The Blogger To Do List: After Finishing Your Post (+ A Free Checklist!)

Any good blogger knows that the job isn’t done after hitting publish. No, there is much, much more to the job than that. (Although that is always the case with any real job–you always end up with more than you had bargained for!)

Well, sure, you could just write a post and publish it and never look back. But then you would be doing your job half-assed and you probably wouldn’t have a very successful blog. And, if we’re all being honest here, each one of us definitely wants our blog to be the next big thing.

Luckily, you guys have me here to tell you exactly how you should do your job. Literally, in this post is a step-by-step guide telling you exactly how to do your job. Pretty generous, eh? ;)

Now, of course some items on this list are no-brainers (like schedule your post…I mean…duh…), but I’m hoping that others will be tasks that you hadn’t really thought about or known the benefits of before. So, without further ado, I present to you: the all encompassing checklist for after finishing your post.

1. Proofread, proofread, proofread!

Seriously. It’s on you if there are typos. Don’t come crying to me on this one because I’ll tell you “THIS WAS NUMBER ONE ON YOUR CHECKLIST!”

Just kidding, I won’t yell at you. Great thing about blog posts? You can easily edit them and pretend your typo was never, ever there.

But I digress.

Obviously, if you’re a blogger, then you’re automatically classified as a writer. Do you know the one thing that every good writer does? She proofreads, edits, revises, proofreads again, and the cycle is never-ending because every good writer also hates everything that she writes. Slightly kidding.

Make sure that your sentences read well, that you haven’t made any silly typos (one time I turned a tenth grade essay in with the word “as” spelled like “ass”), and that all of your points have been put in all of the right places.

2. Customize your permalink

Do you see this little bar up at the very top of your blog post?

It shows you what your permalink is automatically set to be (usually including almost every single word in your blog post title–which in this title is 12 words and that is entirely too long for a permalink), but also gives you the option to “Edit”.

I absolutely insist that you edit every single one of your permalinks so that each one is only two, three, or four (absolute max–I prefer three) words long.

There are several bloggers who do a great job of this.

One of them is Regina from byRegina.com. You can see that throughout her blog posts, she picks out the most important keywords and uses only those words in her permalinks.

• 33 Types of Blogger Collaborations (For Fun + For Profit): http://byregina.com/blogger-collaborations/
• 10 Non-icky Ways to Make Money Blogging: http://byregina.com/make-money-blogging/
• How to Write a Blog Business Plan (The Guide for Champions): http://byregina.com/blog-business-plan/

I have done the same with my own posts:

• How to Gain More Pinterest Followers: https://chloesocial.com/2015/04/gain-pinterest-followers/
• April Social Media Content Calendar: https://chloesocial.com/2015/04/april-calendar/

And I know I use Regina as an example for everything, but that’s because she does everything right and that is exactly why her blog is so successful. Also, I was planning on using several bloggers for this example, but couldn’t find any others who shortened their permalinks. Obviously this is something we all need to work on.

Now you may be wondering why exactly you really need to bother customizing your permalink. Well, frankly, because that makes it ten trillion (a number this large was absolutely needed) times easier for your readers to remember the exact permalink to one of your blog posts and be able to refer to it later or even tell a friend about it.

And for SEO purposes, do your best to keep the keywords from your post title in the same order in your permalink.

3. Preview your post

After you finish writing and have proofread everything, make sure that you preview your post. In posts where I have used a lot of widgets or formatting, like my guide to using hashtags for business that had five million embedded tweets, sometimes things can get a little wonky. This is why it is absolutely imperative that you preview your post to make any final edits before publishing or scheduling.

4. Schedule your post

Maybe you’re one of those weirdos who writes their post write before they plan to publish it, so when these first three items are checked off, you only hit publish.

I, however, am much more normal but totally OCD about scheduling my posts and having them go out at the same time on the same days every week. Emphasis on the normal.

So I write my posts throughout the week (or usually until like 1AM the night before it’s due) then schedule them for the next day. My designated post days/times are Tuesdays and Fridays at 6AM.

Why 6AM, you ask? There was actually a lot of thought put into this.

• I used to publish posts at 9AM, but those breakfast readers would miss out, so I wanted to move it to an earlier time.
• I don’t like publishing posts at midnight because then you get those people who are just checking to see if there have been any new posts but they’re not really in the frame of mind to actually read anything. So they see that you’ve posted something and they’re like “Oh cool, that’ll be a great post,” but then they never go back and actually read.
• So I decided on 6AM. I like it because my post goes live before I wake up, meaning that I have the chance to wake up to a little bit of traffic having already gone to check out my new post. (And if that’s not the way to wake up in the morning, then I don’t know what is!)

