Business Blog Writing Checklist
A business blog is a great way to engage clients and prospects and, done correctly, improve your search engine rankings. Here’s a handy checklist to make sure each of your blog posts is doing everything it can for your business.
1. Is your blog writing directed to the right audience?
You know the markets you’re targeting with your overall marketing plan. Your business blog should have the same focus. This doesn’t mean each post should hit all of your target markets, but each post should hit at least one.
2. Does it support your marketing plan objectives?
Your business blog should support your larger marketing objectives. For example, if one of your marketing plan objectives is to increase awareness of product features, then a blog post might include a story of how someone has used the product. In fact, you should be able to tie each blog post to at least one broader marketing objective.
3. Is the blog post optimized for search engines?
This point is often overlooked, but as with your website, blog posts should include targeted keywords as part of your overall SEO approach. Although you should always write for humans first, and search engines second, it’s usually not much of a stretch to throw in some keywords.
4. Did you include images or video?
As a general rule, images make blog posts more engaging. And Google favours content with video, assigning it higher search result rankings. If there’s an opportunity to include video while supporting your overall message, do so.
5. Is it easy to scan?
People don’t read on the web, they scan. So make sure your business blog content is “chunkified.” Break it into shorter paragraphs, bullet points, headings, etc., so it’s easier to scan and comprehend.
6. Is it error free?
Few things turn off readers faster than errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar. You want to use your business blog to build credibility. Errors get in the way.
7. Does it bring value to your readers?
Too many business blogs use blog posts strictly for self-promotion. Promotion is fine, but you also want a good mix of other content. If you want to build a solid readership (which can convert into clients) you need to provide content people value. Otherwise, it’s like talking to someone who can only talk about him or herself.
8. Does it have a compelling, optimized, descriptive headline?
Users make up their minds about posts in, literally, seconds. A compelling, descriptive headline, optimized for SEO, will encourage people to spend more time with your posts.
Do you have a blog writing checklist for your business blog posts? What does it include?