Blogging is, without a doubt, one of the most effective ways to use content marketing online.
- B2B marketers enjoy 67% more leads when they blog regularly.
- Websites with blogs receive 97% more traffic than those without.
- Companies that make blogging a priority are 13x more likely to experience a return on their investment than companies who don’t blog.
While other content types have their benefits, it’s hard to beat the versatility nature of the blog. Among its many positive points, blogging:
- Provides regular content to draw users to your site.
- Increases the amount of content on your site.
- Improves your site’s SEO.
It’s pretty easy to get started blogging, as there are plenty of platforms available to help you on your way.
That said, mastering the blogosphere and making the best possible use of your blog’s content for marketing can be difficult.
- Completely optimizing your blog and all its content can take time, effort and a lot of experimentation.
- It’s easy to overlook simple steps that can make a big difference to the effectiveness of your blog.
- It’s also easy to end up getting caught up with something that shouldn’t take too long, or end up struggling with a blogging user interface and not getting the most out of your content.
To make things easier no matter how familiar you are with blogging, I’ve put together an ultimate collection of useful checklists for bloggers.
- Each of these will give you insight into the best way to streamline your blogging workflow.
- They’ll also help make sure you cover every aspect of the blogging process without a lot of backtracking and hassle.
There’s something here for bloggers with any level of expertise, whether you’re just starting out or you’re a seasoned pro.
Have a look through them and find the right checklist to guide you on your way to blogging greatness:
Getting Started Checklists
If you’re new to blogging and you don’t know where to begin, have a look at the following checklists and tutorials, which should help point you in the right direction.
These cover important points such as:
- Coming up with the right focus and topic for your blog.
- Getting to grips with WordPress or other platforms.
- Posting your first blog article online.
If you don’t have any idea where to start blogging, or if you want more suggestions for building up a blog, these checklists will be a big help.
This is a good, helpful checklist for anyone looking to start blogging.
It’s comprehensive, and covers a lot of points that you might overlook in your rush to begin blogging – which can save you a lot of time later on.
- The 8 Point Checklist To Start A Profitable Blog (Matthew Woodward)
This is a pretty useful checklist which talks you through a lot of the basics of picking a topic that you can write extensively on and what kind of content you should create.
It’ll give you a lot to think about, as well as provide some handy action steps so you know exactly what to do next when starting your blog.
- A Simple Checklist For Starting A Blog Business (A Blog on Blogging)
This is a simple guide to all the big steps you’ll need to take before you can start blogging in earnest, such as setting up WordPress and organizing a domain with hosting.
This is a great checklist for anyone who’s looking to start blogging for the first time.
Not only does it go through developing the idea of your blog and setting up the site, but it also walks you – step by step – all the way through to publishing your first article.
- Get Going Fast: A Checklist (WordPress)
This is great: it’s a guide from WordPress about how to get to grips with the platform as quickly as possible, helping you to figure out exactly what you need to do to set up your blog.
You can always trust Problogger to provide great content, and in this post, you’ll find a nicely detailed guide to the first few steps you’ll need to take to get your blog up and running.
This checklist walks you through getting to grips with WordPress. If you’ve never used the platform before, this guide will be pretty useful for learning the ropes.
Blogging Beginner Checklists
While there’s no real “wrong way” to start out blogging, sometimes it helps to be pointed in the right direction.
If you’re just starting out, these checklists are great resources that’ll help you learn all the basics you need to become a seasoned blogger in no time.
- Before + After Checklists for Your Blog Posts (By Regina)
This is a short and simple checklist that beginners can run through quickly to avoid tiny mistakes such as typos and grammar errors.
It’s pretty basic, but it can help catch glaring (and embarrassing) errors in your posts.
If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to actually producing the text of your blog post, this checklist breaks down the steps to drafting and editing your articles, in addition to providing some helpful beginner’s tips.
- Business Blogging – Advice, Checklists & More (Spork Marketing)
If you’re looking at business blogging for the first time, this checklist runs through some helpful, basic advice on the specific steps you should take.
- The Ultimate Small Business Blogging Checklist (CJG Digital Marketing)
This checklist doesn’t go into huge detail, but does have some good pointers for new business bloggers.
- Blog Development Checklist (For Dummies)
As it’s ‘For Dummies’, it makes sense that this checklist is short, sweet and simple to follow.
This is a fairly detailed beginner’s guide to writing posts that talks you through the process of creating compelling text that readers will want to engage with.
Thanks to Sprout Content, you’ve got a nice, simple guide to shaping your blog posts, built especially for those who don’t have much experience with blogging rhetoric.
- Beginner’s Blogging Checklist (Blank Page)
Like many of the others above, this checklist runs quickly through a few of the basics of writing blog posts, formatting them and then promoting them once you’ve published them.
