Preparing and planning your blog content will put you ahead of the rest in a huge way. Believe it or not, many bloggers only write when inspiration strikes and don’t have a regular content plan. But, those who are serious and want to create a high value blog that makes money, start with a plan.
Understand who your audience is
Part of creating a great blog with amazing content is really knowing your audience inside and out. You need to know which words have an impact on them. Also, you need to know all their worries, fears, loves and interests and how it relates to your products and/or services. The more you can speak their language about your products and services, the more impact your content will have on them.
What impacts your niche?
Knowing what’s coming up ahead of time or being aware enough to jump on something that just happened in the news related to your industry are important components of creating a great content plan. It doesn’t matter if you blog about events, achievements, and happenings in your own life or about a business industry. Keep it relevant by pairing it with the things that matter to your audience.
Newsletters, email and social networks
Today, your blog content has to work with newsletters, email, and social media content. You cannot plan your blog content without thinking about how you will promote the content. It’s not good enough to write anymore “and they will come” – instead, it is important to understand how it all works together.
main pages
There are important pages that your blog will need to look professional. Potential pages to choose from may be:
- about page
- contact page
- Guest Post Information
- advertising information
- services/products page
- Archived Posts
- Tools and resources
- subscription page
- start here page
- Privacy Policy
These pages are not only important, but they also provide more real estate to add in the copy needed to drive search engine traffic and your audience to read your blog post. Decide in advance which pages you will have so that you can plan the content of each page.
Categories are important (but don’t have too many)
Once you’ve determined the pages you need outside of the “blog” page, it’s important to determine what categories you’ll have on your blog. It is important to limit the number of categories on your blog. Stick with 9 to 15 categories. The more you can narrow down the topic and categories, the more focused your blog posts will be and the easier they will be for your readers to find.
Your content program
When creating the content plan for your blog, ask yourself how often you plan to post content. This is very important to know when creating an editorial calendar based on the products and services you want to promote. Knowing that you plan to post daily takes a bit more work than posting weekly when you have the plan in front of you, and of course, you’ll get better results when you’re focused.
Primary and secondary keywords
Studying keywords within your niche can help you find categories and topics you want to blog about. Themes can also help determine in what forms the content will appear. For example, you may want to interview influencers within your niche. These might be more suitable for a podcast while a “as” the post could be better if it appears as a video on your blog.