According to HubSpot’s research in 2021, 56% of marketers that utilise blogging as part of their marketing strategy say it’s valuable and 10% of marketers claim it brings them the largest return on investment. 

Content marketing is all about creating and sharing blogs, infographics, step-by-step guides, downloadable PDFs – the list goes on. And the purpose of doing so is to reach an audience that it resonates with, so that they can learn more about your products and services, all whilst building brand awareness. 

By creating content, your statistics can help to guide you more towards what your audience wants, which means you can have a better idea of their pain points and leverage these insights to generate conversions. 

So, follow this checklist to elevate your next blog.

Planning a blog checklist:

• Understand what your reader wants – a customer persona can help you to decide what your customers want to hear more about. Don’t worry if you haven’t created one before, follow this link to learn how to create a customer persona. This will help you to create more personalised and relevant content that’s likely to attract customers and lead to sales. 
   
• Think about your topic – when choosing a topic to write about, it’s important to consider your goals. Are you looking to gain links, be an organic landing page, catch customers at the bottom of the funnel? If you’re not sure, you can ask your customers. There are many ways in which you can do this, for example, send customers surveys or ask the sales and support team. Other supporting platforms you can use to decide on content include Google Trends, Answer The Public and Twitter!
   
• Think about your title – keep your title under 65 characters and consider what your audience will be typing – which is most likely questions starting with: how, when, where, who, can, are, why, will, what and which. It’s also important to consider how-to guides, step-by-step instructions, vs and differences between X and Y. 
   
• Summarise what the blog is about in the opening paragraph – readers want validation that they have found the right source of information, one which provides the answers, so it’s important to start your blog strong. If your blog title is a question, answer the question immediately – although we want them to keep reading, it’s important to hook them in by developing on the answer below. 
   
• Consider what your focus keyword is going to be – opt for less competitive keywords, which are your long-tail keywords and use them as your blog post title. Use the keyword in subheadings, alt text in the imagery and in the meta tag and meta description for maximum blog exposure.
   
• Think about your imagery – research from BuzzSumo revealed that blogs that use imagery every 75-100 words have double the share rate than blogs with fewer images.

Writing a blog checklist:

• Be consistent with your tone of voice – understand your company’s voice and what values make up their tone of voice. Perhaps their tone is cheeky, friendly and good-natured. Consider the words you choose in your blog to reflect these values. 
   
• Vary your sentence lengths – reading short sentences only is boring. It disrupts the flow. It loses the focus of a reader. Whereas a mixture of both long and short sentences helps to improve the flow of whatever it is you’re reading. Which makes you think. If you want to keep a reader interested, vary your sentence lengths. They’ll thank you for it. 
   
• Write a punchy CTA – don’t waffle on at the end of your blog, be direct and let your readers know what you want them to do. Whether you want them to subscribe, follow you on social or get in touch, make it clear and provide them with embedded links so they don’t have to search for it.

Proofing a blog checklist:

• Check that spelling and grammar are correct – ever read a leaflet, email, billboard and spotted a glaring mistake? Check over your work once, twice, three times and pass it to someone else and let their fresh eyes check it too. Although we’re only human, it’s important to check to limit spelling and grammar blunders.
   
• Check your blog posts’ readability – did you know that the average reading age in the UK is nine years old? Although we can be swayed toward more complex words to show off our writing flair, your number one priority is relating to your readers, so make sure you keep it relatively simple and accessible to whoever lays eyes upon it. 
   
• Check your links – clickthrough your embedded links to make sure that they work - people don’t want 404 errors!

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