There are so many things to remember when trying to write a successful blog post. Don’t you wish there was a simple blog post checklist to help you make sure you don’t leave anything out?

Well, my friends, I’ve created this article just for you.

In case you didn’t know this about me, I am a massive advocate of blogging. Why? Because I think it can be absolutely life-changing if taken seriously.

Now, I’m not talking about blogging about random daily events in our lives (which is actually how blogging started). What I’m talking about is using a blog as a marketing tool to build your brand.

I see a lot of bloggers out there who could be leveraging their blog so much better than they currently are.

And the only reason I know this is because I have worked for years, banging my head against a wall trying to figure out why my blog wasn’t taking off.

It turns out that just like a great recipe, a great blog post needs the right ingredients to be truly remarkable.

So I’m writing this for you–the blogger who knows they want to create amazing content but just needs help learning the recipe.

Ok, Dustin, I’m ready for the checklist. Where do I start?

Hold your horses!

Before you do anything, please remember that this checklist is for those who understand why blogging is a powerful marketing tool.

You need immense discipline to make sure that your content is interesting, engaging, and of the highest quality.

You will be putting a lot of effort in order for this to work. But trust me, the results will speak for themselves!

By the way, if you haven’t read it yet, I actually published a guide on how to write a blog post. It’s my documentation of the process I go through every time I publish something, and this checklist I’m giving you here is the same one I use.

Ok, on to the checklist!

1. Two-Thousand Word Minimum

Does your blog post have a minimum of 2,000 words?

Look, I wish we still lived in the days where 300-500 word blog posts were a thing that worked. But they just don’t anymore.

With the sheer volume of content being produced these days (and it is staggering how much is being produced), short and sweet articles just aren’t cutting it anymore.

Don’t believe me? There are three reasons why your blog posts need to be at least 2,000 words long. And two of these reasons have enough data behind them that I almost don’t need a third.

Search engines love long-form content

Think about this for a second– What is Google’s job?

Is it to give people the answer they’re looking for?

No.

Is it to find people the best websites?

No.

Google’s job is to find the best answer for someone’s question (or query).

And how does Google differentiate between the first best and the tenth best answer?

Well, that’s a question that only Google’s magical engineers could definitively answer.

But, thankfully there have been plenty of people who have done extensive, data-driven research on the topic. My favorite is by Brian Dean of Backlinko where he analyzed over one-million Google Search results. Here’s what he found:

“…the average word count of a Google first page result is 1,890 words.”

When I tell people they need to be writing 2,000-word articles they often reply with something like,

“But people don’t read all of that. Nobody likes long articles.”

My response to them is, yes, you’re right. Most people don’t like long articles. But Google does. And Google sends me more traffic than most people do.

Longer articles mean you have more opportunity to answer a person’s questions in high detail. It also means you have lots of room to add the right keywords and keyword variants to give your article all the ammunition it needs to blow Google’s digital socks off.

Longer articles get more shares

Here’s another one that’s a bit of a mind-boggler.

Yes, we live in an age where attention span is at its lowest. But the data shows that longer content tends to get more shares.

This study from Noah Kagan and Buzzsumo leaves no room for doubt:

But why, though?

My guess is that it has something to do with the fact that people want to share things that make them look good–things that make them look smart. And guess what–long articles seem smarter than short ones.

I know you wanna be all Seth Godin and write quick words of wisdom that drop people’s jaws in 10 seconds flat. But until you’ve got Seth Godin’s celebrity status, shoot for long-form, in-depth articles that are 2,000 words or more.

People may not read the entire thing. They may skim right through it only reading your headings. But they’ll see how in-depth the article is, and be compelled to share it.

Longer articles tend to be more evergreen

An evergreen article is a piece that can withstand the test of time. It will be as relevant two years from now as it is today.

In a blog post, I’ve written about the benefits of writing evergreen content, I mentioned that I raised my traffic by 41% with just 5 blog posts.

It may be more work up front, but it means less work in the long run.

2. Three Internal Links

Do you have at least three internal links on your blog post?

An epic blog post must link to other epic blog posts on your site.

In SEO speak, internal linking is one of the best things you can do to leverage your blog. By doing this, it is believed that the higher ranking page will “share” a bit of its authority with the other page, giving it a slight boost.

Linking to your other posts can also prolong your audience’s stay on your website. Keeping them on your site longer can build greater trust and increase their likelihood of recommending your or converting into a subscriber.

And session time is also one of the more important things that search engines look for when it ranks websites.

A longer session time indicates that the reader is getting value, and if they’re getting value, that means Google did its job in sending them there. That’s a win-win.

3. Three External Links

Do you have at least three external links on your blog post?

Epic blog posts must reference other authoritative content from other websites.

Search engines like it when sites link to other websites. It helps them determine how to better rank those linked pages. And they put more value to those who do it in a natural manner.

Whenever you link to other websites, you give search engines the idea that you are contributing to the circulation of websites all around the world.

But if you’re doing it in a legitimate way, you’re also adding value to the user experience because those links should be giving additional context to things you don’t necessarily cover in your article.

Be careful though to avoid linking to external pages that have the same target keyword as you. This may signal to search engines that the article you’re linking to is more authoritative, and therefore ranks higher, than your article.

4. Two Tweetable Quotes

Do you have at least two click-to-tweets on your post for better sharing purposes?

And when they see something useful, witty, funny, or interesting they want to share it with their followers.

That’s where this tool comes in.

Click-to-tweets are one of the best things you can add to your posts in order to make it more shareable.

By utilizing this tool, your audience can easily share a quotable part from your article with just a couple of clicks.

The easiest way to add these tweetable quotes (or Click-to-tweet quotes) to your website is to use a plugin like the Share on Twitter Block. It makes it super easy to add these Click-to-tweet quotes within y our blog post.

5.Five Images, One GIF

Do you have at least five SEO-optimized images and a gif?

Images break up your blog post so that it’s not just one giant wall of text.

Images help to convey ideas in a manner that is more engaging to those readers who may be more visual.

Also, images can be further optimized for SEO purposes.

However, reducing file size for better loading times, proper alt tags and title tags must be done in order to fully enjoy the benefits of having an image in your post.

More information can be found in my guide on how to create optimized images.

GIFs are those moving images that are super trendy on social media. And, personally, I love me a good GIF. They just allow you to communicate so much more than a static image.

GIFs are fun, interesting, and are highly shareable on social media, and therefore they are a big win for your article’s sharability.

6.Pinterest-Optimized Image

Do you have at least one “hidden” Pinterest-optimized image on your site?

Pinterest is a social bookmarking site that can help your blog massively increase its exposure and traffic.

But the key is to properly optimize your blog post for maximum pinnability.

If you are not doing this properly or if you are not doing it at all, then you are definitely missing out on a lot of potential traffic.

If you want to know the in-depth details, read my Pinterest Guide for Bloggers.

The short version is this: Create a tall image (735px wide by 1102px tall) for every single blog post that people can save to Pinterest.

Wait, Dustin. I am using Pinterest and am putting Pinterest optimized images in my post. But my audience doesn’t seem to pin it. What gives?

That is where Social Warfare, the plugin I told you about in point 4, comes in again!

One other feature that the plugin can do for your soon-to-be epic blog posts is to make sure your readers are pinning the right image.

When they click on the “Pin” button, instead of getting an option to pin any image on the page, they get the one Pinterest Optimized Image that you’ve chosen for them to pin.

And it also lets you write the description for them, giving your readers even less work to do when sharing your articles.

On top of that, Social Warfare makes it so you can actually hide the tall image from the page if you want. Because let’s face it, giant images just don’t look great in a blog post.

You can create images that are Pinterest-worthy dimensions and just add it to the Social Warfare Custom Options in your blog post.

Pretty easy, right?

7. Headline Score = Green

Are you sure that your headlines are grabbing your reader’s attention?

An epic blog post needs an epic headline. That much is a no-brainer.

Headlines are super important since they make sure that you send out a strong message to your audience about your post using the first words they will ever read on it.

And I do this by using CoSchedule.

