A Post Post Checklist

So your blog post is all written, but are you forgetting to do something? Non bloggers are always surprised to learn that blogging doesn’t just end once you’ve bashed out a post. Here are a few things that you’ll probably want to check over once you’re about to press the publish button…

Does the post read well?
Yes, it can be tiresome to read over a post again when you’ve been staring at it for a few hours, but the first thing that someone else will pick up on is any misspelt words or random formatting in the post. Save the draft, make a cup of tea and come back to it with a pair of fresh eyes. If you’ve copied and pasted some text in from a press release, check that the pasting hasn’t introduced some random change in font size or style to your post! If you’re not sure, it’s a good idea to have a look at the post in the HTML view, so you can see if there are any strange HTML tags in there.

Does the post have a good title?
It can be so difficult to come up with a decent title, and sometimes, it’s just easier to resort to a random lyric of whatever you’re listening to at the time or a phrase in your current book. That’s fine for posts like outfit posts, but if you want people to be able to search for that post in the future (or if you want to find it later!), then giving it a basic, but useful, title will be beneficial. It will also be useful for SEO purposes – remember, search engines can’t tell what your post is from a random title!

Will the post be easy to find again?
Following on from the previous point, you want people to be able to find your posts again in the future, don’t you? Using tags and categories is another way to help someone find all of those posts you’ve written about cakes (or whatever). Wondering what the difference is between tags and categories? Think of them in this way – a category is a general topic on your blog (e.g. beauty, recipes, outfit posts, etc) and a tag will help you narrow that category down (e.g. lipsticks, cake recipes, outfit posts containing products by ASOS, etc). If you’re a Blogger user, you’ll just have the “labels” feature – those are more like tags, but with any of these items, try not to overuse them.

Do the links in the post work?
As a reader, it can be so frustrating to be reading a post about a super new product, clicking the link to go to the manufacturers page, and…nothing. It sounds basic, but make sure that all your links work before posting it – and if it fits in with the content, try to include a link to a previous post of yours. It’s not just good for SEO purposes, but it helps out new readers to your blog to check out what else you’ve written about – they might end up reading lots of your archives and finding more reasons why your blog is so awesome!

Have you shared the post?
Once you’ve checked the above, click publish, and let any auto tweeting, Facebooking and even Google Plus posting things do their thing – but don’t think that’s it. Use something like Buffer to have it send out automatic tweets, etc, around your social media profiles in a few hours or a few days later (because not everyone is online at the same time you are)

Is there anything you would add to this list?