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Help me find my audience? – that is probably the first question you have in mind now. And with a blogging checklist? What is the connection?

You are not mistaken about reading (or hearing) it. Your blog will help you find your audience and share your blog content for your marketing activities. If you have built an audience, they will subscribe to your blog and finally get a client or customer.

But to do that, you need this blogging checklist.

BLOG SET-UP

1. Blog position

Most websites have similar content management systems, but it is essential to position your blog where your audience can easily find it. 

• Is it located on the navigation menu or bar, or footer menu? Your blog is fine if you place it on the main menu or footer and not on the sidebar or drop-down menu. 
• Is it named ‘blog’? Almost everyone knows what a blog is, so you do not need to designate another name for it.

2. Main Blog post list

Your main blog post page should contain a list of some of your blog posts where your audience can look for a specific item in a particular location.

• Is it sorted by the most recent blog posts written?
• Are there featured images for each blog post? 
• Are the blog post titles clear or comprehensible?
• Have you added an excerpt or a few lines that summarize the blog?

3. Blog post organization

Somebody said, for every minute spent organizing, you earn an hour. It is also true with your blog post organization. 

• Have you added categories to your menu?

You do not need many categories, but you should assign categories that cater to the needs of your audience and their user experience. Time to review your current categories!

4. Blog posts’ searchability

• Do you have a search bar on your main blog post page? Your audience can use it to search for specific keywords or topics in your blog.

The hard part of searchability is tracking the organic keywords searched. 

• Is your blog searchable?
• Is your blog Search Engine Optimized? 

Your blog’s visibility plays a role in your business, so if you have the time and patience to study and learn SEO, it will help your business to impact your search engine results.

But if you do not have the time, resources, and skills, get the services of somebody who fully understands SEO. Set up Google Analytics on your WordPress site before anything else.

5. Web address format

I have yet to improve on this, but the key is to make your URL short and simple. You cannot include everything you want to include, for example – unnecessary info, dates, or the word blog.

You also change your URL (Uniform Resource Locator) from HTTP:// to HTTPS:// because it is the secure version of the HTTP protocol. Read more about this from here.

For simplified structure, refer to this post.

So, two things:

• Is your URL short and simple?
• Have you changed from HTTP:// to HTTPS://?

BLOG POST

1. Format and structure

Your blog post’s format and structure count for its readability. The easier it is on the eyes when your visitors and audience scan your blog post, the more they will stay. 

• Do you have a header and a subheader? Subheaders add to what you might want your audience to know.  
• Are you consistent with your header formats? Do you classify headings as H1, H2, or H3? 
• Are your featured images searchable? WordPress said in a guide that ‘search engines and social media sites could also use these images and display them in search results and social media news feeds.’

As to more visual content, visit here.

2. Content

There are a lot of things to consider when writing your content. After all, this is the cream of the crop among your website components.

Quality content, as I have mentioned, is your measure. You have to write a blog post regularly. It means you have to deliver shareable and clickable posts consistently. If you have a regular visitor or audience, they will be looking forward to your content.

But to be efficient, you have an option to hire a writer for your blog posts, for example.

• Will you write your blog posts? 
• Will you invite guests to write a blog post for your website? Or will you hire a writer for your blog posts?
• Will you purchase PLR or DFY (pre-made) blog posts?
• Are you optimizing (SEO) your post?
• Did you check your headline, and did you use a headline analyzer?
• Does your blog post have short paragraphs for easy scanning?
• Is your blog post conversational, engaging, or seductive, perhaps?
• Are the spelling and grammar checked? You can use Grammarly, especially if you are not a native English speaker.
• Is your blog at least 500 to 1,000 words long? The buzz is the longer a post is, the more shareable it can be.
• Have you done your research right and efficiently? You cannot forget to link to a credible source!
• Do internal and external links open in new tabs?
• Do you use social sharing?

3. CTAs or Call to Actions

While some bloggers see that content and promotion are two separate things, it is not because content sells. You can blend content and promotion. You can lead your content to an offer that your business has.

This process is where you use your CTA or call to action. Yes, you can effectively use your content to generate subscribers and customers! The key is your CTA has to be relevant.

Do you specifically ask your visitors and audience to:

• Sign up to become an email subscriber for a lead magnet (free resource like a template or checklist)?
• Share your blog post on social media?
• Comment on a blog post? Or read your next blog post?
• Find out more about a product or service you are offering?

The beauty of a CTA is that it gives you a chance to create a long-term relationship with your visitors and your audience. 

You can also follow up with them and build trust, credibility, and authority while promoting your product and service. 

4. Promotion

Now your post is live! What’s next? 

You use social media to get your post out to the world, drive traffic to your website, and increase engagement to your social media channels.

How will you effectively do that? Answer these questions:

• Do you share your post with a strong CTA? Write a creative and compelling blog post enough for people to take action.
• Do you keep track of every blog post you share? Do you analyze their performance? Identify the top performing (with the most number of links, shares, and comments) blog posts because you need to focus on them to generate more traffic.
• Do you break up your top-performing blog posts and create another variety?

Share your best blog posts multiple times in different formats, appealing to a percentage of your visitors and audience.

It’s time to try this blog checklist and see what’s in store for you.