CoSchedule has a tool called Headline Analyzer that scores your headline according to how attention-grabbing it is.

You can use their free Headline Analyzer or if you are a CoSchedule user, it’s built right into their WordPress integration.

Just type in your headline and it will pop out a score. Keep working at it using their suggestions until you get a score that is “green”.

Success at blogging starts on your headline, and CoSchedule can be a powerful tool that can decide a make or break point in your article.

8. Content Upgrade

Do you have a Content Upgrade on your post?

Ah, Content Upgrades. Did you know that by utilizing this, I was able to grow my subscriber rate to over 4,000 per month?

Yes! And you can definitely do it too!

Content Upgrades are basically a Lead Magnet that is specific to the post you are doing. You put a Call-to-Action on your post saying that your reader can learn more or get fantastic bonuses related to the topic of your article by subscribing to your site.

You can then reward those who subscribed right then and there with something they can only get if they used that specific Content Upgrade.

An example of this can be seen in my article The Ultimate Guide to Branding Yourself on Social Media. I included a downloadable quick-reference checklist for things I discussed there.

A lot of experts already know the power of this. They are utilizing this tactic for their clients and their own businesses, growing their subscriber list like crazy.

9. Internal Backlinking

Once your blog is published, are you looking at other possible link opportunities using old blog posts?

Remember point 2?

Well, it still applies even after you have published your post.

Go back to your old blog posts and relevant links to your new article.

This ensures that those articles are:

1. Transferring any accumulated SEO authority to the new article
2. Making sure that readers who find those old posts have the opportunity to find newer, related blog posts

It might take you 5-10 minutes at first, but once you make this a habit, you’ll get better and faster because your brain will more easily remember key articles that are great link opportunities.

10. Promote On Social Media

Have you promoted your blog post on all possible social media channels?

After publishing your masterpiece of a blog post, it won’t make it big by itself immediately. You need to do the first move to make it epic.

And that is where social media networks come in.

Social media is an extremely powerful tool in getting your content discovered. It has been the single most important way I’ve found my audience to date.

But you don’t just want to paste the title of your article and tell people to “check it out.”

That won’t work. People are bombarded by headlines all day and are completely blind to the words “check this out”nowadays.

You also don’t want to just share it out once, right after you hit “Publish” and be done with it.

That won’t be very effective. People are on social media at different times throughout the day, and you never know what percentage of your audience will see that one social post at that exact time you share it.

Instead, create several interesting social media messages to promote your new article, and do it over the course of at least 30 days.

Whoa, Dustin! Who in their right mind has that kind of time?!

Oh, trust me… I know.

And that’s why I’ve even created a template for you to help you create a month’s worth of social media messages in 5min or less.

That template will help you create lots of different social media posts to promote your article over the course of 30-days using one of the social media management tools of your choice.

11. Niche Community Promotion

Are you promoting your blog post in other niche outlets, such as Tailwind?

There are other ways to leverage your online community to get your content noticed.

One such example is one I use regularly– Tailwind Tribes.

Tailwind is a social media app that lets you schedule Pinterest Pins and Instagram Posts. But they’ve also created a feature they call Tribes which allows you to join groups of other users with similar interests who want to help each-other share great content.

Let’s say you are in the digital marketing industry. You can find numerous Tribes to join and share your article to, and the idea is that all the other members will share your article to their Pinterest accounts.

It lets your blog post reach highly-targeted audiences which are most likely to share your post if they see value in it.

I have been using Tailwind Tribes for a while now, and so far it has given me great results in terms of content promotion!

Some other niche community examples would be things like:

• Online forums about your key topics
• Slack Communities for bloggers
• Facebook Groups
• In-person meetups or masterminds (yes, niche communities don’t just have to be online)

You get the idea, right?

Of course you do, you’re a smarty.

And we’re done!

If you check off every item on this list, you will undoubtedly have an epic blog post you can be proud of.

As a quick recap, here’s a quick rundown of the checklist we’ve tackled so far:

1. Minimum of 2,000 Words
2. At least three internal links
3. At least three external links
4. At least two click-to-tweets
5. A minimum of five SEO-optimized images and one GIF
6. At least one “hideable” Pinterest optimized image
7. A green-lit headline score on Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule
8. A Content Upgrade
9. Internal linked to older blog posts
10. Promoted on all social media channels
11. Promoted in niche outlets like Tailwind Tribes

And there you go!

As an added bonus, I’ve created a printable version of this checklist to help you remember every time you’re about to publish a new post.

Just add your email below to join our Insiders List, and I’ll send you the download link right away! You’ll also get my best social media news, insights, and projects I’m working on sent regularly. You can unsubscribe any time.

On, and just in case you’re into infographics, I created one that you can add to your favorite blogging-related Pinterest board, or wherever else you keep infographics: 

You can embed this infographic on your own website by copying and pasting the code below:

<a href="https://dustinstout.com/blog-post-checklist/" target="_blank"><img src="https://dustinstout.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/blog-post-checklist-infographic.jpg" alt="An Epic Blog Post Every Time with This Simple Checklist" /></a><p>[Infographic courtesy of <a href="https://dustinstout.com">Dustn.tv</a>]</p>

As long as you remember the things on this checklist and discipline yourself into doing this constantly, then you can create an epic blog post every single time.

Warning: if you really want to know how to write a blog post that gets noticed, it’s going to take work and discipline.

This is not for the faint at heart.

A while back I was challenged by a few of my peers to document and share my blogging process. I had never thought to do so before and thought, “why not?”

So I originally published my process in 2014.

Since then, my blogging process has undergone quite an evolution.

Over the years I’ve refined it, added things to the workflow, removed things, experimented, and all of it has helped take my blog to the next level.

In this blog post I’m going to take you through every step from idea capture to publishing and promoting. I’ll also be giving you every tool in my arsenal that I use along the way.

So buckle in– this is not going to be brief.

Idea Capture: Todoist

Since I’m the creative type, I need a quick and simple way to capture ideas as they come to me. Then I need a way to easily access those ideas when I have more time to build upon them.

In the beginning, I used Evernote.

When I had an idea for a blog post I would immediately pull out Evernote and record the idea, adding a potential headline as the title and maybe a sentence or two to fully capture the idea. I would then tag it with “blog idea” and file it under the notebook that corresponds with the blog I want to publish it on.

However, as my workflow changed, I found it harder and hard to remember to come back into Evernote to check up on ideas that haven’t yet made it into a draft.

Instead, these days I now use Todoist for all idea capture.

The reason this works better than Evernote is because instead of creating a note, I’m actually creating a task for myself, that ensures I’m going to follow through with the idea.

Because of Todoist’s simple natural language processing, I can whip out my phone (or use the desktop app) and type out something like this:

#dustn.co idea: how to write a blog tomorrow

This means that Todoist will add a task titled “how to write a blog post” to my dustn.co project (the project I’ve associated with my blog) and give it a due date of tomorrow.

This ensures that I take action on every single idea I have, and it wont just be forgotten in some notebook somewhere.

If I need to add notes, details, or expand on the idea, Todoist allows me to do that by commenting on the task.

Since my day-to-day work pretty much revolves around Todoist and task/project management, this has been an incredibly effective method in capturing and taking action on my blog ideas.

My recommendation is— however you decide to capture your ideas, make it dead simple for yourself. It has to be quick, easily accessible, and memorable. Make it a habit.

Also, be sure to only use one system. Every idea gets captured in the same place. Having multiple places where you keep your ideas will just confuse you and make the job of bringing them to life harder.

One simple system is all you need.

Draft the Blog Post: Typora

Once it’s time to start drafting my blog post I start a brand new document in my new favorite writing app, Typora.

It’s a minimal, beautiful writing space where I can get rid of all distraction and just write. I’d been searching for a long time for a replacement for Desk and all other solutions were always missing at least one thing.

For me, a great writing app needs to have the following traits:

• Simple, minimal interface: this is to make sure when I’m writing, I can focus on writing, and I’m not distracted by clunky, unattractive interface elements.
• Markdown support: I write in Markdown because it’s faster, saves me time from taking my hands off the keyboard, and allows me for quicker, more accurate editing when I’m looking at formatting.
• Cloud storage integrations: my preference has always been Google Drive, but I would have settled for anything that I could also have my team access. Since hiring a VA to help with editorial process, this has been a crucial part in making the whole process efficient.

