Do You Really Need to Plan Your Blogging?

As always the correct answer is the one that applies to you and your own blogging goals.

In order to create a successful blog whether that success is defined as earning money, getting a lot of visitors, getting a lot comments or social shares (or another goal all together) it is important that you create a  blogging plan.

Of course once you have created your blogging plan you have to follow through in order to success.

An empty blog won’t get visitors, and without visitors, you can’t be successful. Now we’ve established that your first goal should be to get targeted visitors to your blog how do you get them?

In training they call it the bums on seats method, they possibly call it that in teaching too. All the those w’s lined up look like bums on seats apparently, and now that I’ve described it, it will be unforgettable

What you need to know is the

• Who
• Why
• What
• When
• How.

Know Your Who

Yeah I know, you’ve done this for your business and now you need to do it for your blog. Is your business customer the same person who will read your content?

So Who is Your Who?

• What does she do?
• Where does she work?
• Where does she shop?
• What does she eat?
• How educated is she?
• What are her time commitments?

Note I’ve said she a lot here… unless you are specifically marketing to men, and it’s an item that their mum, wife, sister, girlfriend, niece won’t buy on their behalf, then your ideal customer is always a she.

I read back in my university days (I’m telling you this as it’s it important that you know the reason why I wasn’t paying enough attention to note the source) that women will buy from advertising and copy that talks to them.

Women know when they are not the intended audience and leave. Men don’t care or don’t notice and will buy from advertisements that are targeting female readers. Grab a larger slice of the pie, write for the women.

Anecdote (sorry, have just discovered that word and I’m determined to use it): over at Birds on the Blog we write as women in business, for women in business.

40% of our audience is male. Writing for women works.

Know Your Why and your What

• Why are you blogging?
• Who are you blogging for?
• What is your goal?

You need to write down these things so that you can always look at it to ensure that each step of the way you’re remembering why you’re blogging  who you’re blogging for.  You can also define what you think the end result will be.

Having this written down is no different from any business owner who creates a business plan. A business plan for your blog isn’t a bad thing, it can help you stay focused and goal orientated.

Know When & How

• Are you going to blog daily?
• Are you going to blog to a different schedule?
• Are you going to write all your blogs
• Make some video blogs?
• Particpate in WordLess Wednesday?
• Create a podcast too?

You can do one,  or you can jiggle it up a bit and attract different readers on different days. By having diverse content, you can appeal to the way your ideal reader wants to consume your content. By keeping to one type of content format you can develop that to a really high level. Whatever you decide, write it down on your plan.

Create an Editorial Calendar

Use an editorial calendar just like professional publications use. WordPress has a great plugin called Editorial Calendar which enables you to look at each month at a glance and enter topic ideas for the future.

Then when you’re ready to write, simply look at the calendar and start writing based on the calendar. You can also create a simple calendar using Word. Take into consideration your keyword research when picking topics to write about.

Make Time

Treat blogging as a job, with a schedule for time to write, or record your video blog, and time to edit and post the results.

If you plan it out for each week, month and year in advance you’ll find that you’ll be more successful. If you are working a day job and getting your blogging business started be realistic about how much time you can devote.

Remember to share your goals with your readers

If your goal is to build a terrific resource that gets lots of referrals then tell your readers your goals. They love to celebrate success, and if they can help you achieve a goal, they will. But they can’t do that if they don’t know the goals in the first place.

How do you plan your blogging? Are you more or less detailed than I am?