How to create a blog plan
We’re almost into a brand-new year – and no doubt, like me,
you’re thinking about how you’re going to grow your business during 2020.
Part of your content marketing plan for 2020 should include
blogging – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – every business should be
creating regular, good quality blog posts as part of their marketing plan.
“That’s all very well,” you might say, “But where do I find
the time, and how do I find subjects to write about?”
That, my friends, is where the blog plan comes in.
Without some kind of plan for your blogging, your posts will
likely be inconsistent and thrown together. And they’ll never get a good readership.
If you want your blog posts to be read, your readers need to know a) when they
can expect to see your new posts, and b) that you are writing about stuff they
want to know about.
Creating your plan
Firstly, you’ll want to decide how often you want to publish
your blog posts. That might be daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly… it’s up to
you, but the key is to stick to the schedule. Make sure that you have both the
time and the content to be able to produce enough content to meet those dates.
Next, you need to think about what you want to cover. The
subjects, in other words. What will you write about? What will your customers
want to know/read about? Don’t make it salesy, make it interesting.
Your plan could be as simple as writing a list of dates and
subjects on a notepad or a Word document. The important thing is that you look
at it often, and stick to it.
Tools to help you
Previously, I used an Excel Spreadsheet to plan out my blog
posts. It worked, up to a point – and it might work for you. It looked a little
something like this:
However, I’m the sort of person who needs to be held accountable.
I found that using the spreadsheet meant that I could too easily ignore things
when I didn’t feel up to the task, or move things around when I was too busy to
deal with it. And that meant that my blogs weren’t being published to schedule.
And guess what? People stopped reading. They didn’t know when the next one
would appear, so they didn’t come back.
So now, I use an app called Trello. There are others out
there, but this one works really well for me.
With Trello, I’m able to create a content calendar, by
entering in the subjects that I want to write about, schedule the day I want to
publish them, and I get a virtual ‘telling off’ if I miss the deadline.
It also allows me to enter links and notes, so I can research
before I start to write. If I come across something on the web I want to use, I
put the link in my Trello calendar, and it’s there when I want to use it.
Batch Writing
Sometimes, we all get too busy to write blog posts when we need
to. The good news is, you don’t have to write them on their deadline day – I’ve
found that batch-writing works so much better for me.
So much so, that I’m
thinking of rolling the same method out to some of my own regular clients.
I’m writing this posts on the 17th of December
2019. It’s scheduled to go live on the 23rd December. I know that I won’t
be working on the 23rd December. So today, I’ve written a post for
the 18th December (when I know I’ll be busy writing a couple of
articles for one of my clients), this one, and if I’ve time, a third one due to
go out on the 2nd January 2020.
So I don’t have to worry about missing deadlines, working
over the Christmas Holidays, or having Trello shout at me that I’ve missed a
post. And because I have no client work today, I’ve got extra time available to
write my own posts in advance. My website allows me to schedule my posts to go
out at a date in the future, and I don’t have to worry about it.
I hope this post offers you some courage to set up your own
blog schedule – make 2020 the year that you make your blog shine!