{"id":12080,"date":"2013-01-07T09:04:25","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T14:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shareaholic.com\/?p=12080"},"modified":"2014-06-30T18:02:54","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T22:02:54","slug":"blog-post-editing-checklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/blog-post-editing-checklist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Blog Post Editing Checklist: A Step-By-Step Guide to Publishing Awesome Articles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"editing<\/a>When you first sign up to blog, you may think that all you do is type up your thoughts and hit publish\u2026but in reality, writing a post is only half the battle. Before you hit publish, there are a ton of changes you should need to make to ensure your posts are as successful as possible.<\/p>\n

To help make the editing process a little less daunting for you, here\u2019s a step-by-step guide of the blog post editing process:<\/p>\n

1. Take a break between writing and editing.<\/h3>\n

If you\u2019re in writing mode, it\u2019s really<\/em> hard to switch to editing mode right away. Before you tackle the rest of this checklist, you should take at least a 10-minute break. Grab a cup of coffee, catch up on your favorite TV show or even head to bed for the night.<\/p>\n

If you take a solid break between writing and editing, your editing skills will be sharper, catching the little mistakes that could normally slip through the cracks.<\/p>\n

2. Does the post help you accomplish your goals?<\/h3>\n

In last weeks\u2019 post on understanding your blog’s analytics<\/a>, we talked a bit about creating and measuring blogging goals. Besides helping you figure out which metrics to track, blogging goals are crucial to guiding your writing and editing processes.<\/p>\n

After your break, read through your post once without trying to edit for grammar, spelling and formatting to see if it addresses your blog\u2019s goals. Be ruthless\u2014if you\u2019re not sure whether the post matches your blog\u2019s goals after the read-through, put it on the back burner until another day.<\/p>\n

3. Write an awesome title.<\/h3>\n

We\u2019ve talked a lot about writing great headlines<\/a>, so we won\u2019t waste much time here going into the nitty-gritty. Essentially, headlines should be catchy, interesting and relevant to what\u2019s being written. If it popped up on my Twitter feed, I would want to click it. It\u2019s also important to deliver on your headline\u2019s promise in the body of your post. If someone clicks on your blog post, they want to get what they came for.<\/p>\n

4. Cut your copy in half.<\/h3>\n

When editing your copy, you need to be ruthless as well. Cut out anything<\/em> that doesn\u2019t need to be there. While many people appreciate detailed posts (like this one), readers aren\u2019t looking for long posts that drone on needlessly.<\/p>\n

If you need help with cutting down your copy, you can try a trick that I learned in one of my favorite classes in college<\/a>: pick someone else\u2019s blog post and cut the word count in half. Once you\u2019ve done that, cut it in half again and again until you\u2019re down to a few sentences. Then, try it on your own posts!<\/p>\n

5. Format your post.<\/h3>\n

Formatting is key to helping your readers quickly scan and understand your posts. Here are some tips you should always follow:<\/p>\n