How to Fine-tune Your New Blog Post Before Publication

Ok, so you’re out there itching to press the publish button. Don’t do it yet! There are still some things worth looking into before you make your post available to the world.

Let’s divide these things into two groups:

Final editing
Final tuning

I know that these groups are probably not very self explanatory so let me tell you what the elements of each are.

Final editing

1. “You-ifying” the post

Yes, I did just make this word up.

But here’s the deal, just go through your post and try to include the word “you” in as many places as you can. Of course, it has to make sense.

The basic idea behind it is that you should always try to talk to the reader directly. There’s no better way of doing it than by using word “you” a lot.

2. Change every “he” or “she” to “they”

Explaining this is a lot harder than giving an example so let me do just that. If you want to say something like: “If your customer demands something you can’t afford to provide then you need to tell HIM to find another contractor,” it would be better to change it to this: “If your customer demands something you can’t afford to provide then you need to tell THEM to find another contractor.” The meaning remains the same but you’re not making any assumptions about that customer’s gender.

3. Include some keywords

Whenever you post something on the internet you want Google to find it, give it a high rank in their listings, and ultimately send some traffic to it. One of the first steps to achieve this is to tell Google what your post is about, hence the importance of keywords.

For example, if your post is about “how to do a backflip,” make sure to include this keyword in the contents of the post itself. The best approach is to use the main keyword in the headline, some of the subheadings and within the first paragraph of the post. Google is more than happy to rank your posts but you have to give them some hints on what the post is about.

4. Include a call to action

You don’t want to leave your readers with no guidance on what they should do next. The truth is that if you don’t tell them exactly what you want them to do, they will do nothing.

Be straightforward and use simple actionable statements. For example: “leave a comment and tell me what you think about this idea,” or “buy my ebook now and get these 3 extra bonuses today.” A powerful call to action is the best way of ending a blog post.

5. Proofread

Last but not least. Once you have the editing done you can do a final proofread of your post. You can do it by yourself or delegate it to someone else – which is a better idea most of the cases. There’s nothing like a fresh set of eyes giving you feedback and pointing out some silly mistakes.

Final tuning

1. Include links to other posts on your blog

Blogging is all about sharing unique content and linking to other (related) pieces of it. Always remember to link to 2-3 other posts on your blog from within the body of your new post. You can kill two birds with one stone using this technique: (1) you’re giving your readers more valuable content to read and share, (2) you’re improving the internal linking structure of your blog (an SEO yes-yes).

Furthermore, using a lot of internal links is a great way of keeping the reader on your blog.

2. Include a link to the post itself

This is optional. Why would you include a link to the post itself? Well, blogging is not all rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes you will find your content stolen and republished on some crappy (or not) sites around the internet. WordPress has no defense mechanisms for this whatsoever. So if that happens and the thief didn’t go through the post but just submitted it automatically, you will at least get a link back pointing to your original content.

3. Include links to other sites

If there is a relevant post on other blog don’t be afraid to link to it. It will benefit everyone: the reader – because they get more quality content, the blogger – they receive a quality link, and you – because the blogger you’re linking out to will notice this and next time maybe they’ll link to you as well.

As you can see there’s still much stuff to do even when you think that the only thing left is pushing the publish button. Every blogger wants to create the biggest possible impact with their posts. Keeping these eight simple tips in mind might bring you much closer to the goal.

What about you? What steps do you perform as part of your own fine-tuning protocol? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.