What’s the most frequent complaint I hear about blogging? Next to “I don’t have enough time,” it’s “I don’t know what to write about.”
Guess what? The two questions are related to the same problem: not enough clarity about business blog goals. Here’s how I help my clients solve this problem of clarity:
- Define your business Ps & Q – (3Ps + 1Q):
=> What Problem do you solve?
=> Who are the People you serve?
=> What Products and services do you offer?
=> What makes you uniQue?? - Create a course outline or a table of contents as if you were writing a book or teaching a class on this problem, i.e., your expertise
- Make a list of keywords, categories and topics you’re qualified to write about and that must be addressed to solve the problems of your readers
- Make an editorial calendar for each day of the week you’re going to be blogging. Make sure you cover all the topics and categories, and that your keywords are repeated frequently in posts and titles (search engine optimization).
- Make a weekly blog schedule to include writing the content, sharing it on social sites, researching and commenting on other blogs, and formatting, editing, linking, etc.
Don’t underestimate the time it takes for all the peripheral upkeep of blogging. Maintaining a successful blog takes more time than just writing a post. And it almost always takes longer than the 30 minutes required for writing.
Do you jerk readers around?
When I’m working with my clients on their blogs, I often find their content is all over the map. Quite often, they blog about whatever crosses their radar, whatever inspires them that day. It can be an email from one of their clients or readers, or something they saw on another site, or what they’re doing that week. It’s no wonder readers get confused and stop reading.
Clarity has to appear not only in your mind, as the author of the blog, but for your readers as well. If you blog about a book you’re reading, then a movie you saw, and then about how to use your business products and services, you are jerking your readers around.
Unless you have a clearly defined plan for publishing content on your blog, you will confuse readers and lose them.
Re-read point number 2 on the list of 5 tips. When you organize your editorial calendar according to an outline or a table of contents, you’ll have a sequence of posts that makes sense for your readers. There will be an order. Brains love order.
Let’s face it, there’s a lot of information to read on the Web. Unless you make your blog content easy to remember because it’s well-organized, and it makes sense to readers, you will miss another opportunity to build relationships and convince and convert.
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Another great post. I have yet to set up an editorial calendar, although every month I say that I will do this. One thing that I try to do is start the next days post the night before. I do not always accomplish this, but when I do it makes the writing process easier. I will lay out the foundation of my post and leave it for the next day. This gives the ideas time to rest in my mind and I am fresh the next day and ready to begin.
Great post,
Jenn
.-= Jennifer´s last blog ..Developing Content to Nurture Leads through the Buying Cycle =-.
Jennifer, I am in total agreement with you about starting the next post the night or day before. It helps find ideas in your sleep, plus you can catch errors and typos, make links better, etc. My editorial calendar is in my head for now, but as I am adding guest writers, it will have to become a real calendar, with real deadlines. Thanks for stopping by and sharing!
P.S. Why don’t you submit a guest post?
“Do you jerk readers around?”
I’m not sure I agree with this. My blog niche is arts and crafts. Most of my favorite other artsy blogs do this routinely. One day they blog about what happening at home. The next hey may share a tutorial or run a contest or review a book.
Maybe creative types, as opposed to analyticals, crave this kind of diversity.
.-= Eileen´s last blog ..Country Critter Wall Plaque =-.
I wouldn’t know about analytical type readers much, not being one myself. But I do know that the more your blog content stays on track with your business goals, the more sense it makes, the more you will achieve the results you wish. Your goals may be entertaining your readers, or amusing them, or stimulating their creative juices. Or, you may be teaching them how achieve something or solve a challenge. Having a plan, even a loose one, will help you stay on track and reassure readers you’ve got their best interests in mind.
I agree with Eileen.
Although you don’t want to be completely all over the map, changing up your subject matter is critical.
Blogs represent people. They create connections to their readers through their personalities. When a blog stays on topic all the time, it begins to feel white-washed like any on or off-line newspaper or magazine.
Personality plays a huge role in a blog. Blogging about those things that are part of the authors passions, likes, dislikes, opinions etc. allows followers to connect with the blog. It’s what makes blogging different than reading commercial news.
Fred Wilson at avc.com is a perfect example. He will be all over the board, start-ups, social media, politics, (usually on the left), internet, telephony, etc. OK he doesn’t do food.
Readers want to connect with blogs. Staying too on “topic” make this hard.
Ironically, I blogged about this connect just today. It’s a unique part of being part of the blogasphere.
[...] I got an interesting comment on a post I did beginning of June and I can’t stop thinking about it. The post was about staying on target with your business goals when you create content for your blog. Don’t Jerk Readers Around: 5 Tips for Staying on Track. [...]
While one’s blog should maintain a familiar, comforting theme (a “brand” image) someone who talks about the same thing all the time is BORING!
“What’s new?” is the first thing friends ask each other, and they don’t want to hear, “Same old same old.” They want to be surprised by what book I’ve been reading; what movie I saw; and the funny thing that happened to me the other day. If I tack on a moral of Unicornish Buddhism, that’s my brand.
Tip 1 is all you need. If you do all the things in Tip 1 right (mindfully and from your heart), you will be in the mood to write blog posts often and eloquently forever after.
The rest of the tips are time-wasters. “Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans,” as Frank Zappa said.