Your 42 Point Blog Post Checklist

What goes into writing and promoting a blog post? Did you ever stop to think that each post has an additional 42 steps to it?

No?

Neither did I until I started listing them in this post

Pre-post writing and research checks….

□   Keyword research

□   Select your keyword

□   What’s your angle?

□  Are you adding anything new or fresh to the story?

Writing Your Post

 □   Research your topic – make a note of articles and sources to reference in your post

□   Decide what type of post it will be

□   Write your post

□  Format your post

□   Add a P.S.  if you like them and a call-to-action

□  Sleep on it

□  Edit your post

□ Add a fabulous headline

□ Edit your post again

Wait for it…. Before you publish

 □   Check for keyword placement and density, do not go nuts with keywords

□   Spell check and review for grammar

□   Add an image with keyword in alt tag

□   Check all links to make sure they work

□   Write the SEO title – this is the title search engines see and it the title that is pulled through to Facebook, it may be different to your post headline.

□   Write SEO description (description tag with keyword) This is the description that gets pulled through to Facebook, G+ and other sites. Add a call to action in this section to encourage readers to click through.

□   Set featured image if your theme is Genesis, or any other theme that needs featured images in its layout

□   Tick appropriate category box, that’s one or two not twenty

□   Assign post tags, it’s okay to have twenty here but you don’t actually need that many.

□   Schedule post or publish immediately

After you publish your post

 □   Share on Twitter

□   Share on Facebook (page and/or profile)

□   Share on Google+

□  Pin to Pinterest

□   Share on LinkedIn in relevant groups as well as status updates

□   Publish excerpt to Tumblr, Posterous, forums and other platforms

□   Tell your email list about the post and ask them to share it if they like it

□   Bookmark on main social bookmarking sites (Stumbleupon, Delicious, Digg, etc.)

□   Comment on blogs with related topics (preferably Commentluv  and @Livefyre Comments 3 May Be About to Change Blog Commenting Systems" href="http://bestbloggingtipsonline.com/livefyre-comments-3-features/" target="_blank">Livefyre blogs where a link to your post will appear below your comment)

□   Comment in forums with related topics and have a link to the post in your signature

□   Answers related comments in Q&A sites with link to post – Yes, even Quora has it’s uses

□   Answer the comments on your post, in a timely fashion or Bob gets mad

I’ve published and promoted my post, what’s next?

 □   Record yourself speaking the post and distribute on podcasting sites like blogtalkradio.com

□   Create slides with key points and share on Slideshare or Slide Rocket

□   Record yourself talking about each point on your slides, using the article as script. Convert to video and distribute on video distribution sites (e.g., YouTube and Vimeo)

□   Convert the article to a pdf and distribute on pdf distribution sites.

□   Keep it in a file for inclusion in a future report or ebook. Yep, you knew you could use Antholgize one day

□  Look at your stats

□ Learn from your stats then…

□ Start all over again at step one. Rinse and repeat.

photo credit: Scott Beale