Checklist for Content Writing

This checklist is for you, whether you are writing for web, or blog or just started freelancing in content writing. This gives you aerial view of things. And little bit of personal advice which I observed while started learning this art.

Here, you will come to know very basic but most important things of content writing, which are very important for smooth user experience. Remember we are writing for making user’s experience to be smooth when they read the content we publish, not for crawler.

Understanding Audience

The first and foremost step in content writing is understanding your audience, whether you want to write content for your business or you provide services to your clients. Before clearly understanding your audience, you can’t write content that helps in conversions, and entertain your audience in any way.

How to understand your audience?

To understand your audience first we need to understand, what your readers want and need. Clarify their pain points, and after this write content that can trigger their emotions, and impact their mind.

Let’s understand this with an example,

Suppose you want to publish your content on an entertainment site, where all users are of the teenage category, so If you post any content which is not entertaining, that content may not get as much success as you think it should get.

So the first rule, for writing content is that it should be as per trend and well written by considering your target audience in the center and which can encourage them to take any action like clicking the Buy button or visiting your profile (or which is decided by you).

How To Generate Ideas For Writing

Now you understood the audience, it’s time for generating ideas for writing content, it is a crucial part. “You might have a question about how I am saying this it’s a crucial part?” So to justify that I can say that not all days are the same in our lives, on all days we are not able to generate ideas. As a personal example some days with me also it happens that I am not able to generate ideas, I read a lot and then land on some ideas but when I try to write about that topic I got very less content that I can produce, and write in my own words. So what happened with that content I end up editing, editing, editing a lot.

A helpful note which can help you in generating ideas is to read, read and read and soak your surroundings.

What Tone Should Be Used Based On The Purpose

Now, you have two ticks on the checklist: You know your audience and have a list of ideas of what to write about. Before moving further let’s decide what you are going to tell your audience, whether it is a piece of information that educates them, or it is content that provokes them to take action, or it has a totally commercial purpose. Based on your purpose you should plan for the tone of content.

Sourced by PressBooks

What Should Be The Structure Of Your Content Writing

The structure of content depends on the type of content, if you are writing a blog or an article then structure depends on the length of your article.

1) Article less than 1000 words (Blog or Article)

If you are writing a blog on an independent topic, then add features and pictures, and the format should be like this :

<h1>H1 – Main Topic of the post</h1>
  <h2>H2 – First Point
     <h3>H3 – Subsection 
          <h4>H4 – Subsection
          <h4> H4 – Subsection
     <h3>H3 – Subsection 
           <h4>H4 – Subsection
           <h4>H4 – Subsection
   <h2>H2 – Second Point
     <h3>H3 – Subsection 
     <h3>H3 – Subsection 
     <h3>H3 – Subsection

Writing should contain one <h1> tag and all subheadings should be divided dependent on topic and subtopic basis.

2) Article has 3k to 5k words (A Guide)

If you are writing an article that is long and is a collection of multiple articles then you can use internal linking to connect all the articles. This helps the crawler easily find all linked articles with your pillar content.

Internal linking with pillar content

How To Design Outline

To design the outline for the content we should be very careful because it’s the one part from where users will skim through our content, So make sure the outline tells the half story of your content what you are covering in content. Normally outline is shown as an index on the top of your article after an introduction or before that as per designing of the content.

Adding Heading and Sub-heading

Remember “Headings are text which gets clicked” in SERP, and write your headings that tell a story about your content in short. Because if users understand your heading then and only then they are going to click on the link in SERP which match their search intent.

Subheadings are heading that should be added to provide more information about the main topic, it helps in ellobrating sub topics and cover all of main heading.

What Should Be Added In Designing Body content

Whether you’re creating a blog post, an article, or any other form of written content, the body of your text holds tremendous power. By comprehending users preferences, you can tailor your body content to resonate with them effectively.

Break your body content into well-structured paragraphs for easy readability. Each paragraph should focus on a specific point or idea which is defined by subheading. Begin with a topic sentence that encapsulates the main idea, followed by supporting sentences and examples. Ensure smooth transitions between paragraphs to maintain a coherent flow throughout your content.

To make your body content more persuasive and credible, include relevant examples, case studies, or statistics. These elements lend weight to your arguments and provide real-life context to support your claims. When presenting data, ensure it comes from reliable sources and is properly cited.

Adding a minimum of 2 links that are visible and understandable if you are referring any other page or linking to your own written content for more information.

Adding Button (Next Step For User)

Adding button means to guide user what they can do next, to help them take action. It can be anything from asking them to share your content on social media or suggesting them to buy specific product or subscribe to the list of articles for future update.

Make sure while you are adding any button, it should be visible to user, clickable and properly placed in between or heading or middle or footer where ever you designed in your designing paper. And proper visible name should be placed on button.

Wrap Up Note

In this article, now I think you have pretty much clear idea about all the thing, from designing to adding CTA (call-to-action) and what should you be put in consideration while doing content writing. There is much more to cover in this topic like Content writing for web, Technical writing if you want more information about that Sucbcribe my email list and Follow me on LinkedIn or Medium.