How to Write a Blog Post Outline

For a good part of the last decade, experts have decried that the blog is dead! Especially since the rise of micro-blogging with X (previously Twitter) and photo/video-blogging with Instagram, long paragraphs of text in blog posts have been written off as useless.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

It is safe to say that blogging is one of the most effective ways to gain visibility (by appearing on the result pages of search engines), authority (by speaking about relevant topics), and thought leadership (by ideating the future).

Yet, 96.5% of the content on the internet gets no traffic from Google, finds Ahrefs!

One of the biggest reasons for this is that the content in these blog posts doesn’t match the search intent. In other words, the content doesn’t meet the needs of the reader.

Today, we look at how you can solve that problem using a comprehensive blog post outline. We discuss why you need a blog post outline, how to create one, and the common mistakes to avoid while you’re doing so.

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A blog post outline is a framework that guides the writing by creating comprehensive, effective, and differentiated content. It provides brand clarity, speed, quality, consistency, and risk mitigation.

To create a good blog post outline, follow these steps.

• Brainstorm ideas and key takeaways
• Structure the main sections
• Fill out each section with the right level of detail
• Revise and refine your outline
• Monitor the performance of your blog post and improve over time

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Understanding the Basics of a Blog Post Outline

A blog post outline is a structure or a framework that includes all the aspects that need to be covered by the writer. It helps the writer frame the narrative of the blog post in a way that’s most meaningful and useful to the reader.

Why do you need a blog post outline?

Whether you’re the only writer or belong to a team of many, outlining a blog post is integral to SEO project management. Before sitting down to write, creating an outline draws the boundaries of your content. 

It’s like making a pencil sketch before painting. It gives you a complete picture of what you’re going to paint without constricting your creative process. This is how it helps.

Clarity: The outline is a roadmap for the entire article. You know where to start, what milestones you need to cross and where to reach. This gives the writer complete clarity of their work.

Risk mitigation: As writers have clarity on their blog post’s goal and structure, they are less likely to submit something that’s way off the mark. This reduces rework and minimizes the risk of delays/failures.

Speed: Outlining separates the research and thinking phase from the writing phase. This means that when you have an outline, you can sit down and finish writing faster than you will without one.

Quality: A good outline helps elevate the blog post. It gives the writer everything they need, including language, SEO, and marketing best practices, dramatically improving quality.

Consistency: For organizations that create blogs at scale, the outline helps bring consistency and repeatability to the process. It expedites the quality control process by creating a checklist for editors in advance.

What is included in a blog post outline?

If you’re wondering how the simple outline can deliver all of these benefits, here’s how. A good blog post outline contains everything the writer needs to know to do their job well. That encompasses:

Context

Who is the audience? What are they looking for? 

This helps the writer visualize the person they’re writing the actual post for and deliver what’s important to them.

Title

What is the title of the blog post?

A good blog post title tells the reader instantly what they can expect. It summarizes the crux of the article. For instance, “How to use AI for coding” is a great title. 

Structure

What are the major sections to be included? Are there any specific ideas/points to be covered?

This is the biggest part of the outline. It defines section by section, heading by heading, what’s to be included in the blog post. Here, the creator of the outline can be as high-level or granular as necessary, depending on the writer’s skills, availability, etc.

Additional elements

Are there any links, images, videos, templates, tools, etc. to be included?

These are the SEO or brand elements that the writer should keep in mind. For instance, you might want to include a few internal links or add a visual that demonstrates the blog post topics you’re covering. This is the place for that.

Housekeeping

Is there a style guide or any other guidelines to be followed?

Last but not least, let the writer know if there’s anything else they need to keep in mind. This can be anything from avoiding the Oxford comma to choosing references from a particular source alone. This sets up the writer for success, minimizing rework resulting from logistical issues!

With that handy, let’s see how to write a blog outline.

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Steps to Writing a Blog Post Outline

A good blog post outline is a writer’s superpower. It compresses the research stage into an easy-to-use framework for the writer to build their story effectively. To create an outline that gives your writers that superpower, you need a process, which we discuss below, and a comprehensive tool like ClickUp.