Typora passed all those requirements with flying colors.

The interface is simple, minimal, and gorgeous. It was also built specifically for writing in Markdown.

As a bonus, it’s also highly customizable with themes! I’ve built a custom Typora theme for myself that makes the writing experience all the more enjoyable. I finally love sitting down and just writing again.

And lastly, it utilizes files from your computer. Therefore, if you have a cloud service (such as Google Drive) syncing files on your computer, that’s all you need to always have access to your files in the cloud.

Oh, and one last bonus—it’s 100% free! Could this app get any better?

Okay, that’s the end of my sales pitch for Typora.

When it’s time to begin drafting a blog post, I will fully draft out the entire thing, starting with a sort-of bulleted list of items that I want to hit. Then I will go back and tackle one point at a time until the entire draft is written.

Every blog post I write generally has the following structure:

• Lead: This is the opening sentence to the blog post. It’s crafted to put the reader in the exact frame of mind that I want them in when they begin reading.
• Intro: This is where I introduce the problem I’m solving, a brief story of why I’m writing the article, or just a plain old intro to the subject matter.
• Body: This is the meat and potatoes of my blog post.
• Conclusion: Wrapping it all up and giving either a final note or a call to take action.
• Question: I try to ask the reader a though-provoking or action-oriented question to spark conversation.

Sometimes the type of blog post I’m writing will deviate from this structure, but for the most part it’s pretty consistent.

Keyword Research: Two Options

Once I’ve got everything drafted out I’ll then take some time to go do some topic research, also known as keyword research.

This is probably backwards for some people who are super organized and do all their research ahead of time. That’s not how I operate.

I like to get all my own thoughts out first, exactly as I would explain it to the person it’s meant for before seeing how others may have approached the same topic.

I feel I learn more this way and instead of having my research dictate how/what I write, I can see how my own thought processes align with those of others.

If I find any relevant links or extras to add in based on the research, I go back and add them into the draft.

Tools I use:

• Ahrefs keywords explorer
• KWFinder

Is Keyword Research Important?

Yes, it is. But, why? Let me give you an example.

A few months back I was writing an article as a follow-up to a content audit I did for my blog. I knew that this blog topic was of high interest as articles like it had performed very well in the past.

I had drafted out the entire blog post already, based on previous ones like it, and even created a boat-load of visual assets for it–an infographic and a handful of other sharable visual content—and it was almost ready to publish.

Since I already “knew” this subject was going to be successful, I didn’t think I needed to do any keyword research. I was convinced that “social media stats” was the keyword I needed to focus on.

However, my gut told me that I should trust my process, and do the keyword research anyways.

Holy crap was I glad I did.

The estimated search volume for the phrase “social media stats” was about 1,400. That means Ahrefs believes that there are about 1,400 searches per month for that specific phrase.

The estimated search volume for the longer “social media statistics” was about 5,400. So just by targeting the unabbreviated version of that word, I was opening myself up to 3,000 more searches per month.

That’s a big deal.

So, yes, keyword research, even just some simple keyword research, can go a long way.

Using Ahrefs

Although it’s definitely not the low-cost option, I highly recommend using Ahrefs if you’re getting serious about your SEO. It’s the most powerful and easy-to-use SEO tool I’ve tried.

Doing keyword research with it is also pretty easy, and gives you loads of data.

A simple search for your keyword will give you some very important information:

• Keyword difficulty: this indicates how difficult it would be to rank first for that term, with a helpful estimate of how many backlinks you would need to rank top 10.
• Search volume: if you want to get free traffic (and who doesn’t?) then you’ll want to know that the keywords you’re targeting have a good amount of people searching for them.
• Parent topic: this shows you if there is a more broad topic/keyword that your chosen keyword falls under. You may even be able to leverage that parent topic to drive more traffic than the one you chose.
• Keyword ideas: this will show you potential alternatives to the keyword you’ve chosen. I can’t tell you how many times I have looked at that list and changed my keyword because I found a more relevant term that would drive more organic search traffic.
• Search results: this gives you a snapshot of the websites that are already ranking for this keyword so you can take a look at what is on those pages. You may even get some ideas to make your post better by reading those top-ranking pages.

And that’s only the tip of the iceburg for what Ahrefs is capable of.

Starting at $99/mo it’s certainly not a small investment. Especially for beginner bloggers who haven’t yet turned their blog into a profitable business. But the moment you have the extra time and resources to invest in your SEO, this is the tool to use.

Using KWFinder

While not as comprehensive as Ahrefs, the free version of KWFinder will allow you to perform up to 5 different searches per 24hrs. This is probably enough for beginner bloggers.

When you type in your search term, you get some pretty helpful information:

• Search volume: same as Ahrefs
• Other suggested terms: in a scrollable list below where your keyword is listed
• Keyword SEO Difficulty: very similar to Ahref’s Keyword Difficulty but with a diffferent rating system.
• Google SERP listings: same as Ahrefs “search results” feature, showing you which pages are currently ranking for your selected term.

Being a free tool, you can’t help but love it. The interface is good, and it gives you all the most important info you need quickly and efficiently.

So if you’re on a budget, this is the keyword tool you’ll want to use. There are others, but none of them caught my eye quite like KWFinder.

As a bit of bonus reading, there’s a great article all about keyword research over at FirstSiteGuide you can check out.

Applying the Keyword Research

Once I’ve done the keyword research, it’s time to make sure the keyword I decided on appears in several places throughout the blog post:

1. The title of the post
2. The first paragraph of the post
3. The last paragraph of the post
4. 2-3 more times throughout the entire post
5. The url (but I wont get to this until right before publishing the post in WordPress)

I try not to overdue it since I’m writing for people, not robots. So when placing keywords in the post, I make sure that it sounds natural and not forced.

Always write for real people.

Finish blog draft

Once keywords have been added in a natural way, I’ll go through my post one more time, reading slowly, looking ways I can:

• Explain things better
• Write simpler, more concisely
• Add formatting such as bold, Italics, headings, etc.
• Add placeholders for possible imagery

This is basically the step where I add polish to the words themselves, ensuring that my message is as good as it can be.

Also, I try to rope my wife in at this point and have her proofread it. She does have her Master’s Degree in communications studies, afterall. And she always finds ways to make me sound smarter. (That’s my secret, shhh!)

Next comes the most fun part for me, creating the images.

Create the Images

Once the blog draft is finalized, I then begin making all the images.

Usually I begin by creating the headline graphic (or hero image). This is the image that will show up as the featured image at the top of the blog post.

From that I create 3 different versions of it according to my social image templates that I’ve shared previously.

This generally takes me anywhere from 10-20 minutes to create all 4 images. (I teach about this in my course, Visual Content Mastery.)

If there are screenshots involved, I go grab them one by one. I will take the first screenshot and create a template for the rest of the screenshots, making sure that they will all end up being the same exact size (if possible).

I also spend some time trying to find (or create) GIFs that help add a bit of moving color to the blog post when appropriate. You may notice that when I use GIFs they’re often times an attempt to add humor.

When I create my images (using Photoshop) I always save them in the most optimized format possible. This means that I use the “Save for Web and Devices” option and then tweak them down make sure the file size is as small as I can get it without losing image quality.

I’ve previously written extensively about optimizing images, if you want to dive deeper on that subject.

I save all images in a new folder named after the blog post topic.

Once I’ve saved the images, I then pull all of them into JPEGmini Lite. It is a Mac App that further optimizes the images (JPEGs only) using what I can only imagine is magic, reducing the file size even further without image quality loss.

Put the Draft in WordPress

When all the images are created and optimized, it’s time to move the post into WordPress.

Now, since I use the Jetpack plugin, I could just copy and past the post into WordPress in Markdown format and it will be automatically converted to HTML on the front end.

