B2C, B2B, Not-For-Profit, Solopreneur and Personal Blogs Compared
Blogs provide a publishing platform for businesses (including B2C, B2B, Not-For-Profits and Solopreneurs) and individuals to create content their readers seek, socialize it and make it findable.
To get your blog on track to succeed, here’s what’s needed for nine major elements of a blog plan.
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- Goals. Determine what you want your blog to help you accomplish. This is especially important for business blogs to be effective.
- Blog audience. Define your target audience and what you want them to do after they’ve read you blog posts. To help your blogging, create marketing personas and social media personas.
- Content focus. To provide an on-going stream of content and build a real connection with readers, develop an editorial calendar to ensure your blog covers a variety of topics related to your category. Consider your audience’s appetite for new information and how frequently you can produce content to satisfy their needs.
- Content format. While many bloggers automatically think text when they think blogs, in today’s multi-format world, consider how you’ll integrate other content options such as images, videos, audio, presentations and e-books.
- Blogger(s). Decide who will create your blog’s content. While this is obvious for personal and solopreneur blogs, it’s not always apparent for business blogs. If it’s not someone’s job, blog posts may not get created.
- Blog support. Blogging involves more than being an astute observer and great writer. You need help from other experts such as copy editors, technology, creative resources, additional writers and photographers.
- Additional promotion. Most blogs don’t naturally attract a loyal readership. It often takes work to develop and convert readers. Among the elements needed are strong content, killer headlines, and social sharing. Additionally, you need to constantly let people know that you’ve got a blog and to spotlight the content. Here’s help promoting your blog with little or no money.
- Blog metrics. As with any other endeavor, it’s important to measure your results in relation to your goals and objectives. Whenever you ask readers to take some step you need to have some means to collect the information and analyze it. BTW, business bloggers should check whether they chase the wrong blog metrics.
- Budget. Blogs like other forms of content and marketing require resources, both financial and human. For individuals there’s often a tradeoff in terms of the person’s own time versus an investment in outside resources.
Blogs are a critical component of any social media and/or content marketing strategy. Regardless of whether you’re a B2C, B2B, Not-For-Profit or solopreneur business or an individual who wants to promote your point-of-view, blogs provide the perfect publishing platform.
What other elements or questions would you add to this blog plan list and why?
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
P.S. If you’re really serious about taking your blog to the next level, download our new FREE e-book entitled, What Every Blogger Needs to Know – 101 Actionable Blogging Tips.
Here are some related blogging articles.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bohman/5206587246/
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