5. Create a bitlink

I prefer to use Bitly.com but there are other options, like the ow.ly links from Hootsuite or the buff.ly links from Buffer. (I use Buffer to schedule out my tweets but prefer to use bit.ly links for my Facebook and Google+ posts.)

This allows you to go back to the site (I have the Bitly app downloaded on my phone for easy access) and track how many clicks your link has gotten. There are many different ways to check this via analytics, but I think that using Bitly is just plain and simple and I like that it just puts the number right smack dab in front of my face.

6. Customize your social share captions

Basically, it’s just plain boring to post an article about how to stick to a vegan diet with the caption How to Stick to a Vegan Diet. Instead, you want to customize your social share caption to something like, “Did you know that America continues to use pesticides on food products that have long since been banned in other countries? Get healthy and stop animal cruelty on farms by learning to stick to a vegan diet” or “Too many cities in this country are not vegan friendly–learn how to overcome these barriers and stick to your vegan diet.”

Come up with something enticing, that makes people want to read your article. But please, for the love of all that is good, do not use “clickbait” captions. This means using a caption like, “Wow, you won’t believe what number 5 says!” or “This site drives 50% of all website traffic–click to learn more!”

Everyone will hate you. Just don’t do it.

7. Share to your social media

This includes your blog’s Facebook Page, Twitter, Google+ Communities, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Whew, that’s a mouthful!

Next step is to take your carefully crafted customized captions (try saying that five times fast) and post them to all of your social channels. You may not use the same ones that I listed above, or you may use all of them and then some. It’s cool. I like social media too.

Post your updates manually or schedule them–whatever suits your fancy. Just make sure that you’re not constantly looking for the latest and greatest (yes, guys, I like to rhyme..so?) plugin that can automatically send out all of your blog posts. Social media is meant to be genuine and a way to make new connections and *gasp* be social!

Side note: You may have noticed that I mentioned that you should share your blog post to your Google+ Communities, rather than just your Google+. You’re a sharp one.

I’m really not the biggest fan of Google+, but if there is one thing that it is good for, that’s its communities. Occasionally I’ll share a post to my public profile, but it doesn’t get anywhere near the traction that it would get if I shared it to, say, my Blogging community with 50,000 members.

Want proof? My hashtag guide got quadruple the engagement it got on any other social media platform because I posted it into a Google+ community. Be sure that you’re only joining communities that are relevant to your niche, that you read guidelines before posting in the communities, and that you aren’t spammy. Only share your posts that you know genuinely offer great information.

8. Add your post to your email newsletter

Do you send out a weekly email newsletter? Each time you write a new post, you always want to add the link to your email newsletter so that subscribers can find the post too.

Maybe you’ll dedicate a whole blurb to summarize the post or maybe you’ll just add it to a sidebar area captioned “On the Blog This Week…”

Whatever you choose, just make sure it’s there! You’ve built that email list for a reason. Take advantage of it.

9. Add your post to your sidebar rotation

As I have mentioned before, it is a great idea to put popular or just plain awesome posts in your sidebar so that visitors to your site have more of your awesome content shoved in their faces.

You can download plugins that will automatically update your sidebar for you, but I personally prefer to manage mine manually. That way I can include the images of my post, customize my sidebar however i want, and just have more control over things.

10. Link to your new post in old blog posts

Go back through your old blog posts to see if you’ve ever referenced something that you just wrote about or if you find a sentence that just links well to your new post. That gives you a great opportunity to create a link to your new post. Any visitors to that old post could potentially be lead to your new one through that link.

11. And vice versa

Although you should have been doing this while you wrote the post, take this time to go back and make sure that you didn’t miss any areas that you might be able to link back to an older post.

For example, I have included links to five of my other posts in this post alone. That, my friends, is how interlinking works.

12. Pat yourself on the back, sit down for two seconds, and then get started on your next blog post.

Hey, you know what they say. There’s no rest for the wicked, guys.

And for being so awesome and sticking around with my throughout this whole post, here is your own free checklist, so that you can make sure that you’re completing every single item on the list each time you publish a new blog post.

Click the image to download your checklist:

Do you have any items to add to the checklist?