Blog publishing

What blog publishing is

Blog publishing is the repeatable job done to every post between a finished draft and a live page. Headings set at the right level. Images resized, placed and given alt text. Links added and checked. Category and tags chosen from the list you already use rather than invented. Author, publication date, excerpt, featured image, and the separate title and image that appear when somebody shares the post in a message. Then a look at it on a phone, then publish.

It is not writing and it is not editing. If the draft still needs work, that is blog editing. If you want the whole blog run, including commissioning the posts and reporting on them, that is blog management and this is one step inside it. This service is the step alone, for a business that already gets the writing done.

When you need one

You publish, but every post looks like it was done by a different business. One has a full-width image, the next has a small one floated left. Headings jump from large to small and back. Half the posts have no category. Three have the author set to admin. Nobody did anything wrong; five people did it five ways over two years.

The other case is simpler. One person on staff does the publishing, it takes them an hour a post, and that hour is the reason posts sit in a folder.

You do not need this if you publish once a quarter and one person has always done it the same way. If the problem is that nothing is written, start at blog posts. And if the pieces are formatted but never go out on time, the fix is content scheduling, not this.

What gets done to every post

The same list, in the same order, on the first post and the fiftieth. That is the whole value of it.

• Structure. One H1, then H2 and H3 in order, subheadings that describe what is under them, paragraphs broken where the draft runs long, and lists where the writer meant a list.
• Images. Resized to the site's standard widths, named sensibly, placed where the text refers to them, with alt text on each one and a featured image set.
• Links. The links the writer marked, plus a link to at least two older posts or pages that belong with it and a link back from one of them, each clicked once to confirm it goes where it should.
• Filing. Category and tags from the existing list, the author set to the person who wrote it, the address slug cleaned up, and the publication date correct.
• The preview. Excerpt written rather than auto-cut mid-sentence, and the social title, description and image filled in so a shared link does not appear as a bare address.
• The look. The finished post opened on a phone and on a desktop before it goes live, and the first two paragraphs read once more cold.

What you get

Published posts. Each one formatted, checked and either live or dated, with the address sent to you.

A written publishing checklist. One page, specific to your site: your image widths, your heading rules, your category list, where the excerpt field hides, what the author name should say. It is yours to keep. If you take the job back in-house, or a new person starts, that page is the training. It is the part of this service worth the most and it costs you nothing extra.

A log. One row per post: date, address, category, images used, and anything I changed or could not do. It tells you at a glance what was published this quarter.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A twelve-person insurance brokerage has been blogging for three years. Ninety-odd posts. Three different staff have published them, and the last one left in the spring. The images range from tiny to enormous, forty posts have no category, the author on most of them is the office email account, and every shared link on social shows the company logo and no description.

The arrangement starts with the next eight posts, published two a fortnight to the new checklist. The checklist itself is written during the first two, agreed with the office manager, and runs to one page: three image widths, six categories, author set to the broker who wrote it, excerpt always written by hand. Separately, the worst thirty of the old posts are brought up to the same standard over six weeks, which is the point at which the brokerage notices its own blog looks like one blog. The office manager keeps the checklist pinned above her desk and does the ninth post herself.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What system you run, how often you publish, who writes, and what the posts currently look like. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per post, or per month for an agreed number, agreed before anything starts.
3. Access and inputs. An editor account on the site, and the finished drafts with their images at the largest size you hold.
4. The first post and the checklist. One post published, then the one-page checklist drafted from it and agreed with you, before the rest follow.
5. The rhythm. Each post published within two working days of arriving, or on the date you set if it is being queued.
6. The log. Sent monthly, with the checklist reissued whenever something on the site changes.

What it costs

Quoted in CAD after the half-hour call and fixed in writing before the first post. Per post suits an irregular blog. A monthly price for an agreed number of posts suits anything steadier and works out lower. What moves the number is how many images a typical post carries, whether your system keeps its fields where they should be, and whether old posts are being brought up to standard alongside the new ones. The pricing page shows the four published ways of working.

What happens next

Once the posts look consistent, the next question is usually supply, and that leads to blog management or, for the whole site, content production management. Some businesses take the job back using the checklist and half a day of CMS training, which is the outcome I prefer. And once posts are going out reliably, monthly reporting says which of them earned anything. This piece of work is complete on its own and nothing further is assumed.