Steps To Consider Before Publishing

Pre-Publish checklists are boring and repetitive especially when you have to run them every single time you're writing a blog post. But, when writing a blog post either personally or professionally, you can often forget simple things from running a spell check to checking all links are not broken.

That is why we created this Blog Pre-Publish Checklist, to ensure you never miss anything when creating your blog post. 

There are numerous different ways to write an article. You can make it as simple or as flowery as you want it to be. In this article the Hemingway writing style is explained and might also be useful for your content. If you had a read through it, and want to give it a try, make sure to check out the app. This will help you to assess your writing in this style.

Remember editing is of high importance when it comes to writing your content!

First up in our blog pre-publish checklist is to run the content through a spell checker! You can either copy your post into a word processor or run it internally on WordPress (or a similar program). 

Next up, you need to ensure that your post is proofread. 

Although not always necessary, it's good to have at least two people other than yourself proofread your content to check for errors.

If you're using WordPress there is an internal proofreading function. Use this only after you and at least one other have thoroughly looked over the post, just to check for any errors you might have missed. 

Write 5 headlines to test on social media. Record these headlines (and send them to [email protected]). Although you can pick your favourite one, we might recommend a different title. Don't worry you still have the final vote!

Note that you should have written many more headlines than this for the initial post; these are just the titles for social media purposes.

Use the results in the future to determine which kind of title is the most effective. More information can be found here on Hubspot.

Ensure that there are sub-headings in your post. These should be <h3> tags and used to break the post down into scannable chunks.

Ensure your links aren't broken and that they link to the correct location. Record all the links you make and send them to [email protected] 

Remember to use affiliate links if you have any, instead of generic ones.

Check the formatting of your lists and bullet points to ensure it is standardized. Using lists and bullets is another great way of making your post more readable. 

In order to ensure that your great content is not let down by sub-par images, you must now check their size and ratio.

In order to get the best result we strongly advice to have your images at least 1000px wide ratio 16:9, however if you have a great image with different properties feel free to use it.

If you're sending us your article in Microsoft Word or Google docs, just paste the link of the article where you want it to apear and we'll ensure that it will show correctly. Video content is a great way to engage readers.

If you're publishing to your own blog, YouTube has functionality on WordPress that allows you to just paste the link without embed code. If you're using another service, you may have to both find the embed code and tweak it so the frame sits nicely on your page.

You're almost there - now you need to double check all quotes you have included. Ensure that you attribute quotes correctly, if you're publising on your own blog have <blockquote> tags start and finish where they're meant to. If you're sending it to us, please ensure that you have listed all your sources correctly.

This is pretty self-explanatory; you need to make sure that all of your content is in a consistent format.

Next up (if required), have the post approved by the appropriate source. If you have any doubts about your post you can always send it to [email protected]. When you are happy with your article, once again, send it to [email protected] with the subject line: ''Article For Review''.

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