How to Write a Blog Post Outline: A Simple Formula to Follow [+Tips from Our Blog Team]

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What makes a blog post bad? The most pervasive problem we find is poor flow. The post jumps from one idea to the next or the post reads like a stream of consciousness – except it’s not a stylistic choice.

One way to prevent this is by creating an outline for your blog post.

Below is my method for outlining posts and organizing my thoughts to create a cohesive, logical piece.

Table of Contents

How to Write a Blog Post Outline
Outlining Tips from HubSpot Bloggers
Blog Post Outline Example

1. Write down as many distinct takeaways from the article as you can.

Start with a brain dump.

Write down all the things you want your readers to get out of the article. These won’t always be the main sections of your article – it’s just all the things you want your readers to know by the end of reading your post.

This is the only time in the whole process you’re not worried about organization – just let your ideas flow naturally. You need to get out all of your wild and crazy ideas now so they won’t muck up your post later in the process.

For example, say my article is on using images to generate leaders on Twitter, I’d probably want readers to know:

What sets a good image apart from a bad one on Twitter
Where they can find images to use legally
How they can create images on their own
What sizes they need to make images
How often they should tweet images
How to actually upload an image to Twitter
How they can generate a lead on Twitter
How long their tweet should be with the image in it
What results they should expect to get

Notice how these are really unfiltered and all over the place. That’s OK. We’ll rein it all in in the next step.

2. Break up those takeaways into larger sections.

Now, we’ll take that jumble of ideas and place them into overarching sections.

Think of it like sorting laundry – each thought belongs to a different pile. From your brainstorm, you should come up with a few big themes.

Sometimes, one of your brainstorming bullets will be a theme in itself, but usually, several bullets will fall under one overarching theme. You may also realize that there’s a theme that you may not have any bullets for, but the post definitely calls for it.

Many recommend sticking to three or four large sections, but it really depends on what type of post you’re writing. If you’re writing a comprehensive guide, you might need more.

If it’s a quick how-to post, fewer sections would be ideal.

Using the same example, here’s how I’d bucket my ideas into the following buckets: