7-Point Blog Writing Checklist: From Research to Editing to Reader Satisfaction

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One of the most common questions I get from potential clients is, “What’s your blog writing process?”

And I understand why potential clients ask this.

We don’t rise to the occasion but sink to our level of processes and preparation.

With a clear and battle-hardened writing process, you can ensure that blog posts hit their targets at least 90% of the time.

But more importantly, you can limit your bad blog posts to almost zero.

That’s why I have a blog writing checklist that guides my writing.

I’ve refined this checklist over the years because it’s so important to serving readers and convincing SaaS clients to hire me!

Also, this checklist is dynamic. I update it as I learn new things about writing.

I’ve also added some templates you may need.

So, let’s jump into the 7-point blog writing checklist.

Blog writing checklist

1. Get a good content brief

A good content brief explains what the writer needs to know about writing on a topic, the ideal audience, competitors, and content direction.

This is important because 2 businesses can have different aims when writing about the same topic. 

They can write to attract different audiences. So, they have to approach the topic differently.

Because of these differences between businesses, a writer may be in the dark about what a business really wants. The content brief shines a light on this darkness.

Here’s what Leigh McKenzie, Head of Growth at Backlinko, said about content briefs:

A good content brief should contain details such as: 

• Content format
• Audience
• Audience pain point
• Audience goal
• Narrative frame
• Client goal
• Target keywords
• Internal links
• Content gap (or information gain opportunities)
• Competitors

If you work for a client, ask for a content brief for each content piece. If not, create a content brief to define how you want a content piece to look.

If you need a brief template, check out Beam Content’s brief template. Edit the template to your needs before using it.

Once you have a great content brief, it guides the other steps during content creation.

Content brief checklist

• Contains ideal audience
• Explains content tone and approach
• Explains information gain opportunities

2. Think deeply about the topic and reader

As someone who has written SaaS content for over 5 years, I can tell you that quality thinking births quality writing.

If your thinking is in the gutter, readers will leave your content with their problems still stinking at them unsolved. 

Not good.

That’s why you need to start thinking early in the writing process

Even if you’re a subject matter expert on the topic you want to write about. Because, as an expert, you perform many of your daily tasks subconsciously due to multiple repetitions over the years.

So, explaining this topic to a beginner becomes hard.

Thinking about it brings the whole process to your consciousness and helps you deconstruct the process to deliver useful information to a novice.

On the other hand, if you have little experience about the topic, thinking about it will help you understand a reader’s situation and what they need to know.

Then, you can form the best questions if you need to speak with subject matter experts about the topic.

That said, these 3 questions will help you think better about a topic:

• What do you already know about the topic?
• How can you add information gain?
• How will this topic be useful to its audience?

These 4 questions will help you think about your readers:

• What’s the search intent of your ideal reader?
• What situation led them to this topic?
• What problem are they trying to solve?
• What do they already know?

While answering these questions, write detailed notes of what comes to your mind.

This exercise guides your research process and what to include in your outline.

Think deeply checklist

• Note what you already know about the topic
• Think about the topic needs
• Think about the audience’s needs

3. Conduct quality research

Quality research involves uncovering as much useful information as possible about a topic.

With research, you can uncover what’s already written about the topic, see how ideal readers describe their problems, and find content gaps.

But if you ask 5 people what quality research means, you’ll get 5 different answers. That said, here are some things I do as a part of my research process:

• Visit Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs): The SERPs will show the search intent Google is currently serving, which is the safest to target in your content. I also visit the ranking pages to see what they already cover about the topic and what’s missing.
• Search relevant keywords on Reddit: Searching Reddit will help you uncover your ideal readers’ current conversations about this topic. From these conversations, you’ll see the information they’re looking for.
• Search keywords on social media: Experts on Twitter and LinkedIn always post about multiple industry topics to build their reputation. Searching these platforms can help you find unique ideas to include in your content.

For example, let’s say I’m writing about sales prospecting tools. I can put the keyword “sales prospecting tool” in Reddit search to see what people are saying about the topic. 

When I checked the threads, I got these insights: 

• Some sales professionals want tools for sales prospecting offline. 
• Buyers want prospecting tools that provide accurate phone numbers and email addresses. 
• GDPR compliance is important to reduce risks. 
• You may need a combination of tools for different aspects of prospecting (finding prospects, finding contact details, outreach, calling analytics, etc.). 
• Sales reps are looking for AI-powered prospecting tools to identify high-intent buyers.

So, even without being a professional sales rep, I can use these insights, plus other research methods, to create content that will help a sales rep find the right tools.

While going through the research process, I always take notes and save important links for further study.

But taking these 3 steps is only a part of research. There’s still more to do.

And the next heading tackles another part of writing research. 

Quality research checklist

• Visit Google SERPs to see the prevalent search intent and ranking pages
• Research topic on Reddit
• Research topic on social media

4. Collect subject matter experts insights

Subject matter experts (SMEs) on your topic have failed and succeeded at performing relevant tasks for many years.

So, they understand what to do in particular situations and can deliver practical insights that readers can use immediately.

But more importantly, you also learn more about the topic, which is great for your audience.

While some think collecting SME insights means only talking with an SME, other methods exist.

And these other methods are necessary because you can’t always reach every SME when you need them. Some of them are just too busy.

But you can still get insights from the content they regularly publish.

For example, while working on a blog post about Ahrefs’ content marketing strategy, I uncovered a lot of insights from content that many Ahrefs content executives already feature.

This is a great alternative if the SME you want to feature is busy.

