Carefully preparing the content for your blog will put you ahead of others in your industry in a huge way. Many bloggers will only blog when inspiration strikes them instead of having a regular content plan. Those who are serious however and want to create a money-making, high value blog, will always start with a plan. Here are some important things to keep in mind when creating your plan.
Understand Who Your Audience Is
Part of running a great blog with compelling content is to really know your audience inside and out. You need to know what words will make an impact with them and which ones they will respond to. Also, you need to know their general worries, fears, loves, and interests, and how they relate to your products and/or services. The more you can speak their language, the more drawn to your products they will be.
Know Your Industry
The niche you’re involved in has a past, present, and future. It’s important to understand the history of your niche as well as who has been making an impact. Knowing about your industry will keep you on the forefront of everything which can help you improve the content you create and that will take you to a whole new level.
What Seasons, News, and Events Impact Your Niche?
Keeping an eye on upcoming events and being aware enough to jump on things that have just happened are important components in creating an excellent content plan. Whether you blog about events, accomplishments and happenings in your own life, or about a business industry, it doesn’t matter. Keep it relevant by matching it to things your audience cares about that are currently taking place.
Consider the Impact of Newsletters, Email, and Social Media
In order to be successful today, your blogging content has to work in concert with newsletters, email, and social media content. You cannot plan your blog content without thinking about how you will promote the complimentary content. It’s no longer good enough to just write it and assume people will come – instead, it’s important to understand how it all works together.
What Other Pages Will Your Blog Have?
Your blog needs to have more than just a blog page. There are important pages that you will need also in order to look very professional. Potential pages to choose from may be:
- About
- Contact
- Guest posting information
- Advertising information
- Media
- Services/product
- Archived posts
- Tools and resources
- Subscribe
- Start here
- Privacy policy
- Terms of service
- Disclosures page
Not only are these pages important, but they also provide more room to add in copy that is needed to attract search engine traffic. Decide in advance what pages you’ll have so that you can plan the content for each page before everything goes online.
Categories Are Important But Don’t Have Too Many
Once you’ve determined the pages you need outside of the main blog page, it’s important to determine which categories you’ll have on your blog. Limiting the number of categories for your blog is also important; stick with somewhere between 9 and 15. The more you can narrow down your subject matter and categories, the more focused your blog posts will be and the easier they will be to find for your readers.
What Type of Content Schedule Will You Choose?
When creating the content plan for your blog, be sure to choose how often you will be posting content. This is very important to know ahead of time as you can then create an editorial calendar based on the products and services you want to promote at certain times.
What Are the Major and Minor Keywords That Define Your Niche?
Studying keywords within your niche can help you come up with categories as well as subjects which you plan on blogging about. These subjects can also help determine what forms the content will appear in. For example, you may want to interview big names within your niche. These interviews could be suited for a podcast while a “how to” post might be better to appear as a video on your blog.
Without a plan of action to move your blog forward, it’s easy to get stuck only blogging when the whim strikes. This is one of the biggest reasons why most blogs do not produce an income or lead to much success. Blogging with purpose and focus will make all the difference, and that starts with a content plan.
