Section 1 – Planning a Blog Post

 Section 1 – Planning a Blog Post

- Things bloggers should do before putting pen to paper – outlining, research etc.

Section 2 – Writing a Blog Post

- Tips on how to focus on writing, productivity tips for bloggers

Section 3 – Rewriting/Editing a Blog Post

- Self-editing techniques, things to watch out for, common blogging mistakes

Section 4 – Optimizing a Blog Post

- How to optimize a blog post for on-page SEO, social shares/engagement, etc.

Section 5 – Conclusion

- Wrap-up

The purpose of this outline is to make sure I know what I plan to cover, in what order the various sections will appear, and some bare-bones details of what each section will include.

Outlines keep you honest. They stop you from indulging in poorly thought-out metaphors about driving and keep you focused on the overall structure of your post. Sometimes I’ll write a more thorough outline (and sometimes I won’t bother with one at all), but most of the time, something like the outline above is perfectly acceptable.

Whether you write your outline in your word processor, on a piece of paper, or even scribbled on a bar napkin, do whatever works for you to keep you focused.

Do Your Research

One of the biggest secrets professional bloggers (myself included) don’t want you to know is that we don’t actually know everything. Truth be told, sometimes we don’t know anything about a topic before we sit down to write about it.

Pro tip: you don't actually need a passport to write a travel marketing post.

This doesn’t mean that all bloggers are insincere fakers. On the contrary, many bloggers’ natural curiosity is what makes them great at what they do. If you blog for a living, you have to be comfortable jumping from one topic to the next, even if you don’t know anything about it. What allows us to do this, and to write authoritatively about subject areas that are new to us, is knowing how to properly research a blog post.

It almost goes without saying, but relying solely on Wikipedia as a primary source is almost always a bad idea. Yes, Wikipedia does have thousands of excellently researched articles, but it’s not infallible, and erroneous facts do make their way into articles without site editors noticing. Plus, every verifiable fact on the site is cited from links elsewhere on the web, so why cite the middleman?

Lou Diamond Phillips was a total beast in ‘La Bamba.’