However, since I sometimes use additional HTML elements and styling (such as buttons) within my post, I like everything to be clean HTML. Also, some day I might not use Jetpack anymore and don’t want to go back and have to re-edit every blog post.

So I first copy the entire draft and paste it into my code editor, Atom.

Atom has a built in feature where you can copy your Markdown text as HTML. So once I’ve copied the HTML from Atom, I paste it right into WordPress (text mode).

Once it’s in there, I switch back to visual mode.

Upload the Images

Once in visual mode, I click on the Featured Image upload. From there I can upload all of the post images with one drag and drop from the folder I created.

As each image is uploaded, I type in the Alt text for each one. I talk more about why Alt text is important in my previously mentioned image optimization post. It’s very important that you write your Alt text for each image.

Once they’ve all uploaded and have their Alt text, I select the Feature image and click Set featured image and start replacing all my image placeholders with the appropriate image throughout the blog post.

I have to admit, this part of the process is very satisfying. Having done all the other work ahead of time means I’m just scrolling for the image placeholders, and finding the appropriate one in the media library to insert it.

Analyze and Refine the Headline

Once the blog post is finalized, now it’s time to ensure that the headline is as good as it possibly can be.

Most people will judge whether or not your blog post is worth reading just based on that one element alone. So it must be good.

To make sure I’m using the best headline possible, I use CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer.

Simply enter your headline and it will score it based on a number of different factors. It will break down all those factors for you and give you a score (0-100) as well as a grade on word balance. There are a total of 11 different factors to help you craft the perfect headline.

I won’t use a headline that gets a score less than 60, unless I have a strong gut feeling that it will work.

Side note: If you aren’t using CoSchedule yet, I’m guessing you have yet to put together an editorial calendar strategy. I highly recommend you do.

Optimize for Social Sharing

At this point, the blog post is done. Now it’s time to prep this baby for what happens after it’s published, starting with the social shares.

Thanks to Social Warfare, this workflow is very easy. I start by selecting the social media images— the general social media image and the Pinterest optimized image. Then I fill in the title, description and tweet inputs.

This is highly important to me because I know that the most important part of extending my reach is other people sharing the post. When other people share it I want to make sure I make it super easy for them to share the article in a way that attracts click-throughs and more shares.

If you do this part right, you don’t even need to know how to use Twitter and you can be successful on it.

As we like to say at Warfare Plugins, “get your posts shared the way you want them to be shared.”

Schedule Social Shares

Thanks to CoSchedule, I can schedule my own social shares of the post before it’s even published.

And I’m not just talking about sharing the post as soon as it’s published. I’ve created a 5-minute system that allows me to create 30-days worth of social promotion. This is by utilizing CoSchedule’s Social Templates.

Using these Social Templates I schdule an entire months worth of blog post promotion for my:

• Google+ Page
• Twitter account
• Facebook profile
• Facebook page
• Pinterest account
• LinkedIn profile

Those reshares usually account for 50-70% of the total clicks and traffic to that blog post in its first 30 days. Definitely worth the effort.

But I’m not just sharing a headline and a link—each post is crafted specifically for the platform it’s being promoted on.

And if this blog post is truly an evergreen post then I take an additional step of adding it to my Agorapulse evergreen list so that it will be shared out on a regular basis indefinitely.

That might seem like a lot to some people, but I’m not sharing the post every day. Agorapulse intelligently shares out my library of evergreen posts on a specific, and conservative schedule, making sure nothing is repeated too frequently.

Publish & Share

Now it’s time to hit that beautiful blue button. The moment where I release my work into the wild. After hours of laborious writing, editing, visualizing and more editing, it’s finally time to hit Publish.

To this day I still get a rush of excitement when I hit that button.

But once it’s published, I head over to the live version to give it one final look, just to make sure nothing is wonky or out of place.

Once that’s done, I take a breath and maybe have a drink.

Conclusion

This process is definitely not for the faint at heart. But this is how I craft blog posts that get (on average) 500+ shares with the occasional 1k+ share post.

To me, blogging is an art form. And while I’m continually working to shave off time and make this process more efficient, sometimes you just need to take the time to create something that you’re darned proud of.

My hat is off to bloggers who can just sit down, crank it out in under an hour and be done with it. For me– this process works.

And the fact that my posts continue to improve my search engine ranking, and continue to get social shares years after they were first created confirms it’s working.

It’s one thing to just know how to write a blog. It’s another thing entirely to write a blog post that gets shared, and drives tons of traffic for years to come.

Is your blogging process anywhere near this extensive? Or am I just a little insane for being so detailed? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Featured image courtesy of Jacob Lund via Shutterstock.

This is how you go from a slow trickle of email subscribers to growing your list by over 1,000 new subscribers per month.

When you first begin blogging, email list building is likely to be one of the lower priority items on your to-do list. You have so much to worry about from blog design to just getting your first few posts written.

For beginner bloggers, it can be both intimidating and confusing to know where to begin growing an email list.

Well, in this post I’m going to outline all the different ways you can begin growing your email list by the thousands. Today.

You see, every blogger started in the same place–we were all newbies at some point, just trying to figure out what the heck we were doing.

No matter how big the blogger you admire is, they were once right where you are.

So I’m going to navigate you through all of the stages of email marketing maturity that I went through as a blogger, and hopefully cut your learning curve significantly.

Stage 1: Picking Your Email Marketing Software

I’ve written a bit about this in my previous post, The Biggest Social Media Mistake, but I’ll touch on it again here.

Picking your email marketing software can be really difficult. There are too many options, and if you don’t really have a solid strategy in place for your email list, it’s very hard to compare features of different products.

I’m going to make it dead simple for you– just pick one of the following:

• MailChimp
• ConvertKit

There are plenty of other great email service providers out there, but the last thing you want to spend time on is trying to pick the “right” email software. Trust me, you’ll waste hours of your precious time comparing a bunch of features you won’t even use.

So, make this part easy on yourself and just choose from one of the two options above.

But, Dustin, why only these two email marketing software providers?

I’m glad you asked. And don’t call me butt Dustin.

Basically, both of these companies provide a few things that are crucially important to get started with your email list:

• Super easy to get started
• User-friendly interface
• All the bottom-line features bloggers need
• Affordable

When I first got started, I chose MailChimp. Recently I moved over to ConvertKit after 5 years of growing my list.

If I could go back and do it all over again, I would start with ConvertKit.

The huge benefit that MailChimp offers over ConvertKit is that it’s completely free to use for up to 2,000 subscribers. That alone will be the deciding factor for most new bloggers.

However, the reason I’d go back and choose ConvertKit out of the gate is three-fold:

1. Email list management and segmentation is simpler
2. Setting up automated sequences is simpler
3. Basically, everything crucial for a thriving email list is way, way simpler

Now, to be fair, I’m not saying that MailChimp is overly complicated to use (for the most part). However, for the majority of things that matter, ConvertKit is just so much easier.

So your choice is basically: Do I want to spend more time figuring out my email marketing software but not have to pay money? Or do I want to spend $29/mo so that I don’t have to spend time figuring things out?

Your call. I would choose simplicity over saving a few bucks.

Bottom line: just make a decision.

Stage 2: Your First Subscribe Forms

Once you have your email marketing software (EMS), you have three types of basic subscribe forms:

• Copy/Paste forms: you can simply copy and paste the form code from your EMS.
• Hosted forms: these are forms that are hosted on your EMS domain that you can send people to.
• Form plugin: if you’re on WordPress there are a number of plugins you can use to create subscribe forms. My two favorites are Ninja Forms with their MailChimp add-on (ConvertKit add-on coming soon), and OptinMonster.

New bloggers generally start out by simply sticking a subscribe form into their blog sidebar with the words “Subscribe to my email list!” or “Free updates, subscribe below!” and call it a day.

As if getting emails from you, for free, was some sort of amazing deal.

I did it. You probably did it. And some of you are probably still doing it right now.

That’s okay. We all start somewhere.

But I hate to break it to you– this is probably the least effective way to actually get people onto your email list.

Don’t believe me?

Well, Debbie Doubter, I tried this approach for almost 2 years because I didn’t really have any sort of strategy behind my email list. And since I was using MailChimp, I had no real incentive to create a strategy because I wasn’t paying anything to have it.