Advanced Blogging Checklists
Okay, so maybe you’re a bit more advanced than the beginner checklists we’ve covered so far, and you’re looking for something with a little more depth.
This next set of checklists will help you to find the weak spots in your content creation process, as well as give you suggestions for streamlining your blogging activities that may have never occurred to you before.
Have a look and see what you can learn:
- 68 Ultimate Blogging Tips: Bloggers Checklist 2015 (Twelveskip)
This checklist runs through the whole process of writing and publishing a blog post – plus, it gives handy tips such as which hashtags to use when promoting your blog on social media (a tip that’s useful for even seasoned bloggers).
- The Definitive 2015 Blog Assessment Checklist (Heidi Cohen)
This is a good introspective checklist, giving you lots of prompting to look at what’s working and not working about your blog.
Bloggers of any proficiency level have something to learn here.
- 23 Point Guest Blogging Checklist like No Other (Your Escape From 9 to 5)
This checklist is great – it provides all the necessary steps in infographic form and also gives some explanations for how to achieve the different steps on its list.
While it’s nominally designed for guest posts, there’s plenty in there for every blogger to learn.
Coming from Neil Patel, it’s no surprise this checklist is in-depth and informative about steps even experts can take to streamline their blogging.
- 29-Point Blog Post Checklist: How to Seduce Your Readers to Buy (Enchanting Marketing)
This is a good guide to writing blog posts that lead readers quickly through your conversion process towards buying.
Inside, you’ll find plenty of specific points that’ll help you make the most of the blog text itself.
- Your insanely useful blog post creation checklist (We Are The Treasure Hunters)
This checklist is provided as a free PDF that you can easily check off as you go.
It covers a range of steps associated with providing diverse and quality content on your blog.
- Blogging for business checklist (Bloom Tools)
This checklist is full of loads of helpful tips for getting the most out of business blogging, including optimizing and promoting your blog.
This checklist is both in-depth and detailed, telling you everything you need to know about blogging effectively and making the most of your content.
- Blogging Checklist: Take Your Blog Posts From OK to Spectacular (Stepping Stone)
This checklist is all about adding that little bit of extra quality to each and every blog post.
- The Ultimate Content Marketing Checklist: 40 Questions to Ask Yourself before Publishing Your Next Blog Post (Quick Sprout)
Another great one from Neil Patel here – lots of sharp, concise advice that’ll really help your blog grow.
- 148-Point Affiliate Marketer / Blogger Checklist (Rosalind Gardner)
This one’s the big daddy of checklists, running through every minute step you’ll need to take to make your blog posts shine.
It’s not hugely descriptive regarding each point (and quite frankly, if it went into each of the 148 points in further detail, it’d pretty much be a book), but it does provide handy links if you need further guidance on any points.
Formatting Blog Checklists
In order to make your blog posts look as professional as possible – as quickly as possible – it helps to run through a formatting checklist before hitting the “Publish” button.
These checklists should help streamline your blog posting and also ensure each post you publish has excellent presentation value.
- My 40 Point Blogging Checklist Every Blogger Needs to Read (Social Media Fuze)
This checklist is a great place to start if you want to learn more about formatting your blog posts.
In particular, take a look at its useful section on the basics of SEO.
- 16 Step Checklist for the Perfect Blog Post (Duct Tape Marketing)
This checklist is useful if you want to structure your blog in WordPress but don’t know where to start.
Over 16 tasks, it covers all the important formatting steps and goes through which settings you’ll need to alter to make your post stand out.
- Before You Publish: Blogging Checklist (Ecreativeworks)
A short and sweet reminder of all the things you should be doing immediately to remove errors in your blog posts.
- Blog Post Before + After (Wonderlass)
This is a nice, simple and clearly laid out guide to formatting for those who might not have a lot of experience blogging (although it might be a bit basic for more advanced bloggers).
- The Definitive Blogging Checklist: Everything You Need to Do Before, During and After You Hit Publish (Red Bamboo Marketing)
This one’s a simple, concise guide to the specifics of formatting your blog posts. No waffle, just clear steps you can take to improve your blogging ROI.
- Perfecting your post before you publish: The ultimate blogging checklist (New Creative Writing)
There’s plenty of good WordPress formatting advice in this article, but be sure to stay tuned for the checklist’s guidance on SEO techniques you can apply quickly.
- 10 Step Blog Maintenance Checklist (About Tech)
This is a really great guide for keeping your blog neat and tidy, and for helping it to run quickly.
In particular, pay attention to the post’s recommendation to delete unwanted plugins and backup your site in case everything falls apart.
Afraid of making simple mistakes when publishing a new post? This checklist will help keep you safe.
