So you’ve heard about the benefits of blogging for your website’s SEO, building credibility with could-be clients and the increased exposure it can provide for your brand, but where do you start? First, let me tell you what NOT to do. Haphazardly choosing a blog topic from week to week and scrambling to get your content out on time is not a strategy.
In order to get the desired benefits out of blogging, you need to have a plan. More specifically, a content plan. If you’re never done this before, don’t stress. It does take a fair bit of time, research and creative thinking, but it’s certainly not rocket science.
Here’s is how to create a bulletproof blog content plan that will get you blogging like a pro in 2017…
Doing keyword research and writing blog content that is popular and frequently searched on is a highly savvy SEO tactic. You can use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool to get statistics and see how different keywords might perform.
For those new to SEO, keywords are essentially the phrases that people type into search engines like Google to find what they are looking for. Ideally you want your content showing up when they do. Incorporating these keywords into your blog content, titles, meta descriptions and urls gives your blogs the opportunity to appear in google search results and drive more traffic to your site.
Forget for a second that you are trying to promote your business and think about your clients. What information and tools can you provide that would add value to their lives. And I’m talking big value!
This is by far the simplest and most effective way to develop a well followed and respected blog, but it always shocks me how many people miss this…
This is by far the simplest and most effective way to develop a well followed and respected blog, but it always shocks me how many people miss this entirely. They get caught up in shameless self promotion and forget that people don’t care. They are in it for themselves, and will split if they’re not getting what they want.
Variety truly is the spice of life, so it’s important to offer a nice assortment of content to your followers. Before getting into brainstorming topics, create categories that your content will fall into.
This will not only insure you’re hitting on a variety of different topics during brainstorming, you will also be laying the groundwork for your future blog category tags. These tags will allow people to filter and search for the information they want on your blog.
Now for the fun part, where you get to research and brainstorm potential blog ideas. You can organize them under the categories you created and just throw down anything that comes to mind. Most people enjoy this part of the process because it allows you to be creative and freely toss around ideas.
Before you start brainstorming potential blog topics, check out the article 5 blog secrets that will dramatically increase your subscribership which will walk you through how to create clickable and shareable blogs in no time.
Asana is the best tool we’ve found so far for managing tasks and projects both at a business and personal level. And it’s free! You can actually brainstorm your topics within Asana and then start organizing the topics based on when and in what order you think it makes sense to release them.
We do this for our own blogs here at Iconica and for all of our clients as well. It’s a great system for setting due dates, assigning various tasks (like designing a hero image or posting the blog) and even including links to the actual content. We use Google Docs for all our content because it’s a great cloud-based tool for sharing and collaborating.
The final step is to decide on a blog schedule you feel is manageable (i.e. weekly, bi-monthly or monthly). We always suggest if you have the time and resources that blogging weekly is the most effective. But the most important thing is to come up with a schedule you will actually stick to.
Your subscribers will expect your content on certain dates, and inconsistency with blogging is a quick way to disappoint people and lose subscribers. Try having your content ready the week before, so you can avoid last minute scrambling.
With these tools you should be ready to get started! If you have any questions, or would prefer to leave your blogging to the pros, contact us and our team of content and copywriting experts are at your disposal!
Stephanie Miles, Director of Digital Marketing