OK…now that I’ve put myself out there and decided to take action, I now need to come up with enough content to cover 99 days. However, I also need to set up some other things to really make this worth my while (don’t worry, this won’t cost you any money). I need a blog plan.
Remember when I said in Post #1 that I would show you how to incorporate a few other Marketing techniques so that we can get the most out of our blog? Well, lets start there.
Marketing Your Blog in Multiple Ways
You see, every time I put a blog post together, I have a very specific process that I follow (don’t worry, I will give you a step-by-step later in this series). When I’m blogging, I’m not just hoping that someone will find my post and read it and share it. I’m putting it out there for prospective readers to find easily.
I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone (or three or four). See, I like to combine my marketing efforts. Not only is it more efficient this way, but it’s also more effective when your marketing works together.
I’m combining several marketing tactics all at once; content marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and video marketing. Who knew you could get so much out of one simple blog post, right?
But once again, I’m going to take this slow. We are going to start at the beginning and take it day by day. If you follow this example, day-to-day, not only will you see the fruits of your labor by getting more traffic to your site, but you will also be complimenting what you have done by presenting that same information to several other marketing platforms.
But before we go any further, we need a blog platform. If you don’t already have a blog, go to Google and type in How To Start a Blog. It’s really simple and there are a million videos that will show you how. This blogging piece is more written to those of you that already have a blog.
If you have a website (and not a blog), good news… they are the same thing. A blog is just what people call a “news” section of your site. Instead of people calling it “News” in the menu, they call it a “Blog”. Let’s assume that you’re this far. If not, I will post a few videos in the coming weeks to show you how to set up a blog. But don’t let that stop you, there are still steps you should take BEFORE you start writing.
Our Blogging Plan
1. First, we need to define our mission goals. Here is what you need to answer: (Mancini Digital’s answers are in parenthesis)
- Who is your target audience? (Business owners and people looking to grow their business online)
- What are you going to deliver to them? (Education, useful information, resources, and motivation)
- The outcome? What are they going to get out of it? (They are going to be able to grow their business)
We do this because this helps us define what we’re going to blog about. If it doesn’t fit into these answers, they we are not going to blog about it.
Let’s Set Up a Blog Plan
2. Now that we know our mission, we can “Pick our Blogging Categories”. Even though you know what your business is about (or what you’re selling), people are still always asking me what to blog about. Here are a number of ideas or you can think about for categories or you can also check out This Blog Post which goes into more detail.
- Frequently Asked Questions that you get from prospective (or current) clients or customers.
- New products, techniques or processes in your industry.
- Testimonials from your customers and what you did to deserve those. Did you go above and beyond? Talk about it!
- Talk about specific customer situations or problems. Let people know about the problem the customer had, the solution that you implemented, and the outcome.
- See what everyone else in your industry is blogging about and use that for ideas.
These are just a few ideas, but you see where I’m going. It doesn’t have to be some 1000 word chapter of a book. It can be 200 words (or more). It just needs to be ABOUT your business, industry, or products. Not every blog post is designed to Sell, Sell, Sell. It can be there to educate people and show that you’re an authority on the subject.
3. Set up a Blog Schedule
Well, we all know about the schedule that I’ve set. 99 posts in 99 days. But for most people you should set something realistic. Typically I see clients try once a week, and most of them fail. They fail because they don’t see the value in it, don’t have the time, and don’t have the motivation. Hopefully this series of posts will help you out with that.
But pick something that YOU CAN DO. Try it once every two weeks. Try it once every three days. It’s YOUR choice, but just choose something that you can be successful with.
Also, pick AND schedule the TIME of the day that you’re going to do it. And typically, the end of the day won’t work (you’re tired and have had a long day). I try to do it at 5am when I wake up and have my coffee. Nobody to bug me, no phone ringing, no emails coming in (I don’t even open up my Outlook). I can just pour out what comes to mind without thinking about that I have to pick up the kids from school.
4. Once you have some posts, we need to check out your results and monitor them. However, you should first have a way to check those results out. If you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website, you MUST have this. CLICK HERE to go to a video on how to add those analytics to your site. Analytics tell us about the traffic going to your blog and what is going on with that traffic once they get there.
Make sure you take note of where your analytics are RIGHT NOW. This is so we have something to compare against once we get started.
I compare constantly, but you don’t need to. Schedule time once every two weeks to check these out.
Those are the steps that you should follow when it comes to setting up a blog plan. What do you think? Is there anything I’m missing? Let me know in the comments below.