Even more, it’ll help you make sure your text is readable and engaging through the use of careful structuring, helping you to achieve the highest possible level of quality with your content.
SEO Blogging Checklists
If you’re after getting the most out of your blogging content, it’s important to make sure every article is perfectly optimized for search engines.
These checklists give you a guide to everything you need to know, as well as all the points you need to cover, to make your blog as appealing as possible to search engine algorithms.
This is a basic introduction to SEO for blogging, covering six major points that you should be aware of.
It’s also got a list of places you can look for more advanced ideas on improving your blog’s search engine optimization.
- SEO Checklist : Every Blogger Should Follow (Shout Me Loud)
This checklist is much more in-depth, covering all the technical points of SEO such as meta tags, keywords and link building.
It doesn’t break things down much, but it does provide helpful resource links for learning more about each point on the checklist.
This checklist is online nine steps long, but it goes into a lot of detail about how to implement each one.
It’s a useful tool if you’d like to learn more about the specifics of the most important steps in SEO.
- The Ultimate Blog Writing And SEO Checklist (Business 2 Community)
This is one of the most helpful guides on SEO for blogs out there.
It covers a lot of different important steps, but gives you plenty of information to know what you should do and why it’s important.
- Simple SEO Checklist for WordPress Blogging (Texas Freelance)
This checklist is fairly basic, but it’s useful particularly for those who are struggling with WordPress.
That said, some of its tips might not be accurate, depending on the plugins you’re using. Consider your site’s setup carefully before implementing any advice.
- Best Blogging Practices: A Blog Post SEO Checklist (Sensible Marketing)
Afraid of going overboard with your blog’s SEO?
This checklist breaks things down and gives good guidance on how to avoid overdoing SEO and making your blog post look like a jumbled, unreadable nightmare.
- How to Write a Blog Post That Converts — AND Brings in SEO Traffic [Checklist + Complete Guide] (The Content Factory)
Here, you’ll find common sense SEO advice, as well as tips on how to write a blog post so that SEO doesn’t just become an afterthought.
There’s lots of good information in here, so be sure to read it in full.
- The Ultimate 22-Point Blog Post Checklist (Writtent)
I like this checklist – it covers a lot of the SEO steps you’ll need to take and gives specific numerical values to things like title lengths.
Even better, it’s got a great collection of links to places where you can learn more about each point.
This is a useful list to look through before finally clicking “Publish” on an article to make sure you haven’t missed anything important.
Promotion Checklists
There’s more to blogging than just writing articles: a big part of becoming a success online is knowing how to attract readers to your site.
These checklists focus on helping you to perfect your social media presence, as well as how to carry out other promotional tasks successfully while running your blog.
- Daily blogging checklist (Amuse Your Bouche)
This is a beginner’s guide to promoting your blog on various social media platforms.
It’s not very in-depth, but it’s a good place for social media newbies to start.
- How To Promote Your Blog: The Definitive Blog Post Promotion Checklist (Blogging Wizard)
This one isn’t the most structured checklist, but it will walk you through some key steps to promoting your blog – even if you can’t really tick off each step as you complete it.
While this one’s a big wordy, I like it because it simply, but clearly explains why you need to be using five key social media platforms to promote your blog.
Again, it’s not the most in-depth checklist, but it will point you in the right direction.
- 17 Things You Should Do to Every Blog Post Before + After You Hit Publish (The Nectar Collective)
I like this checklist because it clearly breaks down the steps you should take both before and after publishing an article to help you build the biggest possible readership.
- Organise Your Blog #5 – Daily Blogging Checklist (Life Unexpected)
This checklist briefly touches on a few of the social media tools you should be using every day to draw readers to your blog, as well as how to use them.
- My Daily Blogging Tasks & Free Checklist (Oh So Amelia)
While this guide is written for mommy bloggers, it’s got some good advice for anyone looking to follow a relatively intensive daily social media promotion schedule.
- A 20-Point Checklist to Making Guest Blogging a Big Success (Get Response)
This guide to guest blogging can be really useful if you’re looking to blog for other sites in an effort to help your own blog’s fame grow.
- Checklist To Increase Blog Post Shares (Blogging in Balance)
This guide runs through a lot of useful tips and tricks to getting your blog posts shared by as wide an audience as possible – very useful if you’re looking to grow your readership and your social media presence.
So there you have it – fifty checklists that can help you take your blog to the next level, no matter how experienced you are at blogging right now.
Feel free to pick through these checklists at your own leisure to build the perfect plan to make your blog stand out from the crowd and to streamline your content creation process.
Or, if you have another great checklist to share, I’d love to hear about it. Leave me a comment below with your suggestion:
Images:
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