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      Brief Copywriter Process

      Copywriting Checklist for Blogging

      Before putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), always:

      1. Define the theme or topic of your blog
        • This will come down to your agreement with your client: will they supply the subject matter (and therefore a brief) or do you need to come up with the ideas?
      2. Ask yourself: Who is going to be reading this?
        • Ask the client who their target audience is.
        • If they have personas, ask for them.
        • As the writer, position yourself in the shoes of the reader, not the company you’re writing the blog for.
        • Remember: while you’re writing on behalf of a company, you need to write in a way that the reader will understand. That means potentially avoiding jargon and explaining things in layman’s terms, depending on who your target audience is.
      3. Define the tone of voice and language style
        • Tone of voice and language style are directly related to your target audience.
        • For example, if your reader is female, 22 years old and into fashion, your tone of voice and the language you use will probably be casual, quirky and colloquial. If your reader is male, aged 47 and is the CEO of a successful company with more than 100 staff, you’re probably going to keep your writing style and tone of voice professional and straight.
      4. Do your research
        • There’s nothing worse than reading a blog that’s meant to sound like you know what you’re talking about but just reads like a ball of fluff.
        • There’s no such thing as too much research. Like that saying goes, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.
        • Using competitors’ sites and existing articles about similar content as inspiration is fine, but never ever copy any words that have been written by someone else.
      5. Do your keyword research:
        • Find out what your client’s target keywords are and keep them in mind as you write a blog.
        • If they don’t have their own keywords, there are plenty of free keyword tools online to help you include a few relevant ones in your content.

      Now it’s time to write

      Word count

      • The general word count for the average blog depends a bit on the audience, but generally speaking around 600-800 words is good.

      • Research suggests that the best length for SEO purposes is around 2000 words but research also suggests that not many people want to read an article that long, so do your own research and testing to figure out how long people stay on your article. At H&D we prefer at the most 600-800.

      Basic structure

      • Every blog need a good intro:

        • Outline the theme.

        • Give a basic overview of what the reader can expect further down the page

        • Introduce the tone of voice and personality of the company.

      • The meat in the sandwich

        • Fill your blog with good-quality content.

        • Split each section with short headlines (think 3-5 words).

        • Keep each paragraph focused on one idea; don’t overload the reader with too much information.

        • Keep sentences and paragraphs short.

        • Include links to relevant websites where possible: both your client’s website and external websites (particularly if you used them for inspiration or research).

      • Conclusion and call to action

        • You’re not at university any more; the conclusion to a blog is not like an essay, so don’t feel like you need to wrap up everything you’ve just written about in one paragraph.

        • The conclusion should give an opinion from the client’s perspective though.

        • Always include a call to action of some sort: encourage readers to do something at the end of the post, like book an appointment, visit your client’s website, sign up to a newsletter or download a PDF.

      Edit

      • Editing should take up the most time of the writing process so take that into account when allocating your time.

      Keywords

      • Once you’re happy with your writing from a creative perspective, it’s time to see where you can put keywords in that will boost the blog from an SEO perspective. If you have to edit lines to make them fit, do it.

      • While keywords are important, there is such thing as too many keywords. Don’t overload your content with keywords, and anywhere you do use them must sound natural, not weird.