So I grabbed the embed code, pasted it into my sidebar widget and called it a day. I later discovered Ninja Forms, which made this a bit easier.

But I still didn’t have any compelling reason for people to subscribe.

Well, for those first 2 years I managed to add a total of 90 subscribers. That’s it.

My best months I added a whopping 9 subscribers.

So eventually I knew something had to change–I needed to do something differently. That’s when I grew into stage 3.

Stage 3: Lead Magnets

The month I began utilizing Lead Magnets, my email list grew by 289%. I went from a list of 90 subscribers to 350 subscribers.

My young blogger mind was blown.

What’s a “Lead Magnet”? Well, according to Digital Marketer:

Lead Magnet – noun – an irresistible bribe offering a specific chunk of value to a prospect in exchange for their contact information.

In simplified terms–it’s something you give people instant access to in exchange for their personal information (for our intents and purposes, their email address).

Some common types of Lead Magnets are:

• Free ebook
• Free templates
• Free swipe file
• Free email course
• Free downloadable thing

You get the idea, right? Giving away a thing that is valuable in exchange for the person’s email address.

It’s a relatively simple concept, but the execution can sometimes get technical. And because it’s got a bit of technicality to it, many beginner bloggers put off doing it.

The Easiest Way to Create and Deliver a Lead Magnet

Okay, so I’m about to remove every excuse you have to create and deliver a lead magnet.

I’m going to lay it out for you as simply as possible so that if you’re not using any Lead Magnets at this point, you will by the time you’re done reading this.

Step 1: Create a valuable thing.

It should either be something they can download instantly or you can send them via email. Try to ask yourself what your target audience needs or what challenges they’re encountering.

Here are some quick options:

• Create an extensive blog post that you haven’t published and turn it into a PDF using Google Docs
• Create an infographic using infogr.am
• Create a checklist and turn it into a PDF with Google Docs
• Package together a bundle of free stock photos
• Put together a list of your top resources and (again) turn it into a PDF with Google Docs

You get the point.

I keep using the example of Google Docs because it’s the simplest for me. You can probably do the same with Microsoft Office or whichever Rich Text Editor you use.

Step 2: Create a form that offers the thing.

Again, you can use your EMS to create a form specifically for this lead magnet and then just copy/paste the code. ConvertKit makes this especially easy.

Or if you’re using WordPress there are plenty of plugins you can work with to create a form for a specific Lead Magnet. My favorite to use is Ninja Forms because it’s super easy.

The important thing is to create a form specifically for this one thing. You don’t want to use a general form because you won’t be able to differentiate the people who sign up for this specific thing.

Step 3: Pick a way to deliver the thing.

Once they fill out the form, you need an automatic way of delivering the thing you promised them.

If it’s a downloadable thing–a PDF or other type of file–upload the file to Google Drive, Dropbox, WordPress, or anywhere else that will give you a link to that file.

Then you have three options:

1. Have your EMS email them the link to the download once they’ve signed up.
2. Have your form redirect them to a “Thank You” page where there is a link to the download (super easy with Ninja Forms).
3. Have your form “reveal” a link to the thing once the form is submitted via the success message (also easy to do with Ninja Forms).

The first option is set up through your EMS while the other two options need to be controlled by your form. Do whichever is easiest for you to configure.

Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to begin collecting emails.

Step 4: Promote Your Lead Magnet

Put this lead magnet form everywhere you possibly can throughout your website:

• Blog sidebar
• Below blog posts
• On your home page (if you have one)
• Create a landing page for it (just a standard WordPress page will do)

Just make sure it’s highly visible and people can clearly see “Get this awesome thing by entering your email address.”

Obviously, you’ll want to brush up on your sales psychology a bit to make sure your copy is attractive.

When done right, your email subscribe rate will get a significant boost as long as you get this in front of your website visitors.

While this is a fantastic way to quickly grow your list, it does tend to take a while to produce. There’s a lot of work involved, and Lead Magnets aren’t supposed to be a “mass appeal” for your audience.

Most bloggers produce one and keep it at that. And that’s fine.

However, when I entered the next stage in my email marketing journey, I couldn’t believe how quickly my list began to grow!

Stage 4: Contextual CTAs (Post-specific Lead Magnets)

When I started implementing what I call Contextual Calls to Action (CCTAs), my subscriber rate jumped 400% the next day. I actually wrote about this previously because it was so powerful for me.

Essentially this is a tactic I thought up because I had a handful of high-performance evergreen posts that were getting lots of traffic and I wasn’t converting that traffic to subscribers very well.

So I came up with the bright idea to give people reading those posts a contextual reason they should subscribe to my email list. I asked myself this:

How would the reader benefit from subscribing to my list in a way that relates directly to this post?

In the example of my Social Media Icon Set it was pretty easy: subscribe to my list and be notified whenever I release a new version of this icon set. (I eventually changed this to “Download the icons by subscribing to my list.”)

In the example of my Best Places to Find Free Images it was not so clear cut. I decided to make the Contextual CTA a “Get notified when I find more Free Images Sites” and it’s worked out pretty well. Not great, but still way better than no CTA at all.

After implementing this tactic on my top 20 evergreen blog posts I went from adding an average of 80-100 subscribers per month to now adding 200-250 subscribers per month.

And the big kicker was, I was writing fewer blog posts than any previous year.

Did you catch that? I was producing less content, but more than doubling my subscriber rate.

At this point, I was hooked on exploring new ways to dramatically increase my email subscriber rates. So I began exploring one more route that I was previously 100% opposed to.

Which leads me to the next stage.

Stage 5: Pop-ups (and Why I Changed My Mind About Them)

There are few marketing tactics that can be as polarizing as the use of Pop-up boxes. You know, those things that unexpectedly interrupt your browsing to ask you to do something?

For the longest time, I was one of the people on the violently opposed side of the spectrum when it came to pop-ups.

I hated them.

In fact, if a pop-up was intrusive enough, I would often close my browser tab immediately, and vow to never return to the site that so rudely threw their CTA in my face.

But I had a bit of a revelation.

You see, many times we can have very strong opinions about things that we’ve never actually explored. This is part of our flawed human nature of hating things we don’t understand.

So when it came to pop-ups, I knew there were many “experts” talking about how they “work”. I always wrote it off as a bunch of gurus who don’t care about user experience and only want to make a quick buck using any tactic possible.

Well, I decided to put my own preconceived notions to the test. In my opinion, you can’t fully speak against something you haven’t tested yourself.

So I decided to put pop-ups to the test.

My theory had always been that while pop-ups might gather more email subscribers, the quality of those subscribers would be lower (worse open rates and click rates).

I went ahead and began utilizing OptinMonster which allowed me to use Exit Intent based pop-ups. This means I could create pop-ups that only fired off when it detected the reader was leaving the browser window (as if they were going to close the tab).

I closely monitored both the number of subscribers and the affect those subscribers had on my email open and click rates.

Boy, was my theory wrong.

As “experts” predicted, my subscriber rate went up when I added the Exit Intent pop-ups to key pages. On average, this added about 7 more subscribers a day.

Over the course of 6 months, that was an additional 1,400 subscribers that wouldn’t have otherwise subscribed. These are, most likely, subscribers that were about to leave my site before subscribing.

To me, that’s a big gain. But what about the quality of the subscribers? Did my list open and click rates suffer like I thought they would?

Nope.

Open and click rates remained relatively unchanged. There was a slight dip, but not nearly enough to cancel out the extra lift in subscriber growth.

So I officially became a fan of pop-ups. Albeit, I’m only a fan of Exit Intent pop-ups since they only jump on the screen when a visitor is leaving, but this is still a big leap from my previous violent opposition to all pop-ups.

I also recommend utilizing the fly-ins which can slide into the bottom of the content, out of the way. These have proven to be even less abrasive and don’t interrupt the reading experience while still drawing enough attention to important calls to action.

Now, as exciting as this journey was for me so far, this next stage was the real game changer.