Here are 4 ways to collect SME insights:

• Speak with an SME: Reach out to an SME through email, LinkedIn, or Slack. During your discussions, chip in the questions you have about the topic.
• Use Help a B2B writer or Qwoted: These platforms link you with SMEs. You just have to state what you’re writing about and the type of experts you expect to contribute. Here, you can create a list (or form) of your questions, and experts will answer them.
• Watch podcasts: Experts regularly go on podcasts to share their knowledge. In these podcasts, they can deliver unique insights.
• Watch webinars: In webinars, experts present on a specific topic. If this topic is close to what you’re writing about, you can gain some important knowledge.

When collecting SME insights, your main aim should be to learn new things about the topic. 

If you learn new things, you can easily transfer those learnings to readers. 

After collecting insights, organize them to see where each insight fits into your content piece.

After going through the last 3 steps, you now have a lot of knowledge and materials to create an outline.

Subject matter experts insights checklist

• Speak with SMEs
• Collect insights on SME platforms
• Collect insights from SME’s published content

5. Create and share blog post outline

An outline is the skeleton of your content piece.

A strong outline provides shape, support, and structure for your content.

Your outline will grow from taking the previous steps. All you have to do now is organize your headings to deliver the best value to readers.

Your outline will provide information about what each heading will talk about. Use bullets to explain the main points of each heading or subheading.

Beyond that, include information about meta description, URL slug, internal links, external links, and SMEs to be featured.

Once you’re done with the outline, send it to your client. The outline will show the client whether you understand the brief as they had it in mind.

The client can then highlight the changes they want when you write the main content.

The outline ensures you’re on the same page with the client, which also leads to fewer edits after submitting your first draft.

If you’re wondering how to create your outline, Moz has a content outline template you can adapt to your needs.

Once you have a great outline, it increases the chances your content will come out as intended.

Outline checklist

• Provide a summary of what each heading will address

6. Write the blog post

Writing the content will be much easier if you’ve performed the previous 5 steps properly.

Once again, you’ll think deeply to combine the materials you have to build a narrative that helps readers solve problems.

This thinking will be both during writing and when you’re away from the keyboard (or notebook).

After all, our brains have a way of forming great sentences and narratives when we’re away from the keyboard.

For example, the sentences in this heading came to me while thinking about this section in the toilet.

That’s the life of a writer.

How do you bring your content together?

• Explain what each section is all about, why it’s important to the reader, and how to take action.
• Use examples, analogies, and stories that can help readers understand your point.
• Ensure there’s a flow of ideas. That is, each sentence should be related to the previous and the next one. Even when you’re changing direction, transition words and phrases should give readers a soft landing on your next idea.
• Use short sentences and paragraphs to give readers an opportunity to breathe. Then, vary sentence length to hold the reader’s attention.

The most important things when writing are being conscious of the message you want to get across and how to present it to your readers.

Writing checklist

• Explain the what, why, and how of each section
• Use examples, analogies, and stories
• Use short sentences and paragraphs
• Ensure there’s a flow of ideas

7. Edit the blog post

Editing helps you test a content piece to ensure it has great information and delivery for its audience.

When editing your content, some aspects you want to examine are:

• Quality of the ideas presented
• Ideas that are out of place for the audience
• Flow of ideas
• Grammar and awkward sentences

But before you launch into editing a content piece, it’s best to take a step away from it. Let the content rest for at least 1 day if you have the time.

Doing this creates a distance between you and the content, which lets you view it critically.

When editing and proofreading content, I read through a few times, checking for one thing at a time. That’s because it’s difficult to check for multiple things at a time.

For example, I can read through to examine the quality of ideas and if they make sense to my ideal reader. Then, read again to see if there’s a good flow of ideas.

To check grammar, I use Grammarly. Of course, I ignore some of its recommendations when they make little sense.

But it helps me catch grammatical blunders.

Another thing I do is read the content out loud to catch awkward sentences.

While editing content can help you catch most things, it’s still easy to miss out on some things because you wrote it.

So, if you have an editor, send it to them after your editing round. Or send it to a teammate who understands content marketing.

In essence, editing is about testing your content like a reader and critic. It’s like a test flight where pilots take an airplane through extreme maneuvers that it would rarely perform during normal passenger flights.

After editing the content, share it with your client. The client will read through and provide feedback about the content.

Once you incorporate the feedback into the content, the next step is publishing.

Now, your content is ready to meet readers for the first time.

Editing checklist

• Check for the quality and presentation of ideas in content
• Check grammar and awkward sentences

Summary of blog writing checklist

Here’s the full blog writing checklist from the beginning to the end of the content writing process:

• Understand the ideal audience
• Know content tone and approach
• Identify information gain opportunities
• Note what you already know about the topic
• Think about the topic needs
• Think about the audience’s needs
• Visit Google SERPs to see the prevalent search intent and ranking pages
• Research topic on Reddit
• Research topic on social media
• Speak with SMEs
• Collect insights on SME platforms
• Collect insights from SME’s published content

• Provide a summary of what each heading will address in the outline
• Explain the what, why, and how of each section of content
• Use examples, analogies, and stories
• Use short sentences and paragraphs
• Ensure there’s a flow of ideas
• Check for the quality and presentation of ideas in content
• Check grammar and awkward sentences

Conclusion

A smooth reading experience for the reader is hard writing work for you.

First, you have to understand who you’re writing for.

Then, understand the message you’re trying to deliver to this audience.

From these 2 elements, you need to build a narrative that helps the audience solve their problems while also promoting your business.

Nailing this process requires a lot of research and thinking.

But if all these sound like a lot of stress, reach out to me to relieve you of your SaaS content headache.

Reach out and let me know your content needs.