the sun — I am specifically speaking to wellness entrepreneurs who want to eventually write a book.

Do you have questions about how to write a blog post so that you can start building your health author platform?