Checklist for Writing a Blog Post

We talked about writing about just one thing and we’ve also talked about writing the goal before the story.  But how do you know you have covered all your bases when you are done? Here are a simple checklist.

Set the goal

Work out why you are writing:

1. Write down a title. You can revamp it at the end.
2. Identify your audience. Pinpoint exactly for whom you are writing the post. Once you know the audience for your content, it’s much easier to be clear about what you are saying.
3. Know your purpose. What is the outcome? For example, it could be to build brand awareness, gain followers or elicit inquiries.

Now write your goal at the top of your post.

Follow your styleguide

Develop a styleguide:

4. Always use active voice. Using active voice makes your meaning clear for readers, and keeps sentences from becoming too complicated or wordy. For example:

Active Voice: I wrote my blog post in an hour.

Passive Voice: My blog post was written by me in an hour.

5. Write for an eighth-grade reading level. Don’t use complex sentences; break it in to more than one and consider using bullet points.  Avoid terminology that readers may not understand. If you cannot avoid it, then define it.  Keep your verbs simple.  Avoid multi-syllable words where a short word would do.

Complex: utilize

Simple: use.

Write the draft

Write a first draft:

6. Write, don’t edit.  Don’t focus on format.

7. Write at least 300 words and aim for 600 only if the topic warrants it.  While longer might be better for SEO, remember padding your post to make a word count will bore your readers negating any SEO gain. A rough guide is 100 words per paragraph but online paragraphs tend to be shorter so use a word counter to get used to what 300 words looks like.

8. When you write your post, provide information that is valuable to the reader in a way they can easily understand. Don’t make them think too hard about what you mean or you will lose their attention. Provide facts, statistics, and/or quotes that are backed by linked references. Where appropriate use examples. Show as well as tell.

9. Be original. While it’s OK to get ideas from other writers, don’t plagiarize.  Write your own content. Add value.

Edit then edit gain

Edit, take a break, then edit again:

10. Use headings. People like to scan online so headings help them know what is coming.

11. Break up your paragraphs into smaller ones.  Change long sentences into bullet points where practiable.  Use white space to ease eye strain and aid the scanability of your text.

12. Use italics to highlight important information. Leave bold for headings. Make sure links are clearly links by using color and mouse over/title text.  Avoid using the same color as other text on the page. (Yes we’ve broken this rule ourselves.) Try not to succumb to form over function or, we should probably say, avoid using color just to make your text look pretty.

13. Add media. In addition to a featured image which is there to engage, add additional images to assist understanding of your post.  Avoid using images as decorations. Make sure the images fit with your overall branding.  Add captions. Make sure your media is not infringing copyright. Remember, images have meta-data; renaming files will not avoid copyright infringement detection.

14. To re-use/re-purpose other content, add links to relevant site pages. If linking to external pages then make sure they open in a new tab/window so as to not cause confusion to the reader. HTML for this is “target=”_blank”.

15. End with a call-to-action. Because all good blog posts are written with a goal in mind, end with a call-to-action that tells the reader what you want them to do next.

16. Finalize your title. Titles with 6-13 words attract the highest and most consistent amount of traffic. Also check the number of characters, the first 60 are the most important.

17. Perform a final edit. It is best to get someone else to do a final review of your post.  Failing that, read it slowly out aloud to yourself to see if it makes sense.

18. Once the post is published, read it again. Tell yourself there is one more error to find and go look for it.

Keep it simple, keep it short, keep it clear.