Before Publishing a Blog Post
Headline
If they would, then you are more likely to get more search traffic.
Curiosity-evoking headlines tend to get more clicks.
If your headline is longer than roughly 57 characters, it will get cut off on Google’s search results page.
Clarity is important. If people don’t know what they are clicking on, they will bounce right off your site.
If you can invoke a common desire within your headline, it will appeal to more people.
If it doesn’t, don’t expect to rank for any terms on Google.
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Introduction
Every blog post should contain an introduction. Here are some of the questions to ask yourself when creating an introduction:
You can do this by asking a question within your introductory paragraph.
You want to get into the body of your post as quickly as possible. Three paragraphs is typically long enough.
This is text which should be deleted at some point. Testing.
Once people read your introduction, they should know if the post is a good fit for them.
You should start your blog post with some sort of media. Whether it is a picture or a video, it should be something that entices people to click through.
Body
When writing your blog post, make sure you ask yourself:
They make it easier for your readers to read and skim your content.
Your paragraphs should never be more than 5 or 6 lines. Anything longer will make your content seem overwhelming to read.
You should be using the words “you” and “I” within your content. It will create the illusion of a conversation.
Italicize questions within your post. It will make your content seem more personalized.
Your readers will be bored unless you keep them hooked. There is no better way to do this than to tell a story.
From charts and images to video and audio, media will help personalize your post.
If your content is filled with fluff, no one will want to read it.
Using fancy words and talking down to your readers is a great way to lose them.
Using Google and Yahoo news to identify trends will help you generate content that will bring in traffic.
Your content should appeal to certain emotions such as humor or anger. Pick one or a few of them, and use them throughout your content. The goal is to put your readers through an emotional roller coaster like soap operas do.
From bullets to block quotes, the formatting tools WordPress provides will make your content more digestible.
Link out to other websites when appropriate. This way, you can email those sites once you publish your post and ask them to share it on their social profiles.
Including other people’s quotes an opinions within your post, you will help your content gain more credibility. Plus, you can also ask those experts to share your content via the social web.
You can’t make claims and expect not to be questioned. Using stats and data will help you create trust with your readers, and it will brand you as an expert.
Conclusion
When wrapping up your post, ask yourself:
This is a great way to help you generate more comments. Also, italicize the question.
A summary should be short and to the point and provide the gist of your post to your readers.
If your summary is longer than 200 words, you are rambling. Ideally, it should be around 100 to 150 words.
Your post shouldn’t read like a final verdict on a subject. Instead, invite your readers to participate in a conversation about it.
Some people will scroll down to your conclusion before reading your content. If it is enticing, they will scroll back up to read the rest.
Promotion
Before you publish your post, ask yourself:
There is a science to content marketing. This chart will tell you when to publish your content.
The best place to publish your awesome content is typically on someone else’s site. This blog post will explain why.
You shouldn’t publish content unless you are collecting emails. Emails are the best way to get people to come back to your site.
A lead magnet entices people to give you their email addresses. You can offer a free ebook or a PDF in exchange for an email.
From using scrolling social plugins like Flare to placing click to tweet links within your post, encourage social sharing any way you can.
Every time you publish a post, you should do outreach, asking people to share your content. I still do this even though I get hundreds of thousands of visitors each month.
If you aren’t, then your content won’t do as well as it could when shared on the major social networks.
Including their user names in your tweets will increase the likelihood of them re-tweeting your content.
It’s a simple tactic that can help generate more shares. Read this blog post for template messages for LinkedIn.
By turning your blog post into a PDF or a slide deck and sharing it on the web, you can get more traffic. Just submit these different versions of your content to sites like Slideshare, and you’ll see more traffic. Make sure you adjust the content, however, as you don’t want to be hit by a duplicate content penalty.
You should be sharing your post at least 2, if not 3 times, on social channels like Twitter. Not all of your users will see your content the first time you tweet.
Use this template in Manifestly
Related Marketing Checklists
- Blog Post Promotion
- Blog Post Review (Before Publishing)
- Website and Content Checklist
- SEO Checklist
- Social Media Checklist
- Paid Advertising Checklist
- Analytics Checklist
- CRM Checklist
- Email Marketing Checklist
- Lead Generation Checklist
- Conversion Rate Optimization Checklist
- Copywriting Checklist
- Mobile Optimization Checklist
- Video Marketing Checklist
- Client Onboarding Checklist
- Client Offboarding Checklist
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