Stage 6: Content Upgrades – the Game Changer

When I started implementing Content Upgrades, my subscriber rates exploded by 1,000% almost overnight!

That’s a 10x increase in email list growth. And it really wasn’t much more work than I was already doing.

It was like I stumbled upon a growth tactic that had been staring me right in the face. And the results were unbelievable.

I think it was Mike Allton that first brought the idea to my attention, noting how similar Content Upgrades were to my idea of CCTAs.

What is a Content Upgrade?

Well, the idea is basically a combination of the Lead Magnet and CCTAs. You give people a Lead Magnet that is specifically for the post they’re reading which enhances, or furthers the value of the post itself.

For example: In my Ultimate Guide to Branding Yourself on Social Media there is a downloadable quick-reference checklist.

Another example: In my How to Promote an Epic Blog Post for 30 Days in 5min there is a downloadable version of the templates.

Are your gears starting to turn?

The Impact of Content Upgrades

One person who has written a great deal about the idea of Content Upgrades is Bryan Harris. He says that,

“I normally experience 20-30% opt-in rates on these bonuses and some have been as high as 62%!”

Another person using Content Upgrades with great success is Brian Dean of Backlinko. He first experimented with this tactic and found:

“The result? A 785% increase in conversions (compared to the previous month).

On this blog, I have several blog posts converting at 50% or better. That means that half of the people landing on those blog posts are turning into email subscribers.

Take a moment and let that sink in.

What if you could get one out of every five (20%) of the people who read your blog post to sign up for your email list? What would that mean for your blog?

Let’s do some math:

If you had 100 new visitors per day to your blog, and you were able to convert 20% of them to subscribers, that means you’d be gaining 20 new subscribers per day. That’s roughly 500 subscribers per month.

At the end of the year, you would have added over 6,000 email subscribers to your list.

And that’s if your traffic stays completely flat the whole time.

Have you had that many subscribers join your list in the last year? If not, then it’s time to start creating Content Upgrades right now.

If you can create a Lead Magnet using the methods I mentioned above, you would just need to do this for your most popular blog posts. Start with your top 10–the 10 blog posts that have had the most traffic over the last year.

Then begin asking yourself the following question for each blog post:

What can I add to this blog post that would make it easier, more effective, or more tangible to the reader?

If you can answer that question, you can easily create a Content Upgrade for it.

I’m telling you, this will change the game for your email list growth.

When I began utilizing Content Upgrades, I went from adding 200-250 subscribers per month to adding over 600 subscribers per month.

And this brings us to where I’m at today. At this point, because of the cumulative effect of creating more Content Upgrades I’m now adding over 1,000 email subscribers every month.

And I haven’t even maximized all of my best evergreen posts with Content Upgrades yet.

If you’ve read this far, and you decide to take your blog and email list growth to the next level by implementing these growth stages quickly, you will be amazed at the results.

Let’s Make it Super Easy for You

Many of you reading this will see the process of creating a Lead Magnet and cringe at how much work it seems like. Then you’ll read the Content Upgrade section and think, “wait, I need to do that for almost every blog post? You’re crazy!”

And you’re right. It is a lot of work. But it’s definitely worth it.

However, I’m working on a new project that is going to make the process exponentially easier.

This will be a tool built to give you everything you need build and manage Lead Magnets and Content Upgrades right within your WordPress Dashboard.

This project is a direct result of my own frustration with how unnecessarily complicated the process is for so many content creators.

I’ve spoken with dozens of great bloggers and content managers working on some of the largest blogs on the internet. They all had the same resounding problem: creating Lead Magnets and Content Upgrades is too complicated!

So I’m working with a team to develop a solution. And I need your help to make it even better than I can imagine on my own.

If you’re a content creator, blogger, or working on a team to develop email marketing strategies, I want you to sign up for our Beta list.

I’m going to then choose a handful of subscribers who I am going to personally work with to develop out their content and begin generating more email subscribers than ever before.

So head on over to our brand-spankin’ new website (just a landing page at the moment) and sign-up for our Beta list.

Sign-up!

In the comments below, tell me what stage you’re in and what you’re going to do, after commenting, to grow your email list.

Bonus: Grow Your Email List Infographic

To make this super easy for you to both remember and share I’ve created this handy infographic with all the tips above. Feel free to pin the below infographic or even embed it on your own website using the embed code.

Embed Code:

<a href="https://dustinstout.com/grow-email-list/" target="_blank"><img src="https://dustinstout.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/grow-email-list-stages-infographic.jpg" alt="Email List Growth Tips Infographic" /></a><br /><em>Image courtesy of <a href="https://dustinstout.com" target="_blank">Dustn.tv</a></em>

Now get out there and start growing your email list like a pro!

Understand how your blog has grown and the fruits of your blogging labor.

A lot can be accomplished in 365 days, and unless you take the time to evaluate the last 365 days  how can you have a proper perspective of what you can expect in the next 365 days?

Do you have a yearly review process for your blog? Not to be confused with a blogging process— have you specifically put together a workflow for measuring how your last year’s worth of blogging has paid off?

Afterall, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

Over the past few years I’ve refined my yearly review process. I wouldn’t say I’ve perfected it, but it has been a great way of helping me to refocus on my goals and plan for the future. With technology, tools, and the evolution that blogging is always undergoing, this is a process that is always in a state of refinement.

In this post I want to share with you my current blog review process and, hopefully, it gives you some helpful ideas to add to your own process. At the very least I hope it gives you a starting point to get your own review process going.

Afterall, not every blogger has the same goals and objectives for their blog, so take what you can use, refine it, and come up with your own process.

With that said, let’s get into it!

Set the Date

Step one is to set a date where you have set aside time to go through this process. If it’s not on your calendar it’s not going to happen. Treat it like it’s a meeting with the President—nothing can overlap this time.

I schedule out 4 hours on the last Saturday of the year. I go somewhere I can focus without being interrupted (like the local Starbucks) and bring only my laptop. You may choose to write down your goals in a journal or notebook, and that’s fine. I just prefer everything to be digital.

Next, I’ll navigate to Google Analytics and set a time frame from January 1 of the current year all the way to the present day.

Then I meticulously go through and record all the metrics that are important to my site’s growth. What metrics, you say? I’m glad you asked.

What to Measure

Below are the 8 primary metrics that I look at when going through my Google Analytics for my yearly blog review.

• Sessions: The number of unique visits to your blog.
• Pageviews: The number of pages that were viewed on your blog.
• Pages per Visit: The average number of pages each individual views before leaving your site.
• Average Session Duration: The average amount of time people spend on the site per visit.
• Social Actions: The number of +1s, Tweets, Likes, and other social media actions that Google is able to track.
• Sessions by Channel: The channels that are driving traffic to your site.
• Sessions by Social Network: The social networks that are sending you the most traffic.
• Referral sites: The websites that are sending you visitors because of a direct link to your site.

To make this process super easy I’ve set-up a Google Analytics Dashboard that will display all of these metrics on one page. All I have to do is just set the date range and I instantly have all of these widgets populated with a year’s worth of information.

Want to get your hands on that template? Just add your email below and I’ll email you the link to add this dashboard template to your Google Analytics account in 3 easy clicks.

Now, a little bit about why each of these metrics are important.

Sessions and Pageviews

These are metrics most bloggers want to look at because they are the easiest to grow. Some people consider them to be vanity metrics, but they can give us some degree of insight about whether or not we’re attracting more readers month-over-month or year-over-year.

For those who are unclear on the difference between Sessions and Pageviews, think of it this way:

If your blog were a Mall and each of the individual stores were a page or post on your blog, a Session is when someone makes a visit to the mall. A Pageview is like entering a store within the mall. Someone can visit as many stores as they like (or accumulate many Pageviews) but it’s still considered one visit (or Session) to the mall.

Make sense? Good, let’s move on.

Pages Per Visit & Average Session Duration

The reason I like to measure how many pages per visit my blog is getting is because this will tell me how good a job I’m doing at getting people to explore the site. I don’t want people just visiting an article to get what they need and then leaving.

