Here's your blog post checklist

When you sit down to write a blog post, you want to make sure it really resonates with readers. But how do you do that? Follow the guidelines in this blog post checklist and you’ll be good to go.

1. Know Who You're Addressing

Before you write a blog post, it’s a great idea to have in mind the person you’re talking to. Narrow it down to one person, and write for him or her.

And when I say narrow it down, I mean narrow. Gender, age, interests, family life — knowing exactly who you’re writing for can help set the tone for your posts.

Check out this blog post I wrote titled "Want to Know Who the Heck You’re Selling To? Create Customer Profiles" to learn more about how creating a profile your reader can help make your content more successful.

2. Make it Readable

The thing is, the ability of human beings to sit down and focus has become — ooh, look. Something shiny.

We’re easily distracted. We want things to be quick and easy, especially reading. Many people will not read an entire blog post, they’ll scan it. This means you need to make your post easily skimmed, with the important points easy to spot. Make sure you include:

• Lots of white space. Giant blocks of text won’t cut it. Keep your paragraphs to a few sentences at most.

• Subheads. Headlines within your post will help break up the copy into sections, making it more easily scanned.

• Images. Remember in third grade when you graduated from picture books to chapter books? It’s okay to admit that you really miss the pictures. Including pictures gives your readers visual cues.

3. Write a Great Headline

Dude, writing headlines is hard.

The thing about headlines is, they have to make a reader go, “Yes. I want to to know more about that,” and then click through. But how do you do that?

Let the reader know you have information that will benefit them in some way. A sense of urgency, or fear of missing out on much-needed information, helps get them to click.

Check out these sample headlines I wrote about a subject that isn’t exactly click-bait:

7 Things You Need to Know Now About Property Tax Laws

What You Don't Know About Property Tax Laws Can Hurt You

You May Not Care About Property Tax Laws, But The IRS Does

Protect Your Family: Learn the Latest on Property Tax Laws

Here’s a great tip for writing headlines: use numbers. Remember above when I said people like their reading to be easy? One of the easiest things to scan and digest is a list.

So if you create your posts in list form, your headlines will be much easier to write. For more on how to write a decent headline, check out my blog post “3 Sure-Fire Tricks to Writing Perfect Headlines.”

See what I did there?

4. Do You

[caption id=”attachment_1621” align=”aligncenter” width=”400”] via Disney.com[/caption]

Forget everything you learned in your high school English class about the “proper” way to write. Dry writing makes for boring reading, so feel free to let your personality come through in your blog posts.

If that means writing how you speak, or tossing in a few swear words from time to time, go for it. You do you, bro. Your readers will respond as they get to know your personality.

5. But Definitely Use Spell Check

Be liberal with the slang in your writing, but not with typos. Make sure to re-read everything you write, or find a somewhat responsible friend or family member to do it for you. Mistakes happen, but rampant typos are just sloppy and careless, and can take away from your message.

Is there anything you do that should be added to the blog post checklist? Tell me about your guidelines in the comments.