Whether you’re planning your blog or you’ve been at it a while, sometimes it’s good to take a step back and examine the bigger picture. You need a plan.
There are some questions you should be able to answer, and guidelines you should keep in mind as y0u focus in on the details of routine posting.
Blogging is such a crucial part of any content marketing strategy. You’ve got to keep your blog focused on the goals at hand in order to succeed.
Here are five big picture questions to keep in mind:
- What’s your value statement? In a few quick words, 1)What solutions do you provide and 2) Who do you provide it to? The vast majority of your posts should fit this. For example, I provide content marketing solutions and blogging tips that help businesses increase their visibility and sell more.
- Who is your target audience? Are you writing to fellow industry colleagues or your customer base? Are they typically male or female? How old are they? What’s their education level? What’s their familiarity with the material? All of this will shape how you write each post.
- What post ideas do you have? You can follow several strategies for finding blog ideas as you continue blogging. In order to develop initial momentum, you should be able to come up with about 10 really good post ideas out of the gate.
- What’s your promotion strategy? You’ll need a sound keyword strategy for search. You’ll need a social strategy to promote your work to your platform. You can also be working to drive your offline contacts to your blog by handing out business cards and talking it up.
- What does success look like? Blogging takes a lot of effort, and it’s easy to spread yourself thin. Are you looking to build relationships? Grow your social platforms? Create a resource for your customers? Communicate with others in your industry? Rank the importance of these objectives. Spend more time on what’s important. The good news is if you do any of these well, it should increase your bottom line.
Once you can better answer these questions, you’ll have a better blogging strategy in place. Consistently posting quality material is time consuming and challenging, but necessary. Don’t be afraid to hire a blog writer, if you need one.
Matt Brennan is a Chicago-area marketing writer and copy editor. He is also the author of Write Right-Sell Now.