My goal is to get someone to explore a bit, find out more about what I do and what I offer, and be convinced that they need to come back again soon to get more of what they came for. Not every blogger might have this goal, but it’s one I like to focus on.

This metric is all about how well you’re doing at keeping the visitor’s attention. Attention is more important that views or impressions— Gary Vaynerchuk has been saying this for a while now, and he’s absolutely right.

“…in marketing, we need to be placing importance on attention, not impressions.” -Gary Vaynerchuk

Having more pages per visit means I’m giving more value to the visitor which also leads to higher likelihood that the visitor will subscribe to my newsletter. And this, of course, is a high-value, high-priority goal for any blogger.

More pages per visit also leads to a higher Average Session Duration, and if you’ve read my post on finding your most Meaningful Metrics, you know that the amount of time someone spends on your site is very important.

Social Actions

Now, in order to track social actions you will need to have a social sharing plugin that allows you to track this. If you’re a Social Warfare user this is built right in—you simply need to activate Button Click Tracking under the Advanced settings.

Social actions are a sign that people are enjoying your content so much that they think other people will find value in it as well. This is a huge indicator that you’re doing things right more so than the number of sessions or pageviews.

This is also a great indication of how well you are scaling your efforts beyond yourself, and getting others to amplify your messages for you.

Sessions by Channel

Also known as Default Channel Grouping, this will tell you which types of traffic sources are giving you the most traffic. The 6 default channel groupings that Google Analytics organizes traffic into are:

• Organic: traffic sent from search engines.
• Social: traffic sent from social networks.
• Direct: traffic that came from people typing your domain into their address bar.
• Referral: traffic that came from another domain.
• Email: traffic that came from an email provider, app, or service.
• Other: traffic that doesn’t fall into any of the previously mentioned categories.

This is essentially a top-level view of where your traffic is coming from. You then can break it down into the two other areas that follow.

Sessions by Social Network

When looking at this metric, I know instantly where I should be spending my time on Social Media. Seeing which social networks are sending you the most traffic allows you to see where your content is best finding its target audience.

For example, if you’re getting 20,000 sessions from Facebook and only 500 from Twitter, you’re probably better off spending more time on Facebook growing your audience than Twitter. Likewise, as I stated in an article for Warfare Plugins, this will also be an indicator of which social share buttons you should offer on your blog.

I’ve said it before, many times:  only focus on 2-3 social networks–the ones that are bringing you the highest return. Don’t waste time on social networks that aren’t bringing value just because people say you should be active on them. You’ll be much more effective focusing on fewer social networks.

Sessions by Source

Lastly, I pay attention to what other websites are sending me significant amounts of traffic and determine:

• Is there a way I can get more traffic from this site via guest posting or some sort of contribution?
• Is there a specific post this site is linking to, and if so can I create more posts like this that they would link to?
• Is there a way I can get in touch with the creators of this site and thank them?

Spend some time exploring either how you can get more traffic from these sites or if there are other similar sites that might be able to send you traffic in the same way.

What Got Me There?

Once I’ve recorded all the most important metrics I compare them to the actual actions I’ve taken. What did I do that led to these results? To answer that question, I ask the following questions:

• How many blog posts did I publish?
• How active was I on specific social networks?
• How much did I engage outside of my own site?

The biggest factor for me though is the first one–how many times did I hit “Publish”? If you’re not publishing new content regularly then there’s not a lot of compelling reasons for people to keep coming back. This will have a drastic effect on your blog unless you have a strong Evergreen Strategy.

Once I have gone through these questions, I then go take a look at which posts had the most page views for the year. This will tell me which types of content are the most successful, and which ones I should probably never do again.

To do this you need to go in Google Analytics to:

Behavior > Site Content > All Pages

This will show you which pages had the most visits/views and you can look at what type of traffic those posts are giving you. Take a look at the Avg. Time on Page and Bounce Rate for those top posts to see if they are bringing you high-value traffic.

I take note of which posts are bringing the most high-value traffic (long Avg. Time on Page and lower Bounce Rates) and plan to create more content like that. Conversely, I also take note on which posts brought the least traffic combined with the lowest Time on Page and highest Bounce Rates and keep in mind to create less content like that.

Setting Next Year’s Goals

Pin this quote

Once I’ve gathered all of this data, I can decide where my successes and failures were. From there I begin to set next year’s goals, along with specific actions to accomplish them.

My blogging goals usually look something like:

• XXX,XXX amount of Sessions
• XXX,XXX amount of Pageviews
• XX,XXX amount of Social Actions
• XX,XXX amount of visits from Social Networks
• X.X pages/visit
• XX% bounce rate

It’s not enough though to just set goals– you must also come up with specific actions that will bring about your goals. Here are some examples of actions I have decided to take to reach my own goals:

• Write more frequently and consistently (publish “X” amount of blogs per week)
• Spend more time networking (make “X” amount of new connections per week)
• Spend more time sharing other people’s work than my own work
• Read books “X”, “Y”, and “Z”

These are the things you can actually control. You can’t control pageviews and you can’t force people to take the actions you want. All you can control are your own actions–or in other words, your own disciplines.

Unless you take the time to plan out those disciplined actions you’ll never be able to know exactly what worked and how to make it better.

Conclusion

This post will be updated regularly to reflect my most current blogging process. So feel free to check back from time to time as you work through your own yearly review process.

A simple walkthrough for creating effective Google Analytics Goals to track your progress.

Do you have goals as a blogger? I’m not talking about aspirations, hopes and dreams like, “I want to be as cool as Michael Hyatt some day.” I’m talking about the kind of goals you can track through Google Analytics.

Not that I don’t fully support dreaming big and trying to be as cool as Michael Hyatt. On the contrary, you definitely need to have big dreams, goals and aspirations.

And let’s face it, what blogger doesn’t want to be Michael Hyatt?

What I’m talking about in this post, though, are tangible, trackable, and quantifiable goals. The kinds of goals that allow you to benchmark your progress and know whether or not what you’re doing is taking you in the direction of your bigger, less tangible goals. Or even more importantly— if your blogging is even paying off at all.

I want to walk you though a handful of goals that I believe every blogger needs to have and how to track them using Google Analytics. They’re really very simple, and more advanced bloggers may want to dive deeper if needed.

But let’s just start with the basics, shall we?

What are some basic blogging goals I should have?

Well, firstly, every blogger should have some basic metrics to gauge how well they’re doing at getting people to their content. These aren’t an actual Google Analytics Goal type metrics, they’re more or less just metrics you’ll want to keep an eye on and maybe just have a mental goal of how much you want to improve them every month.

Those metrics I’m talking about are things such as:

• Sessions
• Pageviews
• Avg. Session Duration
• Pages per Session
• Bounce Rate

In fact, you should definitely have a Google Analytics Dashboard set up for all of these things as well as the goals I’m going to show you how to set up. To make it super easy for you, I’ve gone ahead and created a template out of my go-to GA Dashboard that you can apply to your own site in just a few clicks.

What to get access to this dashboard template? Join my email newsletter by adding your email below, and I’ll send you the link to the Google Analytics Dashboard Template I use on all my blogs.

You can, of course, take the time to create your own dashboard, but this template will save you lots of time in having to do it manually.

Now, one thing to keep in mind is that traffic is meaningless unless it’s translating to some sort of conversion goal. Typically these conversion goals are email signups or a purchase of some sort. And the only way you can actually tell if what you’re doing is paying off is by setting up some conversion-based goals inside your Google Analytics account.

This is actually easier to do than you might realize, and I’m going to walk you through the basic types of goals you should set up immediately.

How to Set Up Google Analytics Goals

There are a number of different ways to set up goals inside of Google Analytics, but I’m only going to focus on two different approaches that are quick and easy to set up for even the most inexperienced blogger.

For both of these goal types we’re going to be using an email subscriber as the goal, meaning we will tell Google Analytics to monitor and track each time we gain a new subscriber to our email lists.

Now, this presumes you have some sort of email subscribe form that you place throughout your site. My form plugin of choice is Ninja Forms (affiliate link), and I highly recommend it. The reason I recommend it so highly is because it allows you to create highly customizable forms that do exactly what you need them to do with a beautiful and easy-to-use interface.

