5 Things You Should Do Before You Publish a Post

When I first started blogging, I was so haphazard about the whole thing. I wrote about what I wanted, whenever I wanted and how I wanted, which usually was sporadically and chaotically. Sounds like a blog you’d want to keep up with, right? Somewhere along the journey, I started getting intentional about blogging. It wasn’t overnight, but eventually, I started using social media scheduling and editorial calendars to be intentional about blogging. It’s all become routine now but it took me a while to build that routine. Blogging isn’t as easy as just writing posts. There is a method to the madness and even more importantly there are a few things I recommend doing every time you write a blog post. Yes, every time.

5 Things You Should Do Before You Publish a Post

1. Proofread

This may seem like a given, but it’s truthfully something I often forget to do. I’m not a perfect blogger by any means! Getting into the habit of proofreading before your post goes live is so important because you may catch a fairly big issue like a misspelled title or a mistake on an image. This is very helpful so that you don’t have errors that you can’t fix later (i.e. permalinks, someone sharing an incorrect Pinterest image, etc.). I always preview my post to see if the formatting looks correct if I’ve remembered to add a read more button to my post (more on why I truncate my posts) and to check for spelling or grammar errors.

2. Categorize and Tag

I plan to write an entire post about categories and tags and why they’re especially important, but for now, let me just throw it out there that categorizing your posts correctly the first time can help someone dive deeper into your blog. I’ve talked about bounce rate in the past (find that post here), but the basic idea is that if you have a brand new post that’s a recipe using a specific ingredient, someone may be curious what other posts you have that use that same ingredient. The deeper someone goes into your blog, the most likely they are to stick around. So tagging your posts from the beginning makes sure that you don’t lose out on a potential new follower who may discover that they love your blog!

3. Create Branded Pinterest Image

This is probably part of your process of writing your blog post, but in case it isn’t, it’s so important to have the right Pinterest image in your post right away. If you don’t have an image that is Pinterest friendly (read: vertical with text) in your post when it goes live, you may have people pinning irrelevant photos from your post or not wanting to pin your post at all! Make it easy on your readers by having the right image to share from the beginning.  Grab the rest of the tips over on Madison’s blog!

About Madison

@graceandvine
Grace + Vine Studios

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