Don’t be too quick to hit publish after you’ve finished writing that post! Chances are, there’s a little typo in there or even a glaring error that you probably missed. So I created this quick content marketing checklist to help guide the way.
1. Keyword Specific
Your article should focus on a couple of keywords that will help boost its searchability. For example, since I’m writing content geared toward someone who is content marketing, I made sure that I tailored headline to that subject.
I chose a keyword phrase (“content marketing checklist”) that was related to the topic and made sure that it was mentioned in the title, once in the first paragraph and in the body to make it easier for search engines to find it. Check out these posts if you need a little more help on SEO and keywords.
2. Audience Match and Tone
Every post you write doesn’t have to cover your ENTIRE audience, but it does need to be relevant to a segment of it. In general, it’s best to write in a simple, easy to understand way–kind of like how you would talk to someone if you were discussing it over coffee.
3. Informative Links
Be sure to provide links when necessary in your post, especially when you’re citing a reference, product information and other relevant content. Don’t fret about sending your visitors off of your site to third party sites, after all, you’re training them to recognize you as the authority.
If you want to read more about creating brand authority, check out these great posts from Ryan Lee and Digital Marketer.
4. Catchy Headline
Headlines are important. It’s the first thing a reader sees and it simultaneously confirms if they are in the right place and pre-frames what the post is about. Make sure your keyword phrase is in the title, this will really help with search engine rankings.
5. Integrate Branding
Everything you publish is an opportunity to remind your readers and visitors about your brand and goes a long way towards establishing your authority. For Seriously Simple Marketing, we make it a point to make sure our posts have our logo, that we mention the brand when its relevant and follow a standard look that always goes back to our brand’s image. In this case, the featured image is the same graphic style as the other posts we publish.
6. Interesting Images
Images are very important to written content, it helps catch, and when used correctly, capture the attention of the audience. Focus on the relevance of the images to your post and make sure that the images you use are clear for commercial use.
We use DepositPhotos to find our images, they've got a ton to choose from.
7. Formatted For Readability
Be sure to format your content so it’s easy to scan and read by your audience. For example, we’ve arranged everything on this checklist in a numbered list to help make it easier to scan and grab key points.
8. Review for Errors
Most word processors and browsers have spell checkers, but they don’t catch everything. Spelling misteaks happen (see?) and grammar hiccups like “its vs it’s” or “they’re vs there vs their” are all to easy to make.
It’s always useful to have a fresh set of eyes look at your final draft before you publish. If you can't find someone to help out, give yourself a “cooling off” period of a day or so between the writing of your final draft and when you publish. That “brain break” will give you a little distance and help make mistakes you made earlier a little more obvious.
9. Encourage Engagement
If you want your visitors to engage… ask them! Expand the conversation by adding a question that your readers can answer; prompt them to share and make sure that the social sharing buttons are ready.
We do this all the time for all our posts. At the end of this post, I'll ask you to share.
(Actually… would you mind doing that now while you're thinking about it?) 🙂
10. Incorporate a Call-To-Action (CTA)
Just as important as engagement is your call-to-action. Keep it simple, specific and direct. For example, if your post offers a free download of a PDF whitepaper, end your post with a call for your audience to click on the link to download it. In our case, there's a popup that'll ask you to join our list.
That's it! Use this checklist to simplify and guarantee quality for everything that you publish. (If you haven't already, now is the time to hit those share buttons!)
Of course, if you have any questions (or suggestions of your own), feel free to leave them at the comment section below.
– Mercer