1. Brainstorming ideas and takeaways

The first step to creating an outline is knowing what the blog post is about. Depending on your organization, area of expertise, audience, and subject matter experts, you’ll have a starting point. Build on it.

Brainstorm diversely

Let’s say you work for a software company building AI solutions for developers, you can brainstorm ideas in the following ways.

To make this process dramatically simpler, use an AI tool. For instance, ClickUp Brain helps you brainstorm ideas for new blog posts in a jiffy. Ask a question and get ideas that get you started! From there, refine your ideas either with ClickUp Brain or by yourself.

Try ClickUp Brain for Free

Once you have a few ideas, choose one to outline. Let’s go with the “how to use AI for coding” idea. It’s time to identify the key takeaway for the reader.

Narrow down your takeaway

How-to articles are a big hit on the internet. The flip side is that you also have immense competition for these keywords. So, carefully choose your key takeaway. In this case, it might be something like “end-to-end process of integrating AI into everyday coding.”

2. Structuring main sections

Now that you have a title and purpose for your blog post, get into the details. Rule no. 1 here is: just because your title is ‘how to use AI,’ you don’t need to strictly stick to it or get there directly. 

Create a number of sections that give the reader a comprehensive overview of the topic. While working on outlines as a team, it helps to use a visual concept-mapping tool like ClickUp Whiteboards. Bring together various ideas in the form of text, sticky notes, shapes, links, tasks, etc. and organize them visually.

Some of the key aspects to consider when structuring your main sections are:

In addition to the basics, you can also include sections most relevant to the topic. For instance, you might add a section on what challenges programmers might face while using AI. Or the best AI tools for coding.

While doing this, organize the sections for blog content flow and readability. 

3. Filling out sections with details

Most outlines stop at defining the sections. While that works, it helps writers even more to fill in some details in each section. For example, under the section ‘What is AI in coding?’ you might include details such as:

This step is best executed as nested bullet points on a document (instead of adding more nodes to your concept map). Open up ClickUp Docs and begin writing down your title and key points. Some of the most compelling details you can add to your sections in the outline are as follows.

Examples: Good examples root the concept in reality. It shows the reader how something works in the real world. 

Statistics: Well-researched statistics give the writing credibility. It also adds a sense of proportion. 

Tools: Another way to make your content actionable is by including tools and templates. For instance, you can include AI tools for code generation, code completion, code review, documentation, etc. enabling the reader to try them out and take action.

Stories: Include case studies, interviews, or even quotes to tell a complete story to the reader.

Links: As a regularly updated blog, you probably write on a wider range of related topics. Provide internal links in your outline for the writer to sprinkle them throughout the piece.

Download This Template

If that seems like too many elements, no sweat. Try ClickUp’s SEO Content Brief Template for a pre-designed framework for everything you need to add to your outline. This blog post outline template contains sections for title, word count, objective, target audience, messaging, keywords, sub-topics, links, references, and more!

4. Revising and refining your outline

With that, the first draft of your outline is ready. However, it’s not ready to be sent to the writer yet. Revise and refine your outline thoroughly.

Logical flow

Ensure that the outline has a logical flow from beginning to end. Check if each section flows smoothly into the next. If you identify any gaps in information, add them in.

Completeness

When a reader gets everything they need to learn about a topic in one place, they are likely to stay longer. So, confirm that all the aspects that can be included are indeed included.

Fluff

Identify any irrelevant information or sections and remove them. During your research, these sections might have seemed relevant but may have become redundant later. 

Competitiveness

Especially if you’re writing blog posts for SEO, you might want to compare your outline with pages that currently rank for your chosen keyword to ensure your content will be competitive.

For more support, offer the writer some content writing templates that work best for your outline. Try ClickUp’s Content Writing Template. This fully customizable beginner-friendly template helps the writer streamline their end of the tasks effectively.

5. Monitor and improve over time

The fundamental purpose of an article outline is to facilitate the writer. It will be successful only when the writer finds it useful, helpful, and meaningful. 

So, set up periodic reviews with the writer to collect feedback. Ask them what would help and include that information in the next blog post outline.

