Celebrate Checklists Day with my Blog Post Checklist
According to DaysoftheYear.com, Checklists Day was started in the early days of aviation to help prevent catastrophic crashes. Today, checklists are used in many industries to help keep people focused and for safety. I use them to help maintain a healthy relationship with my clients and myself. This means creating checklists that are great reference points over and over, as well as using programs like Asana to manage individually crafted lists for larger projects.
Something that folks often struggle with is blogging, so I thought I would share my blog post checklist template with you to help you better attack your article planning.
Steps to Writing a Blog Post
Pick a topic and keyword.
What do your readers want to hear about? Is there a keyword that you can use to optimize this post and reach a broader audience?
Select your author.
If you aren’t writing your blog posts yourself, make sure you start by finding the right author for the topic at hand. You can bring in an outside expert as a guest blogger or write it yourself!
Write a rough draft.
Get your article out of your head. You may need to start with an outline, or just write until you get warmed up and develop the topic. Aim for between 500 and 1000 words.
Review the blog post.
Make sure the keyword is mentioned, that the post has met the desired word count range, and try reading the post out loud to see how you feel about it. Add around 2-4 hyperlinks per one thousand words plus internal links.
Revisions.
Consider rearranging your article to make it easy to read. Using a tool like Grammarly, edit your post for grammar. After you’ve corrected the grammar and rewritten some sections to your satisfaction, it’s time to decide on visual content.
Visual elements.
Design, find or request visual aids to help illustrate your post. Make sure your media is full width. You can find excellent, and free, stock photography at sites like Pixabay, Pexels, or Freestocks. If you are looking to create an infographic for your post, you can hire someone to create it or use a tool like Canva. Remember to avoid any trademarked content on your blog or social media.
Headlines.
Write two or more headlines for your post that use your primary keyword. Try to use around seventy characters or eight words to keep it easily visible when sharing the link on social networks.
Publish your post.
You’ve done it! If you’ve scheduled your blog post to publish at a later date, begin working on promotions to share the article.
Promotions.
Using your content, pre-write, or plan some social media posts. Build an awareness campaign for your blog post with 3-5 Twitter headlines to schedule out over time. Then, write out a question to spark discussion, a benefit to reading your post, create a little controversy, and select a snippet of your post to share on your social channels.
Blog Post Checklist Template
Starting with my checklist template, create your own steps to help refine your blog post writing process. Everyone’s formula is a little different, don’t be afraid to get specific and niche down to make your list your own.
Steps:
- Topic + Keyword
- Author
- Rough Draft
- Review
- Revisions
- Visual Elements
- Headlines
- Publish or Schedule Post
- Promotions
Social Media Promotions
- Question
- Benefit
- Controversy
- Quote
- Snippet
+ 3 Twitter Headlines
What checklists do you use to help improve your promotions? Do you have any suggestions to add to my blog post step-by-step list? Happy Checklists Day!
