How To Plan Your Blog Content
When it comes to blog content, many people I know fall into one or both of these categories. They either have a couple of ideas and are unable to focus on a particular niche or have too many niches but struggle to come up with new ideas. I have been in both of these positions myself at times, but I found my sweet spot a few months back. It took me many years to find out.
This post assumes that you’re a blogger or a business owner looking to grow their audience. To me, blogging “just for fun”
Learn your “Why”
Your blog serves a purpose. It’s important to think about your “why” when you plan your content. What are you trying achieve through your blog? I blog because I want to share my knowledge with my readers, build trust with them and promote my products and services. When planning my content, I only consider topics that will inspire, educate, or entertain my audience.
Sometimes, you have to go wide first
Everybody in the world will tell you to pick a niche. But, I think it’s important to look at a variety of topics before you can decide what topic you want to write about. The same goes for your target audience. You need one, but it is not a bad thing to work with many people from different industries. It may be that you aren’t really interested in working with the people you thought would be your ideal partners!
It may be helpful to do a brain dump on all the topics you could write about for your blog content. After you have gathered enough ideas, you’ll likely see some categories that you can use to narrow down your post topics. You can also skip the brain dump altogether and focus on a select group of categories and only consider post ideas that fall within those categories. It’s up to you.
What are you looking for?
It is easy to blog when you know your purpose and your target audience. You always have something to offer if you know their needs. How can you find out what your customers want? Think about the questions they are asking if you have customers or clients. If you are just starting out, Follow them Do some research on where they hang out – search Facebook groups and observe chats, check Instagram. Chances are that your target audience is also you. So think back to the things you wish you knew 2 or 3 years ago.
Evernote has a list of FAQs that I keep. This is not only for the possibility of creating a FAQ page but also to help me brainstorm blog post ideas. Although I have so many blog posts ideas, I won’t likely ever use them all. That’s a good problem! Write down any question that someone asks in a Facebook group, Periscope comment, or one-on-one meeting. Listening will surprise you with the number of ideas that you can come up with.
Maximize what you have
Analytics are something you should pay attention to if you have been blogging for some time. You can learn a lot from your old posts. I keep track of which posts are most popular and how many people have commented on them. Also, what posts generate the most revenue.
Make a schedule that works best for you
Rewinding back to 2010, we’d find that I was the blogger who went from posting five days a week to posting once a month. Because I was inconsistent, I lost a lot my audience and subscribers. Don’t be like the old you. You don’t have to post a new post every day if you aren’t able to do so 5 days per week. You can choose one, two, or three days. Most people agree that quality is more important in blogging than quantity. Personally, I would rather have one valuable post per week than many “meh” posts. You have only 10 hours per week to blog, so if you can only manage to write one post per week, the basic math will tell you that it would take you five hours to finish a post. But that doesn’t include all the other tasks that go into blogging – editing, social media, community building, photography/design, editorial planning, and networking are just a few of the many things you might need to do.
Return to the point
Perhaps I should add, back to your purpose – Every blog post should contain a call to action that is directly related to your purpose. You don’t want your audience to leave without doing some.
Some helpful tools
Asana is my current tool for planning my blog content. It allows me to brainstorm ideas and manage specific tasks. Although it sounds like too many tools for one result, it is the best system for me. All of these tools are free! Before you start to do any of this, it’s important that you have a solid plan for your blog content. By creating a plan, your blog will better serve your target audience and focus on creating content that converts.