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Tips and Best Practices for Blog Post Outlining

In the five steps above, you got the foundations of blog post outlining. Let’s see how you can take that to the next level with some tips and best practices.

Choose a compelling title

Whether your blog post is listed on the Google search results page or posted on social media, the first thing the reader sees is the title. The more attention-grabbing it is, the better your blog post will perform.

Make your title:

Use a content calendar

Every blog post outline is a part of a workflow that is best managed through a good content calendar software. On a tool like ClickUp, you can create tasks for each blog post, add links to ClickUp Docs with outlines, include checklists, deadlines, and assign users even.

Managing it with a calendar view helps you prioritize work in the right order.

For instance, you might start with the blog post with the earliest due date. Or you might focus on those with dependencies.

Set up and manage your blog plan with ClickUp’s Content Calendar Template. Use this ready-to-use, beginner-friendly template to organize your work in the way that works best for you.

Automate what you can

If you’ve always seen writing as a creative pursuit, you might be surprised to see this tip. Well, don’t be. There are several parts of the blog post outlining and writing process that can be automated effectively.

For instance, with ClickUp Automations, you can automate:

• Assigning available writers based on workload trends
• Changing status when a particular step in the content creation workflow is complete (for instance, alert the editor when writing is complete)
• Sending emails to the right stakeholder with updates (for example, alert the project manager if there is a dependency issue)
• Adding checklists to tasks

One another absolutely powerful feature of ClickUp is the AI custom fields. With this AI content creation tool, you can automatically populate the field with task summaries, updates, data analysis and more. 

Let’s take a look at what a good blog post outline would look like and why.

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Blog Post Outline Examples

To wrap that all up in one nice little bow, let’s see a couple of blog post outline examples.

Example one: How to use AI in coding

Example two: 8 best AI tools for developers

If that sounds simple enough, let’s see what pitfalls you might face in writing your blog post outline.

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Common Mistakes to Avoid in Blog Post Outlining

The biggest mistake content teams make in blog post outlining is not having one. Especially experienced writers have a tendency to choose a topic and start writing immediately. While this can be convenient for them, it affects consistency, quality, and operationalizing of publication.

So, avoid skipping this step. Always write an outline. Once you’ve done that, here are some other mistakes to avoid.

Making outlines too vague: In some cases, outlines just mention the 2-3 main sections to be covered. Especially when comparing that with the high word count, it can be confusing for the writer. 

Add enough detail to support the writer. In the above example about 8 best tools for developers, the section under the first tool includes the aspects to be covered for each. This ensures that the writer knows what level of detail is necessary.

Making outlines too specific: An outline is simply a framework or a roadmap. Adding too many details makes it appear like an early/incomplete draft of the blog post, which can be difficult for the reader to navigate. 

Maintain a level of distance from the details, giving the writer creative freedom.

Giving incomplete context: A writer needs to know as much as possible about the background of the piece. So, mentioning the target audience without the blog post’s purpose or key takeaway can be limiting for the writer.

Ignoring AI entirely: Sooner or later, AI is going to be an integral part of every writer’s toolkit. Avoiding the use of AI would only set you back in terms of productivity and expenses. 

Integrate AI smoothly into your blog workflows. Try AI writing prompts, outline generators, and other helpful tools to improve your output.

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Boost Your Content Engine with ClickUp

Whether you’re a startup, a small business, or a multinational enterprise, the blog is one of the most critical elements in your company’s marketing strategy. It forms the foundation of content marketing management, such as search engine optimization or social media distribution.

As a whole, the blog expands reach and brings more visitors to your website. Each blog post educates the user and nudges them toward buying your product/service. In fact, every blog post contributes individually and collectively to the mission. 

To make the most of this marketing channel, you need a robust blog post outlining process. From research and brainstorming to secure sharing, your outlining process needs a range of steps and blogging tools.

ClickUp’s all-in-one productivity tool is designed for precisely this. Brainstorm on ClickUp Whiteboards, write on ClickUp Docs, create checklists, automate workflows, and maximize your content engine with ClickUp.

Try ClickUp for free today.

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