To connect it to my email list, powered by MailChimp (referral link), there is a Ninja Forms MailChimp add-on that makes for super smooth integration. Be sure that whatever form plugin you’re using is connected to your email list software of choice.

With that said, let’s get started with our first goal.

Creating a Destination Goal

The first and easiest way to set up a email subscriber goal is to create a form that will redirect the person signing up to some sort of Thank You page. With Ninja Forms, this is as easy as setting a Redirect action.

If you’re using a different kind of form builder that doesn’t have this ability, I recommend switching to a better form plugin or skipping to the next section.

Once you have this form redirection set up, you can head over to your Google Analytics account and navigate to your Admin tab.

Now, from your Admin tab it’s only going to take six simple steps to set up your first goal.

Step 1: Click on the Goals tab in the third column. This will take you to a page that lists all the goals that Google Analytics is tracking.

Step 2: If you don’t have any goals set up yet, click on the New Goal button at the top of the list box.

If you already have some goals in there that you’re not using, you can simply click on them to modify those goals and reconfigure them to do what we’ll talk about next.

Step 3: Google Analytics will first have you choose whether you want to use a Template for a goal or create a Custom goal. Choose Custom and then click the blue Continue button.

Step 4: Set the Name of your goal. This will only be for your purposes, so just name it something simple and specific so you can easily remember what it’s for.

I like to add “(Redirect)” to the end of my redirect goals, just so I know exactly what type of goal it is when listed among my other goals.

Step 5: Under Type make sure you select Destination and then click the blue Continue button.

Step 6: In the Goal Details section you can then set the Destination (the URL of your Thank You page). All you need to do is enter the last part of your slug.

So, for example, if your Thank You page address was located at yourdomain.com/thank-you/ then all you would need to enter into the box is /thank-you/.

You can then optionally decide to add a Value and Funnel to this goal, but I recommend not doing this unless you have a deep understanding about how these work and how to apply them to your personal goals. So, for the purposeses of this tutorial, we’ll skip it.

Now, just hit the blue Save button and you’re all done!

You’ve now officially got your first Google Analytics Goal set up and will be able to track every single time someone fills out one of your forms and gets redirected to your Thank You page!

But what if you don’t want to redirect people to a Thank You page when they fill out your subscribe form? Or what if your form builder doesn’t allow you to create redirects?

Well, if you happened to have filled out my form above for the bonus Google Analytics Dashboard template, you would have noticed that you do not get redirected— just a success message letting you know your gift is on the way to your inbox.

If you want to know how to track these types of forms, read on, dear reader.

Track Form Submission Goals without a Redirect

If you’re using the popular WordPress Contact Form 7, they make it extremely easy to add an Event to your forms. This is essentially something that is triggered and recorded in Google Analytics every time a form is submitted and all you need to do is add a simple line of code in the designated area of your form builder.

For those of us who don’t have a form builder that has this easy integration, we have to come up with another solution—we have to create our own Google Analytics event. And boy-oh-boy it was not easy figure out.

I searched the entire internet and couldn’t find a tutorial or simple script that anyone has build to easily add to your site and track form submissions. The reason is because it’s a little complicated and not 100% fool proof. But in my opinion it’s better to track something than nothing.

So, with the help of Kyle from Ninja Forms, David from Confluent Forms, and Nick from Warfare Plugins, we were able to come up with a dead simple piece of code that, when placed in your sites Footer will allow you to create a simple Event that fires off every time a form is submitted on your site.

<script>
  jQuery( document ).ready( function() {
    jQuery( document )
    .on('click', 'input[type=button]', function() {
    ga('send', 'event', 'Email List', 'Subscribed', 'New Subscriber');
    });
  });
</script>

Just place this into your theme’s footer so that it is output on every one of your pages.

If you’re using Genesis Theme (affiliate link) they make this super easy. Just head over to your Theme Options tab and scroll down to the Footer Scripts section and paste the above code in.

Now, what this Event is tracking is actually the act of clicking the Submit button (or whatever the button is that submits the form). So just make sure that your form’s button is an input with a type="button" on it.

If you’re not sure about this you can use your browsers Inspect Element feature:

1. Right-click the button on the page
2. Select the Inspect Element (Chrome) option
3. Look at the button’s code and it should look like the following image

If your button is an input element with a type="button" then you’re all set. If not, you’ll need to consult the developers of your form plugin.

If done correctly, Google Analytics will record an Event with the following parameters:

• Event Category: Email List
• Event Action: Subscribed
• Event Label: New Subscriber

You can then create a Goal for this event using the following 6 steps.

Step 1: Just like the previous goal you need to head to the Admin tab of your Google Analytics property and click on Goals.

Step 2: Click the New Goal button.

Step 3: Under Goal Setup select the Custom option and then click the blue Continue button.

Step 4: Name your goal appropriately.

Step 5: Under Type select the Event option and then click the blue Continue button.

Step 6: In the Goal Details section fill out the exact Category, Action and Label I’ve listed above for this Event. It will look like this:

• Category Equals to Email List
• Action Equals to Subscribed
• Label Equals to New Subscriber

Once you’ve done this, you can click the blue Save button and you’re all set!

You will now be tracking all form submissions on your site. Woo-hoo!

Now, the drawback to this is that even if someone gives a bad email address or the submission has an error and doesn’t go through, the Event will still fire as if it were successful. Additionally, if you also have forms that redirect throughout your site, these will also be counted which means if you have a redirect Goal set up also, those forms will be counted as double.

To fix this, you can add one little modification to both the code above and your non-redirect forms to ensure that only these forms are tracked by the event.

First, you’ll need to add a CSS class to the Submit button. In my forms I just used a simple .subscribe-form class. With Ninja Forms you can do this by clicking on the button element in the form editor and adding the class under Display.

The tracking script then looks like this:

<script>
  jQuery( document ).ready( function() {
    jQuery( document )
    .on('click', 'input[type=button].subscribe-form', function() {
    ga('send', 'event', 'Email List', 'Subscribed', 'New Subscriber');
  });
 });
</script>

If you want to use a different class or already have forms that contain a specific class on your Submit buttons, you can change the script accordingly to have that class.

Bonus Goal: Social Shares

Now, this is only going to be for those bloggers who are interested in getting their content shared and tracking how well their content is at making that happen. More shares lead to more traffic and more traffic leads to more conversions of all kinds.

So, it stands to reason that most bloggers want more social shares, but they just haven’t thought to set it up as a Goal in their Google Analytics. Why? Because most people are using a social sharing plugin that someone else created and the people who created it didn’t have this in mind.

Unless you’re using Social Warfare. As co-founder of Social Warfare, this was a feature I really wanted added into the plugin. So we did, and people are loving it!

As a Social Warfare user, all you need to do is turn this feature on.

Once this feature is turned on, Google Analytics will record an event for every time one of your social sharing buttons is clicked. You can then go about creating an Event Goal just like we did above. When you get to the Goal Details portion of creating it, here’s the parameters you want to fill out:

• Category Equals to social_media
• Action Begins with swp_

Pay special attention to the case-sensitivity and also the trailing _ (underscore) on the Event Action.

And that’s it. You can now see how well every blog post is “converting” to social shares.

Reading Your Google Analytics Conversion Reports

So why go through all this trouble to create goals and track conversions? Because these are the things that show you whether or not what you’re doing is working.

If you’re cranking out content regularly and it’s not getting any shares, it’s time to change up your content. But how would you know for certain unless you’re tracking this?

If you’re creating lead magnets and content upgrades but only 1 out of 1,000 people who see them are signing up, it’s time to change your approach. But how will you know unless you are tracking it?

The reason you set up these goals and track them is to understand if what you’re doing is actually working. This way you can continually improve your efforts, hence the phrase:

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

Pin this quote

Conclusion

Once you’ve set up your Google Analytics Goals you can now begin analyzing and quantifying the traffic that you’re getting. You can see exactly how well you’re doing at turning visitors into subscribers or customers.

Are you going to be setting up some new Google Analytics Goals? Let me